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on a day when we were dark and not so full of light we met what did we find? nothing. everything, when we closed our eyes which anyway had never been open. once, we thought we loved each other who can reverse time? we tried. we stepped out of space into some new step of distance and fell— and not in love.

1 Her story is a part of something larger, it is a part of history. No, her story is an illumination of history, the matchstick lit in the black seam of time. Or, no, her story is separate from the whole, as distinct as each person is distinct from the stream of people that led to the one and leads past the one. Or, her story is surrounded by history, the ambient spaciousness of which she is the momentary foreground. Maybe history is a net through which just about everything passes, and the pieces of her story are particles caught in the interstices. Or, her story is a contradiction, something ordinary that has no part in history at all, if history is about what is included, what is made important. History is the galleon in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in the middle of the sixteenth century, swaying like a drunk who will take six months to finally reach his house. She is on another ship, centuries later, on a journey eastward that will take weeks across the same ocean. The war is over, though her husband is still in his officer’s uniform, small but confident among the tall white officers. Her hair is marcelled like a movie star’s waves, though she has been too sick with the water’s motion to know that anyone sees her. Her daughter is two, the blur of need at the center of each day’s incessant rocking. Here is a ship, an ocean. Here is a figure, her story a few words in the blue void. 2 Research is mourning, my friend says. Which means what, exactly, for the things listed in the archives as filling the galleons when they left Cebu and Manila — ivory objects, jade objects, copper objects, brass objects, lacquer objects, mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture, pearls, rubies, sapphires, bolts of cotton cloth, silks and gauzes, crepes and velvets, taffetas and damasks and brocades, stockings, cloaks, robes, kimonos, bed coverings, tapestries, linens, church vestments, rugs, blue-and-white porcelain that numbered 1,500 in one ship, wax, tallow candles, cordage, sailcloth, musk, borax, camphor, cigars, varieties of tea, cinnamon that was dried and powdered, 40,000 pounds of it listed in one ship’s manifest, cloves, pepper, nutmeg, tamarind, ginger, martaban jars from Burma, dragon jars from China, Vietnamese jars, Siamese jars, Spanish jars, 800 jars found with the wreck of one salvaged ship, jars that would have contained tar for caulking, oil, wine, bizcocho bread, salted meats, dried fruits, lard, bacon, beans, chickpeas, lentils, flour, garlic, cheese, honey, rice, salt, sugar, food for months, not enough food, not enough water, chickens, cows, pigs, up to one thousand souls depending on whether the ship had a tonnage of 300 or 500 or 1,000 or 2,000, ships that in the 250 years of the trade route wrecked somewhere along the way more often than they arrived in Acapulco, sailors, mercenaries, officers, noblemen and their entourages, priests and missionaries, slaves that were called indios or chinos, nails, tools, iron cask hoops, fireworks, opals — elegy? 3 We didn’t want to be noticed, so we put charcoal on our faces. I listen to the hours of tape, of the two of us at the dining table. All the girls, looking like dirt./My father was always drinking Questions about the town, her parents, the names of people or with women, my mother had to take care of the business./ that only she could now remember. The images, I imagined, My sister broke her back when she was a child, she grew up scrolling in her mind, and translated into the answers she gave. into a hunchback. She died very young./They set up a dance Sometimes pausing, not because she couldn’t recall, but didn’t at the municipal tennis courts to celebrate the end of the war, want to recall badly, the pause a kind of gap between what she and he was there, in hisUSuniform./He always insisted that knew and what the words could do. The two things a voice we sit at the front, but when I was by myself on the bus I sat can say when it is saying one thing, the things that suddenly somewhere in the middle. I didn’t want trouble./I was around return when you are speaking, like pockets of color coming to fifty-five when I had my first real job, working as the security life in your mind: I listen to her with my skin and my eyes, at Macy’s./I always liked to read. I wanted to go to college my ears. I had had the notion that asking her about her life like my sisters, but I got married./You know that wedding might add something to what I thought of as my art, as though dress in the picture, we had to borrow it from our neighbor./ her past and her love could be vectors of use. But I started to I liked Japan when he was stationed there. It was so clean. realize that what I actually needed to know, I would have Then Norfolk. Richmond./I was so sick on the ship, I can’t to conjure for myself, because what we know most deeply remember much. Your mama just kept running all around. we guard best, even as she spoke, laughed, passed the glow It was a navy ship./My mother’s name is Canuta Sacay and of each story to me, like a document I could have in hand my father’s name is Enrique Omega. My grandparents were but could not understand. I put the tape away, felt for years farmers outside Ormoc./I was born in Ormoc, December 8, that it was enough, the responsibility done. Our conversation 1924or25./This was the apartment we lived in in Maryland. stopped when my aunt came to take her out for some errands. That’s Junior there in the picture. And there’s your mama. Chatter, chairs moved around, then noises that are just noises. 4 In Madrid I orient myself     I walk on the wide boulevards and know an empire is its boulevards     I stand below the angel skeptical of the beauty of angels     at the royal gardens I count the 138 kinds of dahlias     at the crystal palace I imagine the exhibition of plants indigenous to my islands     I walk up the street of the poets     read the bronze lines on the ground the longing and song of the pirate     in one museum I stare at Picasso’s lightbulb     in the oldest neighborhoods I wonder if  José Rizal walked these streets     studying diseases of the eye during the day     writing his novel in the night in another museum I look     at the paintings of the dwarves of  the horses     of  the undying fruit     in the train station I visit the memorial for the murdered     in the great white square at dawn I walk     inscribe myself  like letters on a page at the naval museum I look into the face of  Magellan     show the painting my face     I sing the neighborhoods of Huertas and Chueca     maybe only in Madrid     is the light a gold weight always     at the supermarket I overhear     two Filipinos speaking and I turn away and break     I find myself in the cathedral     in the movie theater     where I watch a movie without understanding the words spoken     around a corner I stop because a kind of meadow     has been grown on the side of a building     like a tallness of heart     a dream carried into waking     my life breathing before it     incredible and true

I.  Open Ward at the Elisabeth Hospital, Berlin, 1920 My tongue is a spoon. Does that explain it?    Door opens    door closes. White coats stammer the threshold. They draw the sheets      again     and again I give them nothing.     My mouth is a splinter        not telling. They ask if I fell from the bridge or did I jump.         They ask my name.

June 5, 1892 Dear Daughter, Can you be fifty-three this month? I still look for you to peek around my door as if you’d discovered a toy you thought gone for good, ready at my smile to run up and press your fist into my broken palm. But your own girls have outgrown such games, and I cannot pilfer back time I spent pursuing Freedom. Fair to you, to your brothers, your mother? Hardly. But what other choice did I have? What sham, what shabby love could I offer you, so long as Thomas Auld held the law over my head? And when the personal threat was ended, whose eyes could mine enter without shame, if turning toward my wife and children meant turning my back? Your mother’s eyes stare out at me through yours, of late. You think I didn’t love her, that my quick remarriage makes a Gertrude of me, a corseted Hamlet of you. You’re as wrong as you are lucky. Had Anna Murray had your education as a girl, my love for her would have been as passionate as it was grateful. But she died illiterate, when I had risked my life to master language. The pleasures of book and pen retain the thrill of danger even now, and you may understand why Ottilie Assing, come into our house to translate me into German, could command so many hours, years, of my time—or, as you would likely say, of your mother’s time. Forgive me, Rosetta, for broaching such indelicate subjects, but as my eldest child and only living daughter, I want you to feel certain that Helen became the new Mrs. Douglass because of what we shared in sheaves of my papers: let no one persuade you I coveted her skin. I am not proud of how I husbanded your mother all those years, but marriage, too, is a peculiar institution. I could not have stayed so unequally yoked so long, without a kind of Freedom in it. Anna accepted this, and I don’t have to tell you that her lot was better and she, happier, than if she’d squatted with some other man in a mutual ignorance. Perhaps I will post, rather than burn, this letter, this time. I’ve written it so often, right down to these closing lines, in which I beg you to be kinder, much kinder, to your step-mother. You two are of an age to be sisters, and of like temperament—under other circumstances, you might have found Friendship in each other. With regards to your husband—I am, as ever, your loving father— Frederick Douglass

How much of everything is pure Getting ready. Dressing, pushing the button Asquint through its machined furl Only to unbutton, the eyes-open moment Revealed. Ask any animal: nudity isn’t The same as nakedness. Once you’ve seen A dangling, you can’t unsee it, and From that anything might ensue. There’s the rub. Taking the long view You could say the future is romantic I suppose. Also something you Could never do without, though its bric- a-brac is purely theoretical, until It’s arranged. Or not. Then, a miracle?

The morning after my death we will sit in cafés but I will not be there I will not be * There was the great death of birds the moon was consumed with fire the stars were visible until noon. Green was the forest drenched with shadows the roads were serpentine A redwood tree stood alone with its lean and lit body unable to follow the cars that went by with frenzy a tree is always an immutable traveller. The moon darkened at dawn the mountain quivered with anticipation and the ocean was double-shaded: the blue of its surface with the blue of flowers mingled in horizontal water trails there was a breeze to witness the hour * The sun darkened at the fifth hour of the day the beach was covered with conversations pebbles started to pour into holes and waves came in like horses. * The moon darkened on Christmas eve angels ate lemons in illuminated churches there was a blue rug planted with stars above our heads lemonade and war news competed for our attention our breath was warmer than the hills. * There was a great slaughter of rocks   of spring leaves of creeks the stars showed fully the last king of the Mountain gave battle and got killed. We lay on the grass covered dried blood with our bodies green blades swayed between our teeth. * We went out to sea a bank of whales was heading South a young man among us a hero tried to straddle one of the sea creatures his body emerged as a muddy pool as mud we waved goodbye to his remnants happy not to have to bury him in the early hours of the day We got drunk in a barroom the small town of Fairfax had just gone to bed cherry trees were bending under the weight of their flowers: they were involved in a ceremonial dance to which no one had ever been invited. * I know flowers to be funeral companions they make poisons and venoms and eat abandoned stone walls I know flowers shine stronger than the sun their eclipse means the end of times but I love flowers for their treachery their fragile bodies grace my imagination’s avenues without their presence my mind would be an unmarked grave. * We met a great storm at sea looked back at the rocking cliffs the sand was going under black birds were leaving the storm ate friends and foes alike water turned into salt for my wounds. * Flowers end in frozen patterns artificial gardens cover the floors we get up close to midnight search with powerful lights the tiniest shrubs on the meadows A stream desperately is running to the ocean *

This unfinished business of my childhood this emerald lake from my journey’s other side haunts hierarchies of heavens a palm forest fell overnight to make room for an unwanted garden ever since fevers and swellings turn me into a river the streets were steep winds were running ahead of ships . . . There was indeed the death of birds the moon had passed away. * The morning after his death pursuing him beyond his bitter end his mother came to his grave: she removed his bones out of their pattern and ditched them into mud: women came at night and claimed Rimbaud their own that night there was much thunder      it was awesome * Laurels and lilacs bloom around my head because I stood up to the sun You see     the Colorado River runs between flowered banks I repeat my journeys to seek the happiness that overcame your absence I was happy not to love you anymore until the sunset reached the East and broke my raft apart there were other rivers underground covered with dead flowers it was cold it was cold yes it was cold. * Under a combination of pain and machine-gun fire flowers disappeared they are in the same state of non-being as Emily Dickinson We the dead have conversation in our gardens about our lack of existence. * The gardener is planting blue and white flowers some angel moved in with me to flee the cold temperature on earth are rising but we wear upon us some immovable frost everyone carries his dying as a growing shadow. * I left the morning paper by the coffee cup the heat was 85 like the year and I went to the window to find that flowers had bloomed overnight to replace the bodies felled in the war the enemy had come with fire and ruse to stamp the names of the dead in the gardens of Yohmor It is not because spring is too beautiful that we’ll not write what happens in the dark. * A butterfly came to die between two stones at the foot of the Mountain the mountain shed shadows over it to cover the secret of death. *

from the sustaining air fresh air There is the clarity of a shore And shadow,   mostly,   brilliance summer the billows of August When, wandering, I look from my page I say nothing when asked I am, finally, an incompetent, after all

WHEREAS a string-bean blue-eyed man leans back into a swig of beer work-weary lips at the dark bottle keeping cool in short sleeves and khakis he enters the discussion; Whereas his wrist loose at the bottleneck to come across as candid “Well at least there was an Apology that’s all I can say” he offers to the circle each of them scholarly; Whereas under starlight the fireflies wink across East Coast grass and me I sit there painful in my silence glued to a bench in the midst of the American casual; Whereas a subtle electricity in that low purple light I felt their eyes on my face gauging a reaction and someone’s discomfort leaks out in a well-stated “Hmmm”; Whereas like a bird darting from an oncoming semi my mind races to the Apology’s assertion “While the establishment of permanent European settlements in North America did stir conflict with nearby Indian tribes, peaceful and mutually beneficial interactions also took place”; Whereas I cross my arms and raise a curled hand to my mouth as if thinking as if  taking it in I allow a static quiet then choose to stand up excusing myself  I leave them to unease; Whereas I drive down the road replaying the get-together how the man and his beer bottle stated their piece and I reel at what I could have said or done better; Whereas I could’ve but didn’t broach the subject of “genocide” the absence of this term from the Apology and its rephrasing as “conflict” for example; Whereas since the moment had passed I accept what’s done and the knife of my conscience pierces with bone-clean self-honesty; Whereas in a stirred conflict between settlers and an Indian that night in a circle; Whereas I struggle to confess that I didn’t want to explain anything; Whereas truthfully I wished most to kick the legs of that man’s chair out from under him; Whereas to watch him fall backward legs flailing beer stench across his chest; Whereas I pictured it happening in cinematic slow-motion delightful; Whereas the curled hand I raised to my mouth was a sign of indecision; Whereas I could’ve done it but I didn’t; Whereas I can admit this also took place, yes,at least; WHEREAS we ride to the airport in a van they swivel their necks and shoulders around to speak to me sugar and lilt in their voices something like nurses their nursely kindness through my hair then engage me as comrades in a fight together. Well what we want to know one lady asks is why they don’t have schools there? Her outrage empathy her furrowed brow. There are schools there I reply. Grade schools high schools colleges. But why aren’t there any stores there? There are stores there. Grocery stores convenience stores trading posts whatever what-have-you I explain but it’s here I recognize the break. It’s here we roll along the pavement into hills of conversation we share a ride we share a country but live in alternate nations and here I must tell them what they don’t know or, should I?Should I is the moment to seize and before I know it I say Well you know Native people as in tribes as in “people” living over there are people with their own nations each with its own government and flag they rise to their own national songs and sing in their own languages, even. And by there I mean here all around us I remind them. Drifting in side-glances to whirring trees through the van windows then back to me they dig in they unearth the golden question My God how come we were never taught this in our schools? The concern and furrow. But God the slowing wheels and we lurch forward in the van’s downshift and brake. Together we reach a full-stop. Trapped in a helix of traffic we’re late for check-in security flights our shoulders flex forward into panicked outward gazes nerves and fingers cradle our wristwatches so to answer their question now would be untimely because to really speak to it ever is, untimely. But there Comrades there there Nurses. I will remember the swing of your gold earrings.There your perfume around me as a fresh blanket.There you checked my pulse kindly.There the boundary of bedside manners; WHEREAS a woman I know says she watched a news program a reporter detailed the fire a house in which five children burned perhaps their father too she doesn’t recall exactly but remembers the camera on the mother’s face the mother’s blubbering her hiccuping and wail she leans to me she says she never knew then in those times that year this country the northern state she grew up in she was so young you see she’d never seen it before nobody talked about them she means Indians she tells me and so on and so on but that moment in front of the TV she says was like opening a box left at her door opening to see the thing inside whereas to say she learned through that mother’s face can you believe it and I let her finish wanting someone to say it but she hated saying it or so she said admitting how she never knew until then they could feel; WHEREAS the word whereas means it being the case that, or considering that, or while on the contrary; is a qualifying or introductory statement, a conjunction, a connector. Whereas sets the table. The cloth. The saltshakers and plates. Whereas calls me to the table because Whereas precedes and invites. I have come now. I’m seated across from a Whereas smile. Under pressure of formalities, I fidget I shake my legs. I’m not one for these smiles, Whereas I have spent my life in unholding.What do you mean by unholding? Whereas asks and since Whereas rarely asks, I am moved to respond, Whereas, I have learned to exist and exist without your formality, saltshakers, plates, cloth. Without the slightest conjunctions to connect me. Without an exchange of questions, without the courtesy of answers. This has become mine, this unholding. Whereas, with or without the setup, I can see the dish being served. Whereas let us bow our heads in prayer now, just enough to eat;

Is there a single thing in nature that can approach in mystery the absolute uniqueness of any human face, first, then its transformation from childhood to old age— We are surrounded at every instant by sights that ought to strike the sane unbenumbed person tongue-tied, mute with gratitude and terror. However, there may be three sane people on earth at any given time: and if you got the chance to ask them how they do it, they would not understand. I think they might just stare at you with the embarrassment of pity. Maybe smile the way you do when children suddenly reveal a secret preoccupation with their origins, careful not to cause them shame, on the contrary, to evince the great congratulating pleasure one feels in the presence of a superior talent and intelligence; or simply as one smiles to greet a friend who’s waking up, to prove no harm awaits him, you’ve dealt with and banished all harm.