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“Is my team ploughing, That I was used to drive And hear the harness jingle When I was man alive?” Ay, the horses trample, The harness jingles now; No change though you lie under The land you used to plough. “Is football playing Along the river shore, With lads to chase the leather, Now I stand up no more?” Ay the ball is flying, The lads play heart and soul; The goal stands up, the keeper Stands up to keep the goal. “Is my girl happy, That I thought hard to leave, And has she tired of weeping As she lies down at eve?” Ay, she lies down lightly, She lies not down to weep: Your girl is well contented. Be still, my lad, and sleep. “Is my friend hearty, Now I am thin and pine, And has he found to sleep in A better bed than mine?” Yes, lad, I lie easy, I lie as lads would choose; I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart, Never ask me whose.

When Isaac, a small, freckled boy approaching seven, visits us for Family Camp, playing pirate with his rubber sword, sometimes he slumps in grief, trudging along, his sacrifice and small violin in hand, his palm over his chest, saying,Mother is here in my heart. Before he leaves for home, we ask if he’d like a Jewish blessing. Our grandson’s handsome face ignites; he chirps a rousing,yes, for a long life. We unfold the prayer shawl, its Hebrew letters silvering the spring light, hold the white tallis above his head, recite the blessing in its ancient language and then the English, adding,for a long life. Isaac complains, the tallis didn’t touch his head, so he didn’t feel the blessing. We lower its silken ceiling to graze his dark hair, repeat the prayer.

When Isaac, a small, freckled boy approaching seven, visits us for Family Camp, playing pirate with his rubber sword, sometimes he slumps in grief, trudging along, his sacrifice and small violin in hand, his palm over his chest, saying,Mother is here in my heart. Before he leaves for home, we ask if he’d like a Jewish blessing. Our grandson’s handsome face ignites; he chirps a rousing,yes, for a long life. We unfold the prayer shawl, its Hebrew letters silvering the spring light, hold the white tallis above his head, recite the blessing in its ancient language and then the English, adding,for a long life. Isaac complains, the tallis didn’t touch his head, so he didn’t feel the blessing. We lower its silken ceiling to graze his dark hair, repeat the prayer.

what more can man desire? Always, he woke in those days With a sense of treasure, His heart a gayer glow Than his window grand with sun, As a child, its mind all whirring With green and hollied pleasure Wakes in a haze of Christmas! The season of secrets done. Or as one on country linen Wakes with a start one morning— Then on comfort snugger than pillows Floats: July at the lake. Or has married a golden girl And can hardly believe, but turning Sees blossom for him that very face Worshipping cameras take. Toy trains whirr perky on Till springs contort beneath; The middle-age rower slumps Like a sack—indignant seizure! Late editions wail Screen Star in Mystery Death— Yet in those same days He woke with a sense of treasure. Knowing: my love is safe Though the Rockies plunge like water, Though surf like a wildfire rage And omens roam the sky; Though limbs of the swimmer laze Pale where the seaweed caught her, Nothing can touch my love As dangerous time goes by.

Before the God-bullied hull, call me— Before the God-bullied hull buckles, before The red flag unfurled on water bucks and drowns, Before the sky-hawk dives down, before The nail drives through the sky-hawk’s red-wing— Call me the nail driven through the wing And call me the wing driven through. A board On water is buoyant, I know: I cling to wood— A dictionary buckles and drowns. I know I do not drown: I’m abridged, afloat, call me— Sir, when my book arrives, when each page You’ve untied lets go the breath it held That was my breath, then my breath will not be mine— I think you’ll know. I know when doors open I mean to keep closed: study-door, desk-drawer. My wife found the key I hid beneath the fern. My pens she did not touch. She did not touch The hundred pages I left blank to fill other days. She took the cracked compass I keep for luck (the needle’s sharp, but stuck), took my green-glass Ink-pot, and centering the compass on my desk, Poured out each dark drop of ink unitl ink Seeped through cracked glass and left the compass Ink-full. The gold needle loosened, floated: a line. Bent back, I am taking you inside my head Turning back. Ahab bent The needle that refused North back to a magnet’s tow— Did, Ahab did, after The needle’s faith answered our question:No. How do you point at a horizon? Ask me. I know. Needle out your arm: close eyes: And turn in a circle. Inscribe a zero on the wood-deck— The Equator on zero latitudes lies. That is the truth, I know Sir, what name that bay a last page carves Out of no shore:ice? glacier? greenland? strand, shoal-of-white-sand? an artic-calm?

You’re right    in life’s chamber music either listen with total attention    or else switch off Water    one drop can perfectly lock up these shores The crash of waves has no gap    is like a tailored body still sitting on the rock    the lilac-scented surrounding ocean still striking at a little girl’s unceasing gaze into distance Purple or white    petals are stored in the eyes all through the springtime night, dark rings around the eyes keep opening    torn by where she looks far away Suffering is that waiting, underwater pearl what turns old is salt    low sobbing in every wave The fierce wind is a jade bracelet on the wrist Island    like a boat sailing since the day you were born never slowing down its disconsolate speed always arriving yet, underfoot, drawn away by the ebbing tide Purple    wounds the turbulent, close-up scene sets off white    the horizon like land cutting, above snow line, into fate exposing the snow flower you’ve caught for life Still wet    tears run halfway down the girl’s cheeks After so many years play the cold rain you’ve brought back A seagull plunges    then flies back up    You hear clearly this kiss

for Ruth Behar I’m still thinking about your porch light like a full moon casting a foggy halo in the frigid air last night, the bare oaks branching into the sky like nerve endings inches away from the frozen stars, the pink gables of your Victorian home protesting yet another winter for you captive in Ann Arbor as you practice mambo by the fireplace. I’m following your red-velvet shoes to conga beats and bongo taps taking your body, but not your life, from the snow mantling your windows outside, 1,600 miles away from Cuba. I’m tasting the cafecito you made, the slice of homemade flan floating in burnt sugar like the stories you told me you can’t finish writing, no matter how many times you travel through time back to Havana to steal every memory ever stolen from you. You’re a thief anyone would forgive, wanting only to imagine faces for names chiseled on the graves of your family at Guanabacoa, walk on Calle Aguacate and pretend to meet the grandfather you never met at his lace shop for lunch, or pray the Kaddish like your mother at the synagogue in El Vedado, stand on the steps there like you once did in a photo you can’t remember taking. I confess I pitied you, still trying to reach that unreachable island within the island you still call home. I thought I was done with Cuba, tired of filling in the blanks, but now I’m not sure. Maybe if I return just once more, walk the sugarcane fields my father once cut, drive down the road where my mother once peddled guavas to pay for textbooks, sit on the porch of my grandmother’s house, imagine her still in the kitchen making arroz-con-leche— maybe then I’ll have an answer for you last night when you asked me:Would you move to Cuba? Would you die there?

The natives here enjoy a delicate and tense society. Their upper classes make an art of conversation so refined that no Caucasian ever participates without making at least one outrageous faux pas. Few Europeans, in fact, can manage even the rudiments of this language, which consists of vowels only, and, although several grammars have been composed by reputable scholars, these disagree on every major point of syntax. The chieftains are invariably stout: a proverb says “Fat men must be sure; doubt and misgivings need agility.” The special term for this is rendered as “complacency” in all the lexicons, but is in no wise derogatory.

For Derek Walcott An island is one great eye gazing out, a beckoning lighthouse, searchlight, a wishbone compass, or counterweight to the stars. When it comes to outlook & point of view, a figure stands on a rocky ledge peering out toward an archipelago of glass on the mainland, a seagull’s wings touching the tip of a high wave, out to where the brain may stumble. But when a mind climbs down from its high craggy lookout we know it is truly a stubborn thing, & has to leaf through pages of dust & light, through pre-memory & folklore, remembering fires roared down there till they pushed up through the seafloor & plumes of ash covered the dead shaken awake worlds away,& silence filled up with centuries of waiting. Sea urchin, turtle,& crab came with earthly know-how, & one bird arrived with a sprig in its beak, before everything clouded with cries, a millennium of small deaths now topsoil & seasons of blossoms in a single seed. Light edged along salt-crusted stones, across a cataract of blue water, & lost sailors’ parrots spoke of sirens, the last words of men buried at sea. Someone could stand here contemplating the future, leafing through torn pages of St. Augustine or the prophecies by fishermen, translating spore & folly down to taproot. The dreamy-eyed boy still in the man, the girl in the woman, a sunny forecast behind today, but tomorrow’s beyond words. To behold a body of water is to know pig iron & mother wit. Whoever this figure is, he will soon return to dancing through the aroma of dagger’s log, ginger lily,& bougainvillea, between chants & strings struck till gourds rally the healing air, & till the church-steeple birds fly sweet darkness home. Whoever this friend or lover is, he intones redemptive harmonies. To lie down in remembrance is to know each of us is a prodigal son or daughter, looking out beyond land & sky, the chemical & metaphysical beyond falling & turning waterwheels in the colossal brain of damnable gods, a Eureka held up to the sun’s blinding eye, born to gaze into fire. After conquering frontiers, the mind comes back to rest, stretching out over the white sand.

to Rimbaud Two pages to a grape fable dangles the swan of samite blood shaping sand from thistle covered fog Over sacred lakes of fever (polished mouths of the vegetable frog rolling to my iron venus) I drop the chiseled pear Standing in smoke filled valleys (great domains of wingless flight and the angel’s fleshy gun) I stamp the houses of withering wax Bells of siren-teeth (singing to our tomb refusal’s last becoming) await the approach of the incendiary children lighting the moon-shaped beast Every twisted river pulls down my torn-out hair to ratless columns by the pyramid’s ghost (watered basin of the temple stink) and all the mud clocks in haste draw their mermaid-feather swords (wrapped by Dust) to nail them into the tears of the sea-gull child The winter web minute flutters beneath the spider’s goblet and the whores of all the fathers bleed for my delight