Marjorie Agosín

That autumn was abundant In Istanbul the ancient and platinum Women with their faces covered and discovered My grandfather arrived on foot to this Ottoman city From the desolate Sebastopol and from other burned villages, From the bloody snow. He spoke about its minarets Certainly he loved the fields of leaves. Autumn, like a river or a glowing bonfire And I don't know where he went to pray, Or perhaps he no longer did so in the city of the sultans But I know in his mouth he carried a needle Noble metaphor of his trade. Perhaps he wandered astonished throughout lovely Istanbul Searching for sustenance or clients Perhaps inclined, he entered one of the thousand mosques Where he prayed While the clocks stood still, Geographies were erased. Because the city was merely a golden breeze falling upon the leaves A multitude of lights upon the holy minarets, My grandfather, A Jewish tailor also took refuge in Istanbul Also another small Jewish city Among the thresholds of history.

The sun changed colors The moon enamored even the most elderly, The tomatoes blushed with joy upon seeing you pass by.

She longed to be an island, She loved the unbridled madness of them, the islands, She longed to arrive to an island that, perhaps, wasn't an island Divest herself of the ruinous, stony loves She longed to be an island To only inhabit the sea's waistline And not leave or return To only be an island Island of the night Island of the dawn Islands.

I In September beyond the breezes and the smoke when autumn unveils its fiery shell, I think of you fragile and severe, small and immense II You were a traveler through demented and subtle geographies with your magic wand singing about Yugoslavia and Lebanon Chile and Peru —Those details on imaginary sheets, doubtful you would get lost because true history was made by women the girl-women and the old women. III When the children of war become a nebulous flame when the earth's shell is a shawl afire with gold, I name you, Marta Alvarado, arriving almost at dawn with your bony woolen gloves to open the school's doors and the defiance of your notebook.