Ingathering

The poets are going home now, After the years of exile, After the northern climates Where they worked, lectured, remembered, Where they shivered at night In an indifferent world. Where God was the god of business, And men would violate the poets’ moon, And even the heavens become zones of war. The poets are going home To the blood-haunted villages, To the crumbling walls, still pocked With a spray of bullets; To the ravine, marked with a new cross, Where their brother died. No one knows the precise spot where they shot him, But there is a place now to gather, to lay wreaths. The poets will bring flowers. The poets are coming home To the cafés, to the life of the streets at twilight, To slip among the crowds and greet their friends; Thee young poets, old now, limping, who lean on a cane: Or the arm of a grandchild, peer with opaque eyes At the frightening city, the steel and concrete towers Sprung up in their absence. Yet from open doorways comes the odor of grapes Fermented, of fish, of oil, of pimiento… The poets have come home To the melodious language That settles in their heads like moths alighting, This language for which they starved In a world of gutturals, Crude monosyllables barked by strangers. Now their own language enfolds them With its warm vocables. The poets are home. Yes, they have come back To look up at the yellow moon, Cousin of that cold orb that only reflected Their isolation. They have returned to the olives, the light, The sage-scented meadows, The whitewashed steps, the tubs of geraniums, The sere plains, the riverbanks spread with laundry, The poppies, the vineyards, the bones of mountains. Yes, poets, welcome home To your small country Riven by its little war (As the world measures these events), A country that remembers heroes and tears; Where, in your absence, souls kept themselves alive By whispering your words. Now you smile at everything, even the priests, the militia, The patient earth that is waiting to receive you.