Elegy to Lorca

For two weeks I have been channeling Federico Garcia Lorca, Spanish poet (June 5, 1898 – August 19, 1936)

Around me now I watch dark

lumps of hatred grow.

The way gods dropped branchlets of rue

over Europe, bittering its waters.

In Andalusia, place you loved, sweet

water was not to be found.

The fascists escorted you out

to an olive grove and executed you.

They put two more bullets in your ass

because you were gay, laughed.

You underestimated their savagery.

You miscalculated when you stayed.

You thought duende might spare you.

While you were alive—before

either of my parents were born—

you journeyed near my home

traveling New York to Tampa,

on your way south to Cuba,

passing through my Andalusia,

land of giant pine forests,

of mercurial rivers without stones,

of peach orchards blooming

pink in early spring, of people

gathered at crossroads stores to talk.

Because I too have come back

to a homeland soured, violent, hate-

driven, cold-eyed, to people

who turn away, who construct

The Other—and for whom The Other

can be a blight, a tumor, a thorn—

I feel your soul walking close to me.

How shocking that darkness is bacterial.

Infectious, it spreads and destroys.

How choking that no one is safe, not

here in my Andalusia. Not anywhere.

Federico, your death makes my heart

hang like a rotten fruit.

I want to be more watchful, more clever.

Once in a Vermont town I stood

along an outfield fence

watching a baseball game,

listening to two men talk

summer, cookouts, grilled corn,

strawberries, the game, and then

roses they grew in their back yards,

exactly how they cared for the large,

pink, dew-spangled flowers they

carefully cut and brought inside.

That image stayed with me.

Here in the country, on a quiet

farm I love (mockingbird lands now

on a garden perch), I can hope.

I can decide to face my destiny.

Rest a while with me, Federico,

so the ground can know itself again.

So the boots can free the bare feet.

So the roses, Federico. These

beautiful roses.