PALOMA BLANCA

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THE DOOR IS FALLEN DOWN


The door is fallen down
to the house
I used to try & pry open,
in & out,
painfully,
stiff tears.

I sit underneath the cottonwoods--
Friends,
what am I meant to be doing?
Nothing. The door is fallen down
inside my open body
where all the worlds touch.


by Jean Valentine


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Swift wind! Space! My Soul! Now I know it is true what I guessed at--

Eternity lies in bottomless resevoirs . . . . its buckets are rising forever and ever,
They pour and pour and they exhale away--

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars--

Large, turbulent, brave, handsome, generous, proud and affectionate--

I rise extatic through all, and sweep with the true gravitation,
the whirling and whirling is elemental within me--


Walt Whitman


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PEREGRINATIONS ONCE YOU WERE A FISHERMAN & YOUNG


Tata, the dark country of your eyes
still buries
your life inside of me.
Once you were a fisherman

and young, slinging your nets & spearing
Tilapia to sell at the coast-market. Old Man, when the Sea
violently swept your small boat back to her darkness,
La Lucia, you took up your guitar like the light

strumming those long helixes under
the waves. Pouring Tequila onto the rust of your last
coins, you started singing the coro: Cuidado, cuidado que te quema,
Candela. I hear you,

Paletero, Drunk with Amazing Sadness
while in your bare feet you went dancing

dust to chickens. The brother you loved fell down
stabbed in a knife-fight & died
for sleeping with another man's wife. The mother of your sons
has slept now these six
years in the earth, & you know too well that Here
sharp pains release intense joys

for now that you're old your face has grown stern with Musical Silence, Abuelo.
Don't forget us, tenderness
throwing your fist up laughing to Eternity
the sky, Old Odysseus

gesticulating your funny lament, Aye gente! Nunca,
Nunca vamos a llegar
a la luna! Tata,

the dark country of your eyes
still alive has been buried
here inside of me.


























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