con sombreros altos y zapatos de hebillas doradas que morías
por tener, en los que hombres altos y erguidos en cuartos
con cortinas de terciopelo, con pelucas blancas, y plumas en mano
firmaban palabras que volaban como colibrís de la página
hasta el oído de tu corazón: Life, Liberty, Happiness
para We, the people cantando de mares resplandecientes
atravesados bajo cielos amplios a una tierra bendita cuando
lo que sabías de tu patria era sólo una canción y un libro.
Tal vez has olvidado la capital de Vermont
o Iowa, pero seguramente recuerdas tus ojos
en el mapa, memorizando ciudades y pueblos distantes
que casi no podías pronunciar; ni tampoco podías creer,
que esa inmensidad, esa tierra te pertenecía
y tu a ella: espina de las Rocosas, ojos azules
de los Grandes Lagos, hombros de las costas infinitas,
las caderas de incontables puertos, ríos como las líneas
de tus palmas trazadas con asombro de principio
a fin, y el puntico de tu corazón marcaba
orgullosamente dónde vivías, cuando ‘patria’
era eso que descubrías en un mapa.
Querías vivir en esa casa soñada, esa
que veías en la televisión: con sofás acolchonados
y bomboneras de cristal, donde las madres servían
pavos perfectamente rostizados con relleno instantáneo,
donde los niños tenían mesadas y dientes perfectos,
donde los padres manejaban autos con aletas plateadas
hasta aquel club al que seguramente pertenecerías
algún día. Los disparos y la sangre de las guerras
se oían hasta tu recámara, pero te dormías;
hombres de la luna aterrizaban en tu techo
con falsas promesas del espacio, pero la fantasía
era lo único que querías saber de la patria.
No querías cambiar el canal pero
lo hiciste, ¿te acuerdas? Abriste las persianas,
dejaste que la luz brillara sobre las alfombras cubiertas de mentiras
que no habías visto, notaste el polvo de secretos asentado
sobre las fotos, y la casa empezó a rechinar,
a derrumbarse a tu alrededor, mientras tú, sentado solo en la mesa
de la cocina durante años, el último en saber, le gritabas
a tu reflejo en las ventanas: América, cómo
pudiste?, sin ninguna respuesta imaginable,
pues todo lo que sabías de la patria era tu rabia.
Pero tu hogar era tu hogar, así que desempolvaste
los secretos, limpiaste las mentiras, y encendiste la chimenea.
Te sentaste con libros que nunca habías abierto,
escuchaste canciones que nunca habías tocado,
sacaste el viejo mapa de un cajón oscuro
y lo redibujaste con más colores y menos líneas.
Atizaste el fuego que seguía ardiendo hasta que, Bueno,
nada es perfecto, entendiste, te perdono,
dijiste—y el perdón se volvió tu patria.
Te quedaste, me quedé, nos quedamos todos por los muchachos
que regresaron como hombres, algunos sin
piernas; nos quedamos por la caída del Challenger y por las Torres
cuando se desmayaron del cielo; por los valientes
de Nueva Orleans varados en los techos como pájaros sin alas,
por el mar que se hinchó contra el norte hasta que
barrimos cada grano de arena de regreso a la orilla,
nos quedamos para encender veinte velas para veinte
niños, y tal vez sentir lo que siempre habíamos sentido:
conocer la patria requiere todo lo que sabemos del amor.
Algunos días mejor que otros, pero nunca fáciles:
cada mañana de cada año de cada siglo, nuestra promesa
de despertarnos y bajar los escalones con esperanza
rabiosa a sentarnos en la mesa de la cocina otra vez
con los ojos aún borrosos, aún cansados, y decir: Mira,
tenemos que hablar—eso es lo que sabemos de la patria.
. . . some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back . . .
In the way “What We Know of Country” speaks to the various phases we move through in our love of country, similarly has my relationship with Mark evolved and constantly changed. Throughout our twelve years together we have learned to adapt to each other’s needs and reevaluate our relationship through various life-changing circumstances. Being named inaugural poet was certainly one of those circumstances! We’ve always alternated roles as primary breadwinners and work-at-home house-husbands. When we moved to Maine, I had assumed the latter role, managing our home while also working parttime on consulting engineering projects. But the intense pressure of a three-week deadline to finish the inaugural poems forced me to write every available minute of the day, well into the morning hours, and consumed all my mental and physical energy. Mark took over my role and day-to-day routine: picking up mail at the post office, walking and feeding Joey, grocery shopping, stoking the fire—and more. He also took a leave of absence from work so he could step in as my manager, fielding phone calls, scheduling interviews, and coordinating social media and logistics with the inaugural committee. All so I could write—and write I did, right through Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Mark has always been my first reader, though—that didn’t change. I have always valued his input as one of the most intelligent people I know—an accomplished research scientist in his own right. But he’s not steeped in the world of poetry and so maintains an important perspective as a reader. His everyday-person’s perspective was especially important when I considered the inaugural poem’s audience—people from all walks of life with a basic understanding of poetry for the most part. Every night I’d leave him drafts I had finished before going to bed, and the next morning, while I was still sleeping, he would carefully read over them. I’d wake up to giant mushy stars and heart-shaped I love you’s scribbled in the margin, which secretly meant as much to me as his brilliant comments and suggestions on the poem that we’d then discuss at length over coffee. I had always been his emotional rock; now he was mine. Support, devotion, encouragement—all these fall under the umbrella of love, which allowed me to keep writing and working even harder.
. . . sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give . . .
I couldn’t say a word about my selection for three weeks, until the inaugural committee issued a press release with the official news. Finally I could tell my mother! She immediately began making travel plans with my brother to travel to Washington. However, I was told that only one guest could be seated next to me on the platform at the inauguration, which presumably would be Mark. But he insisted that my mother be the one instead of him: The bigger story is about you and your mother—the American Dream, he told me. She should be the one with you. I’ll be okay. It was perhaps the kindest act of selfless love I have ever received from him. Though I know I would have done the same had the shoe been on the other foot. I would’ve given up my seat for Mark’s mother, Carol, who also came to the inauguration. She is as loving, strong, and caring a woman as my own mother.
Since the day I met her and the rest of Mark’s family, I felt right at home. Despite our cultural dissimilarities (they are of Polish, German, and French Canadian descent), I read in them an immigrant story and values quite similar to those of my own Cuban family. For generations, they worked hard and struggled but not at the expense of loving and supporting their children. Mark’s parents (and their parents) believed in creating opportunities for their children to have a better life. His grandparents had worked in a factory, allowing Mark’s parents to graduate high school and move up to white-collar jobs, which allowed Mark to complete doctoral stud
ies in experimental oncology and toxicology and become an honorary fellow at Harvard’s Dana Farber Cancer Center, as well as the youngest research scientist ever hired at Pfizer before 1993. Though on the surface our families are obviously very different culturally (my mother is embarrassed to speak English, and Mark and his parents don’t speak a word of Spanish), we all speak the same unspoken language of a story familiar to all of us—a story of immigration, struggle, and triumph.
Naturally, Mark understood the reverence and awe my brother, Carlos, and I had for our mother and her courage when she left Cuba, leaving behind her mother, her brother and five sisters, and all her relatives—every uncle and aunt, niece and nephew—never knowing if she’d see them again. Could I leave America forever? I asked myself, reflecting on my mother’s life and all her losses. This question birthed another of the three poems, “Mother Country,” in which I place myself (and the reader) in my mother’s emotional shoes, examining the incredible depth of the human spirit and our capacity to survive loss as seen through her eyes. I began taking inventory of all I would lose if I had to leave America: I’d never again drive down the gravelly street where I learned to ride my bike or pick a bucketful of loquats from the tree my grandmother and I planted in our backyard, now thirty years tall; never sink my feet along the shore of Miami Beach or hear the waves replying to wishes I’ve spoken to the sea since I was a child playing in the sand; never again see my brother or step into the secrets we kept and bets we made in the bedroom we shared for twelve years. Or never again sit at the kitchen table of my home in Bethel, where I wrote these words and poems.
I couldn’t imagine having to leave my mother, forever. She’s always been my emotional center and my connection to Cuba. But in “Mother Country,” she also connected me to America in an unexpected way. I realized her story wasn’t solely about loss and courage but was also about faith—the incredible faith she must have had in America, which was little more than a set of abstract ideals she had never lived. It occurred to me how strongly immigrants uphold America to those ideals of freedom, justice, and equality, which they do not take for granted. There’s the irony that immigrants like my mother stand among the most patriotic of Americans and at the heart of the American Dream. She will sit next to me on the platform of the Capitol. She won’t fully understand the poem I will read about America to America in English, but she doesn’t have to. She is the poem; she is America.
MOTHER COUNTRY
To love a country as if you’ve lost one: 1968,
my mother leaves Cuba for America, a scene
I imagine as if standing in her place—one foot
inside a plane destined for a country she knew
only as a name, a color on a map, or glossy photos
from drugstore magazines, her other foot anchored
to the platform of her patria, her hand clutched
around one suitcase, taking only what she needs
most: hand-colored photographs of her family,
her wedding veil, the doorknob of her house,
a jar of dirt from her backyard, goodbye letters
she won’t open for years. The sorrowful drone
of engines, one last, deep breath of familiar air
she’ll take with her, one last glimpse at all
she’d ever known: the palm trees wave goodbye
as she steps onto the plane, the mountains shrink
from her eyes as she lifts off into another life.
To love a country as if you’ve lost one: I hear her
—once upon a time—reading picture books
over my shoulder at bedtime, both of us learning
English, sounding out words as strange as the talking
animals and fair-haired princesses in their pages.
I taste her first attempts at macaroni-n-cheese
(but with chorizo and peppers), and her shame
over Thanksgiving turkeys always dry, but countered
by her perfect pork pernil and garlic yuca. I smell
the rain of those mornings huddled as one under
one umbrella waiting for the bus to her ten-hour days
at the cash register. At night, the zzz-zzz of her sewing
her own blouses, quinceañera dresses for her grown nieces
still in Cuba, guessing at their sizes, and the gowns
she’d sell to neighbors to save for a rusty white sedan—
no hubcaps, no air-conditioning, sweating all the way
through our first vacation to Florida theme parks.
To love a country as if you’ve lost one: as if
it were you on a plane departing from America
forever, clouds closing like curtains on your country,
the last scene in which you’re a madman scribbling
the names of your favorite flowers, trees, and birds
you’d never see again, your address and phone number
you’d never use again, the color of your father’s eyes,
your mother’s hair, terrified you could forget these.
To love a country as if I was my mother last spring
hobbling, insisting I help her climb all the way up
to the Capitol, as if she were here before you today
instead of me, explaining her tears, cheeks pink
as the cherry blossoms coloring the air that day when
she stopped, turned to me, and said: You know, mijo,
it isn’t where you’re born that matters, it’s where
you choose to die—that’s your country.
MADRE PATRIA
Amar a un país como si perdieras otro: 1968
mi madre deja Cuba y emigra a los Estados Unidos,
una escena que me imagino, parado en sus zapatos:
un pie dentro del avión camino a un país que sólo
conocía de nombre, un color en un mapa, fotos brillosas
en las revistas de la farmacia. Su otro pie anclado
a la plataforma de su patria, su mano aferrada
a una maleta, solamente con lo más necesario:
fotos de su familia coloreadas a mano,
su velo de novia, el pomo de la puerta de su casa,
que no abriría en años. El zumbido afligido
de los motores, una última, profunda inhalación, aire
familiar que se lleva con ella, una última mirada a todo
lo que ha conocido: las palmeras se despiden
mientras ella se sube al avión, las montañas se encogen
ante sus ojos, mientras ella despega rumbo a otra vida.
Amar a un país como si perdieras otro: La escucho
—érase una vez—leer libros infantiles en mi cama,
a la hora de dormir, mientras los dos aprendemos
inglés, pronunciando palabras tan extrañas como el habla
de los animales y de las princesas rubias en las páginas.
Pruebo sus primeros intentos de macaroni-n-cheese
(pero con chorizo y ají), y su vergüenza por los pavos
siempre secos del día de acción de gracias, pero
contrarrestados con su pernil perfecto y yuca con mojito.
Huelo la lluvia de aquellas mañanas, acurrucados debajo
del paraguas esperando al autobús hacia sus días de diez horas
en la caja registradora. En la noche, el zzz-zzz mientras cose
sus propias blusas, vestidos de quinceañera para las sobrinas
que siguen en Cuba, adivinando sus tallas, y los trajes
que vendía a los vecinos, ahorrando para un sedán blanco
oxidado—sin tapacubos, sin aire acondicionado, sudando
todo el camino de nuestra primera vacación
a los parques de atracciones de Florida.
Amar a un país como si perdieras otro: Como si
estuvieras en un avión que se va de los Estados Unidos
para siempre, y las nubes s
e cerraran como cortinas sobre tu país;
la última escena en la que haces garabatos como loco
de los nombres de tus flores, árboles, y pájaros favoritos
que jamás volverás a ver, tu teléfono y dirección
que jamás volverás a usar, el color de los ojos de tu padre,
el pelo de tu madre, aterrorizado de olvidarlos.
Amar un país como si yo fuera mi madre aquella primavera:
cojeando, insiste que la ayude a subir hasta
el Capitolio. Como si ella fuera yo, aquí hoy
frente a ustedes con sus lágrimas y mejillas rosas
como las flores de cerezo que coloreaban el aire
ese día en que se paró, volteó y me dijo:
Sabes, mijo, no importa dónde naces, sino
dónde escoges morir: esa es tu patria.
Thank the work of our hands . . .
“Mother Country” was the last of the three poems I wrote for the inauguration. I finished it a week after I had completed the first two poems (“What We Know of Country” and “One Today”) and submitted them to the inaugural committee and the White House for consideration. Of those two, they had overwhelmingly selected “One Today” as the poem to be read. But once I completed “Mother Country,” it became my favorite poem; it was closest to me emotionally, and I felt more comfortable with it because it was the kind of poem I was used to writing. I felt my voice came through more naturally than in the other two poems. And so I submitted “Mother Country” for consideration, but “One Today” remained the preferred poem by the committee and the White House.
Disappointed, I wormholed into a creative turmoil for a couple of days, wondering if I had any bargaining power to insist that “Mother Country” be the inaugural poem. I reached out to friends and writing colleagues for advice, most of whom felt as torn as I did between “One Today” and “Mother Country,” mostly because they were such different poems that it was hard to judge. Apples to oranges.
Mark felt that “One Today” was the more appropriate poem from the very first draft, and his instincts would prove to be spot on. But perhaps the biggest champion of “One Today” was writer Julia Alvarez. After I shared a first draft with her, she said without reservation that “One Today” was the perfect poem for the occasion of a country coming together, even if it was for that one moment at the inauguration. She eased my apprehensions by noting that some of the best poems in history use the kind of oracular voice she heard in “One Today,” a voice that captures the zeitgeist of a moment. Her brilliant advice saved me from going into a tailspin. I also shared the first draft with my former professor and mentor, Campbell McGrath, who agreed for similar reasons with Julia that it was the “right” poem.