Unspoken Eulogy for Tía Cucha - Richard Blanco

I arrive with a box of guava pastelitos,

a dozen red carnations, and a handful

of memories at her door: the half-moons

of her French-manicures, how she spoke

blowing out cigarette smoke, her words

leaving her mouth as ghosts, the music

of her nicknames: Cucha, Cuchita, Pucha.

I kiss her hello and she slaps me hard

across my arm: ¡Cabrón! Too handsome

to visit your Tía, eh? She laughs, pulls me

inside her efficiency, a place I thought

I had forgotten, comes back to life

with wafts of Jean Naté and Pine Sol,

the same calendar from Farmacia Galiano

with scenes of Old Havana on the wall,

the same peppermints in a crystal dish.

And her, wearing a papery housecoat,

sneakers with panty hose, like she wore

those summer mornings she'd walk me

down to the beach along First Street,

past the washed out pinks and blues

of the Art Deco hotels like old toys.

The retirees lined across the verandas

like seagulls peering into the horizon,

the mango popsicles from the bodeguita

and the pier she told me was once

a bridge to Cuba—have all vanished.

  

I ask how she's feeling, but we agree

not to talk about that today, though

we both know why I have come

to see her: in a few months, maybe

weeks, her lungs will fill up again,

her heart will stop for good. She too

will vanish, except what I remember,

of her, this afternoon: sharing a pastelito,

over a café she sweetens with Equal

at her dinette table crowded with boxes

of low-salt saltines and fibery cereals.

Under the watch of Holy Jesus' heart

burning on the wall, we gossip about

the secret crush she had on my father

once, she counts exactly how many

years and months since she left Cuba

and her mother forever, we complain

about the wars, diseases, fires blazing

on the mid-day news as she dunks

the flowers in a tumbler—a dozen red

suns burst in the sapphire sky framed

in the window, sitting by the table.

Richard Blanco, Place of Mind, Floating Wolf Quarterly Chapbook, 2011.

Richard Blanco - Photo of a Man on Sunset Drive: 1914, 2008

Groundbreaking Ceremony, City of South Miami, Sunset Drive Improvements

And so it began: the earth torn, split open

by a dirt road cutting through palmettos

and wild tamarind trees defending the land

against the sun. Beside the road, a shack

leaning into the wind, on the wooden porch,

crates of avocados and limes, white chickens

pecking at the floor boards, and a man

under the shadow of his straw hat, staring

into the camera in 1914. He doesn't know

within a lifetime the unclaimed land behind

him will be cleared of scrub and sawgrass,

the soil will be turned, made to give back

what the farmers wish, their lonely houses

will stand acres apart from one another,

jailed behind the boughs of their orchards.

He'll never buy sugar at the general store,

mail love letters at the post office, or take

a train at the depot of the town that will rise

out of hundred-million years of coral rock

on promises of paradise. He'll never ride

a Model-T puttering down the dirt road

that will be paved over, stretch farther and

farther west into the horizon, reaching for

the setting sun after which it will be named.

He can't even begin to imagine the shadows

of buildings rising taller than the palm trees,

the street lights glowing like counterfeit stars

dotting the sky above the road, the thousands

who will take the road everyday, who'll also

call this place home less than a hundred years

after the photograph of him hanging today

in City Hall as testament. He'll never meet

me, the engineer hired to transform the road

again, bring back tree shadows and birdsongs,

build another promise of another paradise

meant to last another forever. He'll never see

me, the poet standing before him, trying

to read his mind across time, wondering if

he was thinking what I'm today, both of us

looking down the road that will stretch on

for years after I too disappear into a photo.

in Place of Mind, published by Floating Wolf Quarterly, 2011.

Maybe - Richard Blanco

Maybe

for Craig

Maybe it was the billboards promising
paradise, maybe those fifty-nine miles
with your hand in mine, maybe my sexy
roadster, the top down, maybe the wind
fingering your hair, sun on your thighs
and bare chest, maybe it was just the ride
over the sea split in two by the highway
to Key Largo, or the idea of Key Largo.
Maybe I was finally in the right place
at the right time with the right person.
Maybe there'd finally be a house, a dog
named Chu, a lawn to mow, neighbors,
dinner parties, and you forever obsessed
with crossword puzzles and Carl Young,
reading in the dark by the moonlight,
at my bedside every night. Maybe. Maybe
it was the clouds paused at the horizon,
the blinding fields of golden sawgrass,
the mangrove islands tangled, inseparable
as we might be. Maybe I should've said
something, promised you something,
asked you to stay a while, maybe.

in Looking for the Gulf Motel, Pittsburgh University Press, 2012

Este é o poeta que irá ler um dos seus poemas na tomada de posse de Barack Obama. Mais informação aqui.