AZUL
A[to the poet Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881-1958)]
Juan Ramon standing amid blue flowers
did not hear me calling
small birds flew on every side
through chinks in a chain-link cloud and over
the scuttled rainbows of your sighs I picked up on the ground
to far-away laughter
oh but "not-it" I cried out from
the space left by your shadow
on the grass
like a child in a game of tag,
the last one left in the
blonde and feathered fields still
unashamed
of starlight by the railroad tracks
and hotel rolls with real pats of butter-
at home in the pink stucco of "play-like" afternoons...
Sr. Jiminez bluer than the bluest
shadows could be,
could it be the earth is disenchanted?
will we grow apart?
stand still, I said, with a mouthful of pins
I will sew your shadow to the sky
and line it with pale green stars
it's strange while
I'm still trying to speak
in lilies and small roses
in blue diamonds secretly
distinctly...
oh why do you keep on
haunting your own poems
it hurts so much
even in my minted sleep or
is it, dream?
to be crumpling up the violet
of mimeographed vocabulary lists
again-
and practicing
balletic leaps by the
persimmon trees
it's not that I'm that far
from all those merry dialogues
about butter about arroz con
pollo about beaten chocolate-
regarding time I find it hard to keep
the tenses straight:
do I keep breaking the heart of moonlight
without knowing why-
or is all that hushed?
and can I pray to God in
pure hibiscus, too?
entenderás...
a hundred years from home
no one recognized my speech
but the blue wind and God
and the tire-swing swung
in glittering silence by the
small girl dressed in
blue porous happiness...
mary angela douglas april 26-april 28, 2011
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