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I
Ask The Impossible
I ask the
impossible: love me forever.
Love me when all desire is gone.
Love me with the single mindedness of a monk.
When the world in its entirety,
and all that you hold sacred advise you
against it: love me still more.
When rage fills you and has no name: love me.
When each step from your door to our job tires you--
love me; and from job to home again, love me, love me.
Love me when you're bored--
when every woman you see is more beautiful than the last,
or more pathetic, love me as you always have:
not as admirer or judge, but with
the compassion you save for yourself
in your solitude.
Love me as you relish your loneliness,
the anticipation of your death,
mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends.
Love me as your most treasured childhood memory--
and if there is none to recall--
imagine one, place me there with you.
Love me withered as you loved me new.
Love me as if I were forever--
and I, will make the impossible
a simple act,
by loving you, loving you as I do
--Originally
appeared in the Berkeley Poetry Review, 1990 #26, 1992-93
On
The Meaning Of Things
(In memory of
Dieter Herms)
He took me to my
first opera.
I was 38 and he was dying.
He looked elegantly gaunt rather than infirmed
in an off-white double breasted jacket
suitable for summer.
It was 'Don Giovanni', in Italian with
German subtitles projected onto a screen.
"The plot is rather stupid," he said and already knew,
but enjoyed hearing Mozart again, the high point for him
being when he recognized an aria and could fit it
into the story.
He listened throughout near-faint
with the thinness of air, the crowded theatre,
and the constant drilling pain.
At intermission, he reserved a table
and we had champagne.
"This will be the last time we see each other,"
he said. "What is hardest for me to give up is memory."
I moved my seat closer to his, "Perhaps, memory too,
will be transformed," I said.
"Will I remember you?" he asked.
"In another way," I speculated,
as is all we can do
with the meaning of greetings and partings, and love
that resists death.
--Originally
printed in Poesía, Ollantay Press, 1995
El
Chicle
Mi'jo and I were
laughing
ha,ha,ha--
when the gum he chewed
fell out of his mouth
and into my hair
which, after I clipped it,
flew into the air,
on the back
of a dragonfly
that dipped in the creek
and was snapped
fast by a turtle
that reached high
and swam deep.
Mi'jo wondered
what happened to that gum
worried that it stuck
to the back of my seat
and Mami will be mad
when she can't get it out.
Meanwhile, the turtle in the pond
that ate the dragonfly
that carried the hair
with the gum
swam South on Saturday
and hasn't been seen
once since.
--Appeared as
part of the Poetry in Motion Series on the subways and buses of
the Chicago Transit
Authority and the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York City
All poetry © Ana
Castillo.
linked from http://anacastillo.com/ac/archives/index.shtml |
