Hear Me, Hart Crane

Orlando Ricardo Menes

It was on a small island in the Gulf  of  Batabanó

That you built your bridge across the East River,

Cuba’s sun the furnace that forged steel cables

From aerial roots of  banyan and strangler fig

Innocent of  ice fog, hail burst, acid snow.

Your mind smelted our mangrove nurseries,

Slabbed our coral beds, wrenched our cradles

Of  epiphyte into cantos of  Manifest Destiny.

Outside that cluttered study, caisson of  your craft,

Grew an old mango tree trussed with blue liana

Whose vines you plucked to metal iambs

Till such tender wood could not bear the wrack

Of your industrial winch, clamp, crowbar.

I cannot blame you, dear Hart, for don’t we all

Make art from paradox? I have lived long

In the monster’s entrails, longer than Martí,

To know that twisted fate is more gift than curse—

As I did years ago when I wrote my first book

(Pure Caribe—magia  y manigua—no apologies)

In that apartment by Chicago’s lakeshore,

Gazing out the window each winter morning

To tropicalize snowbanks into coral cays

And melt those slush puddles to swamplands

De la rana, el caimán, la jutía conga, el catey.

The snow pebbles scattered to papaya beads,

And the trestles of  icicle swung like garlands

Of  bougainvillea against tall royal palms

I lathed from the blizzard-blighted poles.

And in the cold wind or in those lake flurries

I’d hear our  ruiseñor  trill her cascabel song.