[The day, with all its pain ahead, is yours]

The day, with all its pain ahead, is yours.

The ceaseless creasing of the morning sea,

the fluttering gamboge cedar leaves allegro,

the rods of the yawning branches trolling the breeze,

the rusted meadows, the wind-whitened grass,

the coos of the stone-colored ground doves on the road,

the echo of benediction on a house-

its rooms of pain, its verandah of remorse

when joy lanced through its open-hearted doors

like a hummingbird out to the garden and the pool

in which the sky has fallen. These are all yours,

and pain has made them brighter as absence does

after a death, as the light heals the grass.

And the twig-brown lizard scuttles up its branch

like fingers on the struts of a guitar.

I hear the detonations of agave

the stuttering outbursts of bougainvillea,

I see the acacia's bonfire, the begonia's bayonets,

and the tamarind's thorns and the broadsides of clouds

from the calabash

and the cedars fluttering their white flags of surrender

and the flame trees' siege of the fort.

I saw black bulls, horns lowered, galloping, goring the mist

that rose, unshrouding the hillocks of Santa Cruz

and the olives of Esperanza

Andalusian idyll, and answer

and the moon's blank tambourine

and the drizzle's guitars

and the sunlit wires of the rain

the shawls and the used stars

and the ruined fountains.