Spring
Poem—Renewal at the Immigration Rally, April 10, 2006
Hermanas,
we welcome you
into this month of the Fish
moon,
Egg moon: when Sky is full
of itself
Sprouting grass running the ground
Well of course, could we
do any different…
We live in the city of fish
Number one fishing port in
Americanation
Your tribe scaling, gutting
in its grey Atlantic
The way we don’t want
to need to do.
We welcome you hermanos
not quite like the woman
who hands out sweatshirts ID-ing
as “Americans too”
your eddy of baseball-
capped workers, hundreds
representing still more low-profile,
triangulating the space between
our institutions,
City Hall and the Free Public
Library,
implicated in an America
you cannot read,
faces open as sunflowers
chanting litanies of “si se puede”—“it can be done” possible at last all
you could ever do
unlike the missionary who
thinks you should have stayed in Mexico,
unlike the Mayor’s call
for ID cards and above-the-table
deals
with your consulate and our
government
watching,
most unlike the suit with
a gun in one pocket
and a flask in the other
grinding your generations
to their knees
unlike the tall men, the
CEO’s who can never meet
your eyes,
unlike the intellectuals
expressionless under their shades
A native drum remembers you
Compadres
Your eager faces, the tiny
flags wafting the April breeze
Waved by brown arms of children
who
no doubt
will be taller than you thanks
to price rite
and the free health
center
It beats wel/come
Be a-
ware
in this cost-effective
corp-o-nation built on a
free
labor pool
Y cuando
diga Libertad
Me dicen
Muere!*
Echoes of homeland (twice, louder the 2nd time)
We,
The children of immigrants,
slaves, Native
human beings welcome you….stand
with you
Waxing toward fullness, Egg
moon expands through dying light,
Benevolent in its moment
of Unity,
our humpbacked flute player,
your Aztec song.
*Otto René Castillo, Guatemalan
poet and revolutionary, murdered by the junta in 1968; And when I say Liberty, they tell me die.
