Three Poems: St. Oscar’s Prayer, and: Sanctuary, and: Manchado

St. Oscar’s Prayer

May the vigil’s knock at the door in the early hours of Novemberalways abide by a hope older than the quetzaland preferentially opt for love

for justice lives not by bread aloneand the cry of El Mozote is louder than any biblical versewhen the only theology that mattersisthat which falls to the earth like grains of wheat

for Oscar’s litany, and as capacious as a peopleyet as vulnerable as fleshtaught us that the only gospel worthy of our faithreads:

it is not enough to be good

Sanctuary

the caribeño sea and saguaro desert are archivesas opaque and cavernous as mass graves

whether and what memory could emerge from their bare existenceis a query as enigmatic as ethicsand whether they shall only ever beget vigilant eyesis a query just as sober

for who could forget the solemnitywith which prayers to Ochún and Tonantzin howled in thewildernessand all hopes fell to an earth drier than salt

and where except in the krik! y krak! of an elder’s staccato voice andraven eyescould such a memory find asylum

for in this world where even a paloma’s cry is held hostagememory older than a day is a menace

indeed, who could forget that piracy and conquistadorsroamed these very seas and desertsonly to learn that an alibi as quaint as a marketcould prove so worthy an heir

so if sanctuary is the name by which this history comes to an endit shall be so, only insofar as this happily ever after we call amnestyno longer plagues our conscience

Manchado

with what majesty could a plátano reign over a people,bespeak their peculiar desires or haunttheir every hope

the irony is sublime, not tragicinsofar as the dye is set amidst the coquí’s whisperor at that early hour when the gallo says, “Yes, you are safe …”

but what of the wayward and the bereaved,eclipsed by furies that torment even the dead

do lucumí sacraments and flesh the color tainoknow their namesdo they know thathere—amidst that epic called the American centurymanchas speak only one languageand plátanos are a vulgar fruit

for that epic plagues every new day with a heaviness as old as acolonyand a tragic echo that asks, “Where are you from?”

so I look to poetry and askis this our cross to bearpor secula seculorum