“We always go back to the old places where we loved life.
Then we understand how absent they are,
The things we loved.”
—Armando Tejada Gómez & César Isella, “Canción de las cosas simples”
“Don’t you miss the Island?” they ask.
Yes.
I miss the perpetual thereness of the sea,
its echoes in a conch,
its ebb and flow in my body.
I miss the plentiful greens of the northern mountains
streaming past my pupils,
the wistful sepias of the southern hills,
the snaking bends of a road
along the Island’s spine . . .
the waving panicles of sugar cane fields
and the big, wilting leaves peeping
from decrepit tobacco barns.
I miss the small towns gathered round plazas
and the old capital city
crisscrossed with blue streets,
cradled in ancient walls.
I lament the root-concealing
muteness of a grandfather
and crave the root-revealing
tales of an aunt . . .
the cacophony of cousins
capering around
on late Sunday afternoons
tinted
with melancholy sunsets.
I yearn for the scent of truth
on one grandmother’s skin,
and the loveful mooring
of the other’s lap . . .
and for the boundless mercies of a father!
I miss those who can no longer answer to my call.
And destinations to which no map leads any longer.
And the homing grace of the Spanish language!
And the pieces of my heart scattered across a complicated geography.
The Island?
I wear it over my body like a second skin scarred by absence.
Note: The epigraph is Pedro Sandín-Fremaint’s translation of the original Spanish: “Uno vuelve siempre a los viejos sitios donde amó la vida, y entonces comprende cómo están de ausentes las cosas queridas.”
Photograph by Tammy Higgins
Smoky Quartz 