Dark Matter
Because the farmworker housing
is unventilated and unbearably
hot, Mila sleeps on the ground outside,
the Washington sky like a blanket
always descending but never settling
over earth. She points out
the constellations to her sons.
The Great Bear, she tells them,
was called Ocelotl by the Aztecs.
The Queen reclines on her throne.
The Swan flies always back toward
the sunset, fleeing the night.
She remembers sitting with her father
on the roof of their house
in Piedras Negras, watching the surface
of the moon. He traces the pictures
in the stars for her. La Osa Mayor.
La Reina. El Cisne. He tells her la Osa
keeps watch, that the Aztecs called her
the Jaguar, that she would keep them
safe, and because he is her father
and he rides a horse along the border
and can split a log with a single swing
of the axe, and because his name
is Refugio, she believes him.
Now she wonders what has happened
to the elegance of the Swan’s neck.
Once it reminded her of a poem
from school: una hora divina
para el género humano. Now it is twisted
into a question mark. Now the distance
between each star is the distance
between this sky and home,
the distance between three decades
ago when her father, still alive, touched
the stars with his outstretched
fingertips, and now,
when the night stretches so far
the light threatens to burst
into darkness.
Mila Goes to the Mormon Church for the First Time
She will remember two things
with a smile: first, how cramped
the building felt, four cement walls
pressing in nothing like Nuestra Señora
de Guadalupe’s soaring ceilings,
light pouring through stained glass.
Second, how bloodless the water
of the Holy Supper looked when the boys
(just boys!) brought it to them in paper cups.
A fly buzzed in her ear, and she could not
imagine that one day she would drink—
how the water would dazzle her.
Rivers
There were six rivers
in Hades
but in Piedras Negras
there was just one river
When you said
the River
people knew
what you meant
just as if you had said
the Church
though the river
wasn’t in Piedras
but alongside it
the limits of the city
state nation
and world
except for every day
when you
or your husband
or children
crossed it
The river Acheron
separated the living
from the dead
but you knew
Death on both sides
of this river
When you were a child
you walked
the river’s edge
watched the eddies
tipped the cattails
with your fingers
Once you saw
a family of gringos
on the other side
picnicking
They waved
It felt like a message
from God
You fled
Nardos
A problem of translation.
I can’t carry them across
the space from Guelita’s
mind to mine. This is not
a poem about Spanish
though it’s true that when
she listed all the flowers
in her garden—rosales
hermosos claveles jasmines
nardos violetas lirios y otros—
I only recognized a few.
But even if I had known
the English for nardo
(not spikenard but tuberose,
a false cognate but a true
scent) I still would not
and do not and will not
have ever had a flower
garden as redolent or rich
in my mind. There is no
translating the memory
of nardo cradled in
a girl’s hand. It belongs
to a lost language, not
Spanish but Mexico,
childhood, home.
Lament
After Randall Jarrett and Rainier Maria Rilke
All is far
And long gone by.
She believes the sun
That rises still and searing
Will live for five billion years.
She believes her grandchildren,
Whom she cannot hear,
Will understand her then.
In the yard a bird
Is singing. . . .
In whose voice?
She would like to walk
Out of her body, over the sharp mountains.
She would like to pray.
And surely, in all this sunlight,
There must be shade.
She believes she knows
Where to find rest;
Where, at the end of the sunbeam
Reaching down,
Lies a cool place to sleep.
John Alba Cutler is an associate professor of English at UC Berkeley, where he teaches and researches in the field of US Latinx literature. These poems are part of a larger project, tentatively titled “Milita: A Family History,” about his grandmother’s life.
The final poem closely follows the structure of and borrows language from Randall Jarrell’s translation of Rainier Maria Rilke’s 1918 poem “Lament” as it rewrites and comments on it. See Rainer Maria Rilke, “Lament,” trans. Randall Jarrell, in Randall Jarrell, The Complete Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981), 244.
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