Until We Could - Richard Blanco

This is a beautiful video. It is a beautiful poem.Watch the video. Drink in its beauty, its poignancy, its nod to history. But the real substance, the meat, is this amazing poem. I haven't heard such amazing use of the English language in quite a while. So, read the poem, as well. Marvel in it as I do.

"Until We Could"

Richard Blanco, 2014 

I knew it then, in that room where we found 

for the first time our eyes, and everything— 

even the din and smoke of the city around us— 

disappeared, leaving us alone as if we stood 

the last two in the world left capable of love, 

or as if two mirrors face-to-face with no end 

to the light our eyes could bend into infinity. 

I knew since I knew you—but we couldn’t... 

I caught the sunlight pining through the sheers, 

traveling millions of dark miles simply to graze 

your skin as I did that first dawn I studied you 

sleeping beside me: Yes, I counted your eyelashes, 

read your dreams like butterflies flitting underneath 

your eyelids, ready to flutter into the room. Yes, 

I praised you like a majestic creature my god forgot 

to create, till that morning of you suddenly tamed 

in my arms, first for me to see, name you mine. 

Yes to the rise and fall of your body breathing, 

your every exhale a breath I took in as my own 

wanting to keep even the air between us as one. 

Yes to all of you. Yes I knew, but still we couldn’t... 

I taught you how to dance Salsa by looking 

into my Caribbean eyes, you learned to speak 

in my tongue, while teaching me how to catch 

a snowflake in my palms and love the grey 

clouds of your grey hometown. Our years began 

collecting in glossy photos time-lining our lives 

across shelves and walls glancing back at us: 

Us embracing in some sunset, more captivated 

by each other than the sky brushed plum and rose. 

Us claiming some mountain that didn’t matter 

as much our climbing it, together. Us leaning 

against columns of ruins as ancient as our love 

was new, or leaning into our dreams at a table 

flickering candlelight in our full-mooned eyes. 

I knew me as much as us, and yet we couldn’t....

Though I forgave your blue eyes turning green 

each time you lied, but kept believing you, though 

we learned to say good morning after long nights 

of silence in the same bed, though every door slam 

taught me to hold on by letting us go, and saying 

you’re right became as true as saying I’m right, 

till there was nothing a long walk couldn’t resolve: 

holding hands and hope under the street lights 

lustering like a string of pearls guiding us home, 

or a stroll along the beach with our dog, the sea 

washed out by our smiles, our laughter roaring 

louder than the waves, though we understood 

our love was the same as our parents, though 

we dared to tell them so, and they understood. 

Though we knew, we couldn’t—no one could. 

When the fiery kick lines and fires were set for us 

by our founding mother-fathers at Stonewall, 

we first spoke of defiance. When we paraded glitter, 

leather, and rainbows made human, our word 

became pride down every city street, saying: 

Just let us be. But that wasn’t enough. Parades 

became rallies—bold words on signs and mouths 

until a man claimed freedom as another word 

for marriage and he said: Let us in, we said: love 

is love, proclaimed it into all eyes that would 

listen at every door that would open, until noes 

and maybes turned into yeses, town by town, 

city by city, state by state, understanding us 

and the woman who dared say enough until 

the gavel struck into law what we always knew: 

Love is the right to say: I do and I do and I do... 

and I do want us to see every tulip we’ve planted 

come up spring after spring, a hundred more years 

of dinners cooked over a shared glass of wine, and 

a thousand more movies in bed. I do until our eyes 

become voices speaking without speaking, until 

like a cloud meshed into a cloud, there’s no more 

you, me—our names useless. I do want you to be 

the last face I see—your breath my last breath, 

I do, I do and will and will for those who still can’t

vow it yet, but know love’s exact reason as much 

as they know how a sail keeps the wind without 

breaking, or how roots dig a way into the earth, 

or how the stars open their eyes to the night, or 

how a vine becomes one with the wall it loves, or 

how, when I hold you, you are rain in my hands.