Friday, February 6, 2015

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.

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