(…cont.)
João Afonso & Art Coelho, 1986
Grandma Laureano
(for Maria Lemos Cordeiro)
Your years, Grandma
eighty-five gems to me;
each line in your face
a more beautiful memory.
My bloodline is more
than the hot Wheatville sun
or barley thirsty for canal water,
more than the grit-riddled wind
hammering my face raw with dustdevils.
The seasonal whales
off Terceira Island;
the harpoon in hand
in open sea water…
that too runs in my veins.
That crowning spew,
fishermen lost in a gale,
fresh cod on a hand line,
the bounty from the Atlantic depths.
Yes, in the village of Biscoitos
the beauty of my people’s steps.
In Grandma’s eyes
there are also islands;
nine daughters and two sons.
A family rich, so wide
within the human heart
that epics would understate.
Other women might wear
expensive jewelry, but Maria
wears her grand-children;
her great grand-children;
her great great grand-children.
That afghan you made for me.
The colors are you.
Hands that have known
the udders of Holstein cows on
the homeplace dairy farm at Lemoore.
Fingers that have made
many loaves of festa sweetbread
with a whole egg in the center.
Who can give more than labor,
bread, children, love, and life?
This song for you
in poem-form honors me;
music to wrap your name
in memory-a joy!
My heart reaches out in
these gardens of the moment
and touches your slow but proud
steps in your own kitchen
on 150 Sally Street.
Nothing, including this
box full of old photographs,
a big family reunion,
all the embroidered doilies
can match one twinkle in your eye,
the kiss on the threshold goodbye.
At times
remembering for me
is a kind of enchantment;
and when you do let loose
from this life you’re living
absolutely nothing will stop.
Love will be as strong.
Even memories will seek out new songs.
A mandolin of your days
will sweep up a treasure of
your valley living, your first
source to our America.
To my place as an artist
creating shrines for your
proud steps, and our proud legacy.
João Afonso did not stop at just translating the Grandma Laureano poem. He had Eduardo Mayone Dias translate the short story, Papa’s Naturalization, where both my maternal grandparents are the hero and the heroine of this fiction based on a true immigration incident that happened on their dairy in Lemoore, California. Later Eduardo wrote an article about my work in Diário Insular, Descobridor dos Açores(Saudades da Califórnia)on the 17th de Janeiro de 1995, which included his translation of my nostalgic poem about the loss and the regaining of my culture called A ILHA DO MEU AVÔ.
My Grandfather’s Island
It comes slow
as a foreign language
this hunger
for island truth;
smiles setting the pace
of a village by foot-
by poverty’s intimacy.
Here I must learn
to walk slower
down a donkey path,
gaze longer,
feast within
and tell the stranger
I am with my boots
to go barefoot.
The fishermen at the port
hold secrets beyond me,
working rhythms in torn nets
that I can only guess at
the six centuries
of subtle movements.
And even up to this day
their sweat brings honor
of peace to my strolling
every solitary evening
along the tiny docks
where fishing boats
are unloading their catch.
I near an old man’s garden,
drink in memory from his vines.
His creased and callused fingers
threading the young sprouts
for another season of deep green.
The color brown is unknown here.
It’s never found a Pico palette.
And my Grandpa’s eyes had the
intense brilliance of bamboo leaves
that blocked the sea salt from his fields.
Not only had João Afonso introduced my poetry in the A União newspaper, he was also the first Azorean scholar to call attention to the fact that as a poet(hobo), he mentioned my creative soul as being part of the American West, which included my gypsy period, and the ten years of my youth where I rambled around the United States and set foot on every state except Alabama, Main, and Hawaii. João Afonso called attention to the misspelling of my last name, Cuelho; and as a result of the teasing about my nametag during the II Congresso in 1986 I changed my surname back to the traditional “O” spelling so that my American peers and readers would know that I am Portuguese. Just one letter change in my name threw off my actual ethnic identity. I had been writing to Ron Silveira an Azorean that was head of a major Southern California library acquisitions department and he didn’t know for years that I was a grandson of immigrants because with the “U” spelling of my name he assumed I was Hispanic. My grandfather Francisco Pereira Coelho had changed our last name because they kept mixing up his mail, his letters and business papers went to another immigrant in hometown with the same exact first and last name as his. But meanwhile back at the ranch, let’s see what kind of freewheeling hobo I was when I was a young poet, what I called my modern-day drifter days when I cut a lonesome trail across the western plains on my way to my own immigration to Montana at twenty-three years of age.
Lucky Enough To Be a Bum
I look within the heartbreak
where the hopes of songs
are often discarded in heaps.
Jukebox seekers like myself
would look under death
for some lost note of music
just to prove the search
was sane enough to be
worthy of its keep.
Beauty never found the right
price in a skid row pawn shop,
in a drifter’s knowing eyes,
or in a dawn’s old promise.
I’ve slept under bridges
where the cobwebs and
the swallow nests are
the only testament
to the mad rush of
wings in and out and up;
and the familiar sunshine
haunted this road called time.
I’ve seen one of the strangers
in the mirror called dying-
alone and cold with the night.
I don’t have to speak
to anyone of thunder or rain
and ties that seldom link.
I can nod and eat some stew
and every time I see a girl
on the street I click my eye and wink.
And I say thanks for seeing every
star in the sky when I’m
fresh out of a rolling boxcar
with my body such a raging stink,
and I’m lucky enough to be a bum
when I don’t have to rhyme
my poem with kitchen sink.
(cont…)
