dialect untouched in poetic prose

He inherited Africa in his skin and looks,

and when we saw him play soccer in high school,

we began calling him

Your father talked with my father.

Life ran in a straight line.

Until just like your father and my father

My cousin Manuel from Prainha do Pico

lives in San Jose. He works in drywall.

Unlike his father he didn’t want albacore or bonito:

He brought eyes of the ocean weeping

from another sea’s black mountain

Pico’s ashes, mists from its stone-walled pastures

The men of Pico

embark upon the land

So he speaks Altares-style

the sounds of his speech – with trunk and root.

In his faraway language the greatest saudade

in the word saudade is the living language.

Not the little saudade of folklore

also plays in Portuguese, in the community band

white trousers white cap blue blazer

in consanguine step with the saudade

He rests upon his knee the woman

smooth and voluptuous guitar. Eighth-notes

of rounded verse from charambas

...this heart of yours is a voyager

Álamo, how is the soul of Raminho

spread out along the Pacific coast

a freeway is it a route

We see the houses the cars the suits the dresses

we know the sweat the factories the machinery the cattle

we guess the meaning of life the feelings

Mother said no more

no more I no more you daughter

no more names in the rocks of the wharf

Lord Holy Ghost of Whom I am a Brother

of Your Fraternity at Desterro. Bless

the abundance of the Californias – the meat the wine the bread

offered in the name of Your Trinity in the person

I know that times have changed Queen Isabel

And that California is the land of plenty

Of roses and oranges and suns of honey

Salute to John Steinbeck

California – East of Eden

from my left side

Fairmont Hotel San Francisco.

in the bar swing, blues and jazz

daiquiris and Bloody Marys. It is clear

The day the night the dawn exist

in Yosemite: time that is measured

with a compass. And there is the timeless Time

Peoples of the pallid memories of this time

Tribes of your old world, out of focus in the recollection

of a faded movie-frame of a film, with an intermission

for cherry brandy, codfish pastry, sunflower seeds