GRANDMA MENDES

Perhaps because grandmother
is Spanish
to expect tragedy
is already one
to keep in silence
in this century of Civil War
for a poet to deny
history's wronged words
is to have vanished
by farewell songbirds
when morning wears
her own children out
by her ungovernable piano
in her rented rooms
overgrown with Joaquin Rodrigo
feeling at home
with a Segovian lesson
on her Catalan guitar
resting now in her orange groves
tasting the imagination
of a child's surprise
in her prisms of dark eyes
you expect
to adopt her optimism,
even options of miracles
are the easiest day dreams
above stars in the open canopy
to brambles and trees
under the tabernacles we love
as children to enter in.