Blanco-Until+we+Could.pdf

CATAMARAN 137136 Richard Blanco

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 ery kick lines and res were set for us

by our founding mother-fathers at Stonewall,

we rst spoke deance. 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.

RICHARD BLANCO

Until We Could

I knew it then, in that room where we found

for the rst 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 innity.

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

I caught the sunlight pining through the shears,

traveling millions of dark miles simply to graze

your skin as I did that rst dawn I studied you

sleeping beside me: Yes, I counted your eyelashes,

read your dreams like butteries itting underneath

your eyelids, ready to utter 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, rst 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 snowake 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

ickering candlelight in our full-mooned eyes.

In 2013, Richard Blanco was chosen to serve as the fifth

Presidential Inaugural Poet poet of the United States. Richard

was born in Madrid and immigrated to the United States as an

infant with his Cuban-exile family. His works include City of a

Hundred Fires (1998), which won the Agnes Starrett Poetry

Prize; Directions to the Beach of the Dead (2005), winner of

the PEN/American Beyond Margins Award; Looking for the

Gulf Motel (2012), winner of the Maine Literary Award and

the Paterson Prize; One Today (2013); Boston Strong (2013);

For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey (2013);

and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood, winner

of the Lamda Literary Award for memoir.

editorial note