JACARANDA
Tommy Sweeny
I.
This humble document that
I finally put to paper
-- these jumbled words that
pour and sputter from my brain –
this clumsy declaration
is from here on all I claim.
II.
Who should I thank
for our first conversation? To what
master do I aim my adoration
for the sacred warmth
of memory? More of those things
come every day – tiny floating
pieces of pieces that surely mean
nothing outside of my heart and
away from this page. But here
and there are all there is and
so now at least I must listen
and heed that voice of strange
design. To what angel do I
yield? That day I leaned
on the trunk of that tree –
you were miles away . . . across
that purple city – I photographed
some ants toting the violet
blooms down the trunk to
their hiding space and I wondered
what we would have for dinner
later that evening when I
returned home and would surely
have to knock, key or not,
as the doors and the keys
down in your country are strange.
Do they eat those, I wondered.
Those purple buds –
those tokens of the time we shared
-- those symbols of your city.
They carried them on their backs
like they were going to a feast.
We clung together as in a dream.
We cling together now from
separate hemispheres. Distance is
discipline. To what stern
teacher do I aim my gratitude
for this lesson in fortitude?
Nothing is now nor ever has been
as sweet as the misery
of continents.
I cannot say that if not mimosa
but jacaranda filled the air
outside this space I’d love
as much as I do on this page –
but surely this page would not
seem so urgent. Anxious?
Yes, always for one reason or
another, but not so dire as
the burning pull of other countries.
That I may be with you again
in yet a third location – a third
season – a third explication
-- this makes the bloom eternal
and that sweet pain of which
I spoke as well. Heaven!
Hell! Live forever in my eye
and tongue and stretch your
arms across the world
to touch that one
that torments me with things
he cannot help but be.
As life leads him away from me
careful planning prolongs the pain
in the soulful guise of seeing
other worlds I have not seen.
III.
To what devil do I steer my praise
for making this world a beautiful place?
Worlds from today and away
from the winter of this mundane
northern plane,
I hear the blossoms open
somewhere south on my
handsome jacaranda.
Who or what is owed cognizance
for the ironic twistings of existence
and the blessed pain of bitter distance
and the putrid humor of resistance?
IV.
. . . and this
is what we’ve chosen.
V.
The scent of memory
-- that silvery breeze
whose kisses reminded
night and day the coupling
of souls. The rain as warm as
blood that only fell at night,
in those hours before dawn,
and lulled you, at last, to sleep
through the open window
as you lay your body against
the sweet, balmy flesh
of Future. These nights
will not wither.
VI.
What things once precious are
burning? I smell the fire;
I think I know.
So I’ve charred another
sacrifice for a beauty impossible
to integrate. There is no fear.
Local atonements and dreams
of love in the Here equal
nothing next to this. There is
no need for despair or to
assimilate with what is –
for the distance between and
for crueler things, but not
for the taste –
inedible.
I could have pulled off a twig
and pressed the scent and the
shade of Heaven in a book
to preserve the memory
in a tangible thing. Perhaps
that is what I’m doing now –
insuring my place in the shade
of my splendid jacaranda.
These words will have to do;
from here they’re all I claim.
VII.
Your river, your calles,
your men and your music –
the answer to my question.
But the one true blessing
from all of this bliss – the love
of the one who defines it –
the manna you gave me,
my grand glorious city,
Buenos Aires.
He and I are tied
to your beautiful tree –
underneath the purple
with no space between.
VIII.
The redolent memory
of my vernal November
is like a lens that magnifies
the whole of the world
making it smaller in the
sweetest of methods and ways
and time is made feeble
and distance, a joke.
IX.
My handsome saint of depravity,
my charismatic imp – thank
you for trust and love
unsurpassed by those spirits
I’ll one day leave behind.
Thank you for knowledge.
Thank you for the memory
of the sweet jacaranda.
No matter where in all
our lives our twisted lives
will pull us, thank you for
that blessing that will
last me all my life.
X.
Gracias por mostrarme
un mundo distinto del que
sabía existido.
Gracias sin fin,
mi amigo querido.
XI.
As I sit alone amongst the clutter
of my desk on this, the first day
of the new year, my thoughts
travel south across your continent
once again. I think of you
and how you must have been
this morning at 2 a.m. –
thinking of me and wishing me
a happy new year. My midnight
was with you and your friends.
In twelve days I, my heart,
and my eye for the future
will face not south but east
toward my old country and
east toward your new one.
The text of the question is,
at times, an impossible riddle
and time, in these times,
the severest conundrum
but the answer, I know,
is yes. Yes.
I will never forget
the answer is yes.
XII.
The spring that will ensue
your summer – the one
that will devour my dark,
hungry winter will make us
both children again. We will
share that riddle on an
equal ground, for the third
time solve it together,
share a rebirth
and share the same earth
once again.
Arm in arm, together
we’ll walk and not just
rely on imagining.
XIII.
To the north of Italy,
to eastern Spain, or back
to these connected Americas
-- to whatever heaven
year two will take us,
the answer is yes when
the question is us.
There is no fear in waiting;
we will live again together
in the very same house.
We already do.
The answer is yes.
XIV.
When in those few lucid days
last summer was it?
When? When the message
was passed by your friend
at the bar? When we sat
on your Wall and I told
you my secrets? When?
Was it in the shower
that first morning – or
right after – when we
layed and tasted one another?
The first time I kissed your
stubbled jaw? Your nipple?
Your thigh? Your fingers?
Or when you came to me
after the show
covered in hormones and sweat
-- and you did one-armed push-ups
from the wall on my truck
and I gave you my shirt; and you
embraced me so perfectly
I’ll never forget?
When you first said
my name? I don’t know.
I’ll never know;
I don’t really care.
But I knew it was there
that morning at Hartsfield –
and I knew by its
tenacious ringing
it would stay with me forever.
I knew again
that shock of bliss
-- that pulse
-- the first time
we said goodbye.
Now hello is all.
We are ours forever.
XV.
They’re coming now – faster than
my heart can catch them – little
memories of the city we leave
behind for future. One day I walked
into a wedding party. Even after
my footing came loose and I looked
down and saw the rice on the
sidewalk and the people that had
been there all along shouting in
Spanish and laughing – I
didn’t know.
I saw then the people crowding
a beautiful woman in white lace.
She stood not three feet away.
This is how vibrant and alive
it was – I didn’t even realize
the overlap of separate heavens.
XVI.
Mi ricordo il desiderio che fecce
alla vecchia fontana.
La tradizione Romana –
uno di questi giorni ritornare.
Ma il mio desiderio,
il mio segreto, era che
se ritornasse il vero amore
sarebbe venutto con me
la seconda volta.
Quel pomeriggio afoso in
agosto fu il giorno primo
del mio futuro benché
non lo sapessi allora.
XVII.
Each Wednesday afternoon
for quite some time now
I find my body here.
Feeling the trunks
of certain trees
and caressing the skin
of the bark like a blind
man, or crazy, or drunk,
or a fool. The image
of bliss is a farce
to preoccupied minds who are
just passing by.
XVIII.
Ernie at the NORML rally
back in the spring of 1990
-- high on schwag weed
and climbing higher and higher
up the oak like a monkey
-- in the field by the playground
where we threw down our
blanket and filled up our bong.
XIX.
Steve sobbing against
the trunk of the oldest
and biggest tree – the one
of the few that survived
the Burning – autumn, maybe
October, 1993
-- when he knew
-- the first day that
he knew
he was dying.
I pulled him from the tree
and held his living body.
The tree is by the lake
still.
XX.
The great magnolia
that shades the gazebo
with its thick, waxy leaves
that are green still in winter.
Where Damon and I were
photographed nine years ago.
Captured now forever are
those blazing, swift years of
immortality when youth
and wisdom and toil and love
are all that you’ll touch and
taste then forever. The crooked
branch still forms the seat
in which young gods
once sat and posed
-- before the gorgeous and
terrible world was cracked
open wide and eaten.
This changed us gods
into mortal men
but the tree
remembers all.
We love one another
still through death
and through time.
Always we will.
XXI.
There is no tree
in this park, in this city,
that marks a memory
or history of the newest
brother in the family. There is
the wall on the hill
where we sat that brief
while and shared the secrets
of our hearts’ chronicles
-- but enough has been said
of the wall. It is there.
It still stands.
But there is a tree
-- a whole city of trees
that belongs to him.
I never pulled him
from a deathgrip embrace
of the trunk. He never
climbed its branches or sat and
posed for a photograph
in any of its mighty arms.
We may have walked
in the shade of this one
or that – but memory fails
if we ever laid our hands
together on the black
bark. We crushed
underfoot the petals
that had fallen and made
the paths in the parks
of that city a purple carpet.
There is but one magnolia
that belongs to Damon – he
does not own the genus or
breed. Ernie does not
own all oaks – just the one
he climbed with me.
Steve’s spirit does not
dwell alone in all the big
old trees that have survived
a Fire – but brother, muse,
amigo, somehow although
it wasn’t touched, and cannot
now be touched by either
of us – you own
the jacaranda
wherever it grows.
XXII.
Do you think
the twists and gnarls
in the branches
are random? unplanned?
I tell you
they are not.
If you suspect
a break in the cadence
in the rhythm
of my written word
do you think
less of me or my creation?
Do you suspect me
a victim of my own
chaotic mind? How wrong
you would be. How do you
see the tree? I tell you
there are no accidents.
XXIII.
Lovers and wives –
husbands, fathers,
offspring of the blood –
although I’ve never known
what warmth and safety
these beings can bring,
I can say with all surety
that none can equal
what the prophet has called
the need and love of comrades.
This love will last beyond
my death, or the death of
those I love; for death,
for those who think they know,
does not exist in my world
of trees. The blossoms
will brown, the leaves
may fall – the flesh of my token
even may rot and become food
for the worms, or humus,
or mulch, but the love
for those few – my brothers,
will live and thrive far beyond
the heart that contains it
and those hearts that it contains.
When we are dead and
gone/not gone, like the
blossoms of last spring, the
tree will not forget.
I speak now not of oak
or magnolia or even my cherished
jacaranda, but the tree
that makes us whole with
the others – brothers, yes,
even at times lovers and fathers
-- that is the tree of which
I ramble – the tree from which
all fraternity is born – the tree
that never dies. Those blessed
nights and days spent in the
company of comrades –
along with the blooms
from that sweet, holy tree
-- that one immortal thing
to which we all belong
-- none of this shall wither.
This is all I’ve ever claimed
-- no matter what sprang
from my teeth and my tongue;
for this is the only truth
I know beyond my soul is true –
the sacrosanct love of comrades.
To my heart there is none so holy as this.
We live forever in this bliss
that for the purpose of
this humble treatise, I nickname
jacaranda.
