what would my grandmother have said
if you told her at 25
her grandchildren would speak in syllables
she would never understand
would my grandfather still have laid down
with that woman
he never learned to love
if you told him
that all of his years
would amount to houses made of mortar and mud
and all of his 12 children
would leave him on that island
where he could not help
but retire those fists
that were fluent in beatings
but could not write
100 hundred years ago
the women on the little island
were not permitted jobs
out of houses
and only knew their worth
in marital names they did
not know how to spell
300 hundred years ago
my forefathers were the property
of my other forefathers
and recited stories of countries
their fathers had come from
but had never seen
or recited songs about the island
that once belonged to them
500 hundred years ago
the men and women
who would beget a new breed of people
were just learning
that men and women in different shades
than their own
existed, not knowing that the lives
they had always known
would be erased from the island,
from the earth, for ever,
by the children they thought would preserve it
if the greatest-grandmothers
and the greatest-grandfathers
were told the story of the future
their island’s failed bid at independence,
the mass exodus
to New York and other cities
where their genes would claim their numbers in
ghettos and slums
under a struggle to loose the biggest
obstacle: their accent
their identity
would they still lie together
to give life
to children who
would never understand their
histories their
languages their
names
what were they?
i ask them
in English,
my native tongue
