Instructions upon Arrival
By Dan Vera
Record the language as it is spoken.
Learn the local names they give their flowers
—Ignore the Greek and Latin— the cactus that grows
for a hundred years in spiny majesty.
They might take you one day to that pocket canyon where trees
each May become studded with flowers like trumpets
whose song must be the fragrance that hangs over the town
with a scent like nothing else in the world! they’ll tell you,
and the names they give a dawn like this one
when the clouds are broken like sheets of ice.
Record the shapes and the names of the birds,
the wing-shaped chorus of sparrow or wren,
the percussion of cricket and beetle,
their whistling tunes and melodious song.
Be warned: it will take great patience.
You must ignore the interference.
Do not simply call it cactus or blossom.
Record what the first people called it,
the dozens of names the immigrants brought,
the names given by infants and scholars,
the powerfully short and the linguistically long.
Imagine yourself arriving a hundred years ago.
Strip what has come since then and
with your eyes amend to see
the changes that have come.
Honor this point in this land’s story,
where people walk and run
and sleep and laugh and sometimes dream.
Most of all remember:
All of it is a way to proclaim home.
Notes:
This poem is part of the portfolio “The Chorus These Poets Create: Twenty Years of Letras Latinas.” You can read the rest of the portfolio in the December 2024 issue.
Source: Poetry (December 2024)