A few years later, I went back again,
this time with my father.
And at the spur of the moment, we
decided to search for the grave of my great-grandfather, whose
name was Buenaventura Roig.
Buenaventura in Spanish, roughly translated,
means good luck or good fortune.
And indeed, he was one of these larger than life figures
that almost every family has in its history.
This is what we found.
There's some Spanish in the poem.
The title, first of all.
"La Tumba de Buenaventura Roig," of course,
the grave of Buenaventura Roig.
I refer also to Utuado, which is the town up
in the mountains of Puerto Rico where my father was born.
I refer to flamboyán, which is a brilliant red and orange
flowering tree on the island.
Patrones, of course, the landowners.
Jíbaros, that's our word for peasant.
And finally, San Miguel, or Saint Michael, the patron
saint of Utuado.
The poem, again, is called, "La Tumba de Buenaventura
Roig," for my great-grandfather, who died in 1941.
"Buenaventura Roig-- once peasants in the thousands
streamed down hillsides to witness the great eclipse
of your funeral.
Now your bones have drifted with the tide of steep grass, sunken
in the chaos of weeds, bent and suffering,
like cane cutters in the sun.
The drunken caretaker cannot find the grave.
Squinting at your name, spitting as he stumbles
between the white Christs, with hands raised,
sowing their field of white crosses.
Buenaventura Roig-- In Utuado you built the stone bridge,
crushed years later by a river, raving like a forgotten god.
Here, sweat streaked your face with the soil of coffee,
the ground where your nephew slept while rain ruined
the family crop, and his blood flowered like flamboyán
on the white suit of his suicide.
Buenaventural Roig-- in the town plaza where you were Mayor,
where there once was a bench with the family name,
you shouted subversion against occupation armies and sugarcane
patrones to the jíbaros who swayed in their bristling,
dry thicket of straw hats, who knew bundles and sacks loaded
on the fly bitten beast of a man's back.
Buenaventura Roig-- not enough money for a white Christ.
Lost now, even to the oldest grave digger--
the one with an English name, descended
from the pirates of the coast, who
grabs for a shirt pocket cigarette
as he remembers your funeral.
A caravan trailing in the distance
of the many years that cracked the skin around his eyes.
Buenaventura Roig-- we are small among mountains,
and we listen for your voice in the peasant chorus
of five centuries, waiting for the cloud
burst of wild, sacred song pouring
over the wreckage of graveyard, over the plaza and the church,
where the statue of San Miguel still
chokes the devil with a chain."