Need is not quite belief – Anne Sexton
– I know, but I want to believe the last leaves
of the season cradle-rock down
to me as I hear hands unclasp in the storm
coming. I want to believe I carry
the season of cradle-rocked breath like a cloak,
the one Juan Diego opened after
a storm of disbelief had him carry
Castilian roses from the hill.
My breath’s the one Juan Diego inhaled after
his cloak opened, and a door inside
the Spanish archbishop – Castilian roses
from his home country turned the key,
unexplainable roses inside the cloak –
and he, too, began to believe. Now I,
home in another country, turn pages and find
myself unable to make up my mind:
Did others begin to believe a native story,
the joke on the pale Spanish powers,
a brown-faced Mary come to make up their minds
for them, that maybe they didn’t know
everything – or was the joke on the natives,
the brown apparition on the cloak
a Spanish hoax, only the Spanish didn’t know
how far the joke would go: tattoos,
the dark apparition of the cloak mingled
with believer’s blood, on candles
with prayers, not jokes, painted like tattoos
on glass, Our Lady on t-shirts and charms,
her image bleeding through to believers, even
me, who wants to believe the last leaves
of Our Lady’s season drop to me like charms,
her hands unclasping through the storm.
after Richard Rodriguez