THE QUIET DISTANCE

 

 

THE QUIET DISTANCE

(For Mother+ on Christmases Past and Yet to Come)

 

1. Her Noche Buena

Did you wake up for Noche Buena?*

Lit the balled candle on the belen?*

Do you still put those candles away
for another Pascua de los muertos?*

I can almost see you cranking open

the heavy lid of that narra trunk

at the foot of your bed where his
picture stands sentry while you sleep.

How long did it take you this time

to rearrange the animals around

the manger? Reposition, you’d say

but they’re always in the same place.

The lamb snuggles closest to the box

you stuff with dried grass for hay,

the ass farthest, the horse between.

Why? I would always ask while I,

insolent tot, handed you the wrong

fauna at a time. You would laugh

at how San Jose landed on your palm
when you asked for the donkey, an

angel when you yelled for a shepherd,

a magus when you barked for a burro,

and on and on until you’d pitch me

the hard-packed ball of saved candle

drips from father’s grave on the one

other fiesta you’d get up from sick bed

for---but Noche Buena is a rare treat:

you’d eat pan de sal, a whole banana.

2. Her Belen de Pascua

“Para mi fuerza, para mi belen de pascua,”*

you would sheepishly explain an appetite

we plead for each day you’d remember

father building the manger with you long

after he had the last laugh when, like me,

he would give the dingiest animal figure

instead of a king, a shepherd, or an angel,

and simply did not get up from a crumple

laughing at you when you threw him

back the make-believe cow dung, manure

for the grand project of a straw stable

that father said was wrong: it was a hole

in the city of Petra in that Bethlehem hill,

and there were no inns to take Him in.

You buried him with that Belen de Pascua,*

Mother, and could not quite remake one

you would delight describing to a devil’s

detail to polite and knowing neighbours,

who would drop by to gawk at your porch

where the only clay image in its right place

was the baby in the manger whose name

you kept on muttering was father’s name.

On nights like this, I scare myself, Mother,

with the spectre of the quiet distance.
 

3. Her Pascua de Alma On The Hill

Would you and Father have enjoyed this site,

atop a hill overlooking the sea, a pantheon

of verdant grass, bushes, and arboles de fuego?

I can still see the Belen you last built with him.

The infant on the crib of hay looked old,

mottled with the splotches of years and use

much like the darkened bronze plate marking

your final niche where  you and your lover,

my father and friend, must still be arguing

between guffaws of fun, of which magus must

bring the jug of gin, which angel the trumpet

startling the shepherds, which donkey brays

and which Joseph looks askance at a son,

a king with no dominion, gurgling little noises,

that would have been silent screams of infants

quartered in pieces known henceforth as innocents

who must continue to perish until He comes again

to gather all the hurting children into his House.

O, Mother, I hurt still from this quiet distance,

where there are no longer any Belen de Pascua.
 

--ALBERT B. CASUGA

  

*Noche Buena, Christmas Eve; belen, Christmas manger; Pascua de los muertos, Feast of the Beloved Departed; Para me fuerza, para mi belen de Pascua, for my strength, to build my Christmas manger.