a POETRY 44 WLT AUTUMN 2021 E Sea Notes by Marjorie Agosín The sky over tonight’s sea is a mirror of glittering fireflies. Writing expands, attentive to this limitless sea that, night after night, grows even more immense. In the distance a tear splashes and slides in the sand. This sea, perhaps only my sea, has only a few islands to spare. Perhaps only two, quite far away. I think of those two lonely islands under a rainfall of ashes. When my heart was a seed, poppies grew beside the sea, guiding my dreams. The sea watching over me, like a firefly over a good night’s sleep. I imagined her spreading sheets over me, rocking me gently. I imagined her imitating siren songs for me and the seashells and I grew up. I grew up between the sea and dreams of water. How was that sea? Was that sea yours too, the one we saw in the distance, bringing us the voices of the wind and of fearless women? It was only the sea and its words. The sea and its flowing world. On this sea always searching for light, I see your eyes filling with light. Then a hand reaches for mine or lips seek some wave with desire that leads us halfasleep around the moon. That sea at night is a sea of fragility, a sea of absence, an ocean of questions. The children of the sea who descend the steps in their shiny leather shoes and dressed in silk. They walk along the shore of that sea condemned by mankind. Children trapped deep in the sea and condemned by the decree of men. My mother’s eyes are ancient like the sea, sometimes blue and at times violet. I have seen myself in them and have also found in them a sea of mirrors like fate. One day I found an island in her eyes and a sad darkness shipwrecked upon her shores. She Lydia Rubio is a Cuban-born multidisciplinary artist who lives in Hudson, New York, and has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in national museums, international galleries, private collections, and public art displays. Her awards include the Tree of Life 2020, Ellie’s Creator Award 2019, a Pollock-Krasner grant, and the Cintas Fellowship. Photo by Patrick Farrell. Visit worldlit.org to read the poem in Spanish. PAINTING BY LYDIA RUBIO, “THAT SEA AT NIGHT IS A SEA OF FRAGILITY” WORLDLIT.ORG 45 Marjorie Agosín is the Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American Studies at Wellesley College. She is an award-winning poet and human rights activist whose work addresses issues of social justice as well as the pursuit of memory. The United Nations honored her with a leadership award for her work in human rights. Her most recent books include Braided Memories / Memorias trenzadas and Maps of Memory. An eminent translator of Latin American literature and Guggenheim Fellow, Suzanne Jill Levine’s recent works include her five-volume edition of Jorge Luis Borges’s poetry and nonfictions for Penguin paperback classics, the anthology Untranslatability Goes Global (Routledge), and her translation of Guadalupe Nettel’s Bezoar and Other Unsettling Stories (Seven Stories). looked at you that way until one day you filled with light the world you kept captive in your eyes. In her brief pauses, in the amazement of a silence that seeks us out, I learned what is forgotten, and that love itself fades away. What is treasured by day can be found again in the sound of a freshwater sea, in a sea that enfolds everything into its refuge. One loves the sea from a distance. The sea that every night becomes peace and sleep. The subtle cadence and rhythm. The sea at night that tells stories and that also I desire. The sea also waits and wants your eyes, needs your lips to name it from time to time. The sea also looks for warmth among us, a light with a voice, eyes that come to gaze. The sea and its shared solitude. Beneath that sea there might be a nest, a nest that is always warm and still, a nest is a country...