POEM "INHERITANCE" BY PARAGUAYAN AMERICAN POET DIEGO BÁEZ

When my child came into this world,

she didn't rock mine or turn it upside down

but flipped it inside out. It felt not like a burning fire,

but like a new chamber opening in my heart,

a fourth dimension unbending

between sternum and spine.

Surely it had lived there all along,

huddled with the Spanish

I hadn't spoken in ages.

Before I was born, my father bought a '57 Chevy:

bright green, gas cap inside one silver tailfin.

Ran like shit. Poured smoke. No seat belts.

My father drove me home from hospital in that thing.

We sideswiped another car on Camelback Bridge in Normal.

Years later, I never learn which party was drunk driving.

I imagine my Spanish is like that green Chevy:

busted, barely runs, a rickety gift.

But that doesn't mean it's not mine to share.

At first, simple whispers suffice:

words for "love" en Guaraní y Español.

How those early endless hours

—then days and weeks—

balloon, uninvited, to encompass the story

I tell myself of her genesis.

The way a point turns to line,

a line to surface, surface to volume,

until all that's left is time.

That first long year, when we moved

so seldom, estacionados en la mecedora.

Like a landslide, these evening rocks

roll into crawling, a crawl to first steps,

her carriage precarious until the wild,

grinning child turns to run.

And I see her already,

moving through timelines I no longer recognize.

An anchor point or past tangent,

I'm already a bystander

in the green blaze of her ascendent arc.

She has changed so much—so much of me—already.

She fills space, and grows, and will not stop

growing, god willing. With hope, Hashem,

she'll continue to move

in pursuit of her futures,

not any one particular, but all of them

simultaneously

unfolding like tesseracts

outside the quickly shrinking cage

of a father's captive heart.

Because wasn't it just yesterday

her breath first rounded into syllables,

sílabas into word and words into song?

Was it not just yesterday

she fit inside the makeshift cradle of my arms,

not yet so far removed from this vast world she'd cracked wide open?

It's certain only to quicken.

I see her climb into that bright green Bel Air

destined to face whatever fate alights:

to swerve away or embrace, to box, to bridge

the distance between her now and future self,

to mind the road for other lives unwinding.

Of course, all this unfolds in the time it takes to fall asleep,

to sway in the morning sun after a restless night,

her head on my shoulder, something with rhythm on the radio.

I imagine if there's an afterlife worth living for,

it's probably this, just like this, forever.

SOURCE: Yaguareté White: Poems by Diego Báez, The University of Arizona Press, Arizona, USA, 2024, pp. 51-53.