The Weeping Gardener, A 9/11 Remembrance

[Xipe Totec]

Three years ago I watched in helpless horror as the twin towers turned to rubble. I arrived home that night, raised the flag on my front porch to half mast, and wept. I did not weep for those whose lives ended tragically that day, but for those who survived to carry on with shattered dreams and broken lives.

I wanted to give a voice to grief that night and found it in a poem by Miguel Hernández, a Spanish writer who served with the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s. One of Miguel’s closest friends was murdered in an act of revenge like many during the war. Miguel Hernández wrote a eulogy to his friend and poured into it his grief and his rage. This eulogy has many metaphorical references to the Twin Towers tragedy and, to this day, I still can’t read it without being moved to tears. In Spanish the poem is simply called Elegía. I call it ‘The Weeping Gardener’ to distinguish it from the many other eulogies Hernández wrote. This is my translation:

The Weeping Gardener
By Miguel Hernández


I want to be
the weeping gardener
of the ground you occupy,
and compost so early,
my soul mate.

To feed the garden snails in the rain,
organ of my voiceless pain,
surrendering your heart as food,
to the disheartened roses.
Such pain clumps in my chest,
that breath is agony.

A hard fist, an icy blow,
an axe strike, homicidal and unseen,
a brutal push tumbled you.

There is no wider chasm than my wound,
I cry to misfortune and her companions,
I feel your death, more than my life.

Unkempt and unshaved,
without warmth or consolation,
I tend to my affairs soullessly.

Death took flight early,
and early came the dawn of morn,
and early it spills upon the ground.

I do not forgive death for loving you,
or forgive life for its distraction,
or forgive the ground,
or forgive oblivion.

With bare hands I raise a storm,
of stones, bolts and strident axes,
thirsting and hungering for catastrophe.

With bare teeth I want to dig the ground,
and move the dirt part by part,
in dry and furious bites.

I want to mine the earth until I find you,
to kiss your noble skull,
unbind your body and return you,
to my garden and my fig tree.

Your soul that was,
so effortlessly gentle,
will flutter lie a bird,
among the flowered trellises,
and will return at the murmur
of the iron gates,
where lovers meet.

You will lighten the shadow of my brow,
and your blood will flow through my garden.
Competing for the bees and for your girl,
your velvet heart will summon forth,
a crop of snowy almond blossoms.
But my jealous voice will call you
away from the almond trees,
to the winged souls of the roses.
For we have much to talk about,
my soul mate,
my companion.