Charlotte Pence

I served as a translator for doctors providing their medical services for free in Mexico. Before I left for this trip, I reviewed my Spanish, studying what I thought I would be of use: names of bones, organs, and common ailments such as chicken pox and the flu. What I found was that I completely unprepared despite my best intentions. This poem came to be as many of my poems typically do: an image that would not loosen its hold on me. When I had to tell one of my first patients that he was going to die, I can remember that earnest look on his face as he asked me for a bit more time so that he could attend his daughter's wedding. I had to write about him, immortalize him as poems have the ability to do. Getting to the essence of the experience required several revisions, more than what I usually write. Grounding the poem in external, natural images, such as the flower shaped like a trumpet, gave the poem a sense of focus and represented my own feelings. Samuel Johnson said, "The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it. I would like to add another element and that is to enable writers and readers to better understand their own experiences. Most of my poems begin in anger and end in love, as is the case with this poem. I was so saddened by the patients' predicaments and angry at the seemingly callousness of death. In writing this poem, I was able to realize the greater power of human compassion that presided over this clinic and the patients who accepted their death with such grace. - Charlotte Pence

Never had I told a man he was dying,
and one day, I told three.
It was the minute afterward
that made me stutter,
want to tear out my teeth.

The young man crying for his brother;
Mrs. Gomez crying over her husband;
the gray-haired son crying for his father.
Polite even then--
remembering to thank me,
that one succinct word,
the first I learned, gracias,
the one I want to throw back
for its murderous civility.

Some say grace will come
in difficult moments.
It didn't with me:
shirt bunched under arm pits,
bangs stuck to lips,
my Spanish grew gnarled,
as if I chewed hot potatoes.

My sweaty face over their beds
was all they saw of their death.
Mr. Gomez couldn't see it,
see what cancer looked like.
Was it yellow, like the curse of a scab,
or black, some venomous poison?
Did it smell down to the devil?

I wanted to ease the doctors' verdicts.
But I couldn't lie, couldn't say
you will have many more years,
many years as El Popo
has had spewing smoke.

I couldn't say, you will go quietly,
the way a boy slides a stone
into his pocket or gently
as the white trumpet flower
closes at noon, escapes from heat.

Instead, I trembled
as Mr. Gomez asked for a favor,
for maybe two more weeks,
or three if I could spare it.

I remember making my own deals
with God, hunkered over my toy box,
begging, I'll never doubt
if you keep Mother alive.

I, who had reneged,
being asked for something
I could not do. I'd asked God
because there was no one else.
Mr. Gomez asked me
because there was no one--

only death, hiding inside him.
I wish it weren't so cowardly,
would show itself as it is,
a bloody midnight-in-the-park brawl.
But that's not how it behaves.
It's more like the trumpet flower,
opening at dusk once the sun tires
of pulling corn stalks higher.