María Coraje

Maria Courage

She is 106 years old and has snow-white hair.
She wears a black dress and black wooden earrings.
Her tough body gave birth to fifteen children
and nursed thirteen from the same breast.
Three were taken by the war, lost in the mountains.
The homeland took them, the postman sang triumphantly.
For five days, she didn't see the sky.
Her sentence was always, always silence.
She had a miner son and one bloody afternoon
they brought him back covered in blood and mud.

With a calm step, she climbed the path to the dark mine
and upon reaching the gate, she lost her gaze and spat on the ground.
With a furrowed brow, she descended to the town
and spent fifteen days without seeing the sky.
Her eyes soften when she remembers her first kiss,
when she wore a new dress for her first grandchild's baptism,
and from the honeymoon trip and her fear
entering the bedroom next to her husband.

One afternoon, he grew tired of being awake
when the field was adorned with its new mantle.
She has a poet son, a carpenter, and three in Mexico,
two others in the mine, one who is a friar, and the youngest,
who was always very handsome, almost perfect.
Today, he is a tender greenhouse flower.
She shelters them all under her cloak
and remembers their names and birthdays.