LIKE SO MANY PREFACES, THIS ONE IS ALSO PROBABLY SUPERFLUOUS

1

If a poem cannot speak for itself, it has failed.

Even so. . .

2

This book is like a country of the future, a place I would like to inhabit: as bilingual as I am, the first collection of my works that offers my two languages, my Spanish and my English, my two loves, the chance to breathe side by side on paper as they breathe next to each other in my mind and in my life.

3

These poems came to me over the last twenty-five years and are as unfortunately necessary today as they were when they first visited me, blessed me, rescued me from despair.

4

These poems came to me in times of trouble.

When I needed healing and the world needed healing.

5

Has anything changed?

6

I think I’ll let these poems speak for themselves.

October 11^th, 2001.