Telling a Friend about Reading Lorca in the Alhambra

by Mary O’Donnell

This was happiness, I said.
We talked about the quick, perfect stealth
of those moments. I sat beneath orange trees,
and the ground breathed up on me.
A gentle possession, a lover
long known, rarely seen.

And later, when the sun had set that day,
a full moon stealing over the Sierras,
I thought of going to Santiago de Cuba,
as he had done,
of dancing to Cuban rhythms
rum on my tongue,
a reek of skin, all body,
burning up —