Verde for Vicki

When I read Vicki Lane's blog post today (vickilanemysteries.blogspot.com), I recalled a poem I'd read at my alma mater Wesleyan College, in Macon, Ga. I told the graduates that when I was a senior, I'd written a weekly column titled Caustic Cogitations. Some of my comments in those columns disturbed a few faculty members, one of whom wrote to scold me by saying that I would come to regret "my salad days when I was green in judgment." (from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra) I assured the graduates that I did not regret my green days at all and I hoped they never would regret theirs either.
Then I read this poem.



Coraggio
-for the class of 2006, Wesleyan College, May 13, 2006

"Verde, que te quiero verde."
--Federico Garcia Lorca

When the soprano rehearsing
Traviata's impassioned "Sempre Libera"
missed yet another high E-
flat, the conductor looked up from his baton
and challenged, Coraggio, Madam, Coraggio!

Courage!
What better word
could I offer as you take your leave
of this place that has gathered you
into its sisterhood?

Sometimes I still hear its voices
exhorting me: don't you forget
how you sat on the grass
outside Wortham dorm,
smoking too many cigarettes,

longing to find your way
into that poem you recited in Spanish class,
Lorca's verde viento that blew
through the classroom
like wings roused from slumber.

Forty years later I've come back
to say, simply, always be ready to welcome
the green, all that's verde within you.
Have the courage of your corazón,
have esperanza,

a little French insouciance.
You know what I mean,
flair and attitude, flinging your purple
shawls over your shoulders!
That green wind I wanted

to follow is right here,
today, on the thirteenth of May,
so cup it awhile in your fingers
and listen: your voice,
the breath of it lifting its brave canción.

~ Kathryn Stripling Byer, Class of 1966