A few months back, we went down to Huelva 
to clean our graveyard—condoms hung 
from the saplings shooting up from the dead: 
British fighter pilots mainly, and an American. 
My bishop chainsawed brush and got welts 
from the sap. I followed in a wheelbarrow. 
Dressed in my clericals. 
                                                Townsfolk laughed. 
I think about my country and hope this reaches you— 
as Lorca hoped his poems might reach us. 
I think of Natalie’s son washing plates in the back. 
I see those New Englanders brush crumbs away.
Sometimes I feel out of place, but then I think
of Katharine Lee Bates, a missionary to Spain 
and closeted lesbian, who wrote our famous hymn.