In downtown Chelsea.
“The refugee’s run
across the desert borderlands
carved wings of fright
into his forehead,
growing more crooked
with every eviction notice
in this waterfront city of the north.’’
— From “Mi Vida: Wings of Fright
Chelsea, Massachusetts, 1987,’’ by Martin Espada
Chelsea is a gritty old manufacturing town next to Boston.
Mr. Espada, an English professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, lives in very bucolic Leverett, Mass., well known for its Buddhist New England Peace Pagoda and the many babbling brooks coursing down its hills.
The New England Peace Pagoda, in Leverett.
Saw Mill River Falls near Rattlesnake Gutter, in Leverett.
