“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.