Promising Spanish Poetry

Abbas Panakkal

    Poemas de Jaime Garcia Maiquez

    Jaime Garcia Maiquez

    THE DESERT ROSE
    To my mother

    What kind of sculptor made you, I know not,
    but as he was carving, how he managed
    to give you, lovingly, that perfume which
    requires no written piety at all,
    in order to remain, long after death.

    The splendor of the storm gave birth to you,
    the crazed kiss of wrath made you appear;
    yours was the proud glory of a symbol,
    as was the rather dry sound from afar,
    of sand dunes like a solemn sea of waves.

    You are the beautiful riot of petals
    that no stem will ever presume to hold,
    mystical fruit in which the indifference
    of flower meets the humility of stone,
    and the living sand weds the flowering dust.

    You are the frozen rose that sings a hymn
    for us, of hope in the midst of silence,
    the soundless music that makes the saddest
    foundations on earth shudder and tremble:
    for there is love even in the desert.


    CHILDREN OF THE END OF THE WORLD
    Now that the end is finally nigh,
    let us have faith, let us not fear,
    look ever forward, but not see:
    we must construct, and always found.
    Begin again, as it all ends,
    try to resurrect through others,
    make love on the ruins of time
    running out: let us have children
    for the coming end of the world.


    THE CHOSEN

    You the ugly, the fat, the dwarfs, the cross-eyed, the blind,
    the old, the mad, the retarded, the imbecile,
    those born simple, those solemnly silly,
    the poor, the ignorant, the lonely, the mister nobodies, all of you
    who bear the obscene scar of suffering on your face,

    your humiliation is God’s tabernacle, the cloth
    on which I have so often dried my stupid tears.
    I praise you from the deepest caves of joy!


    MY HOUR

    There is, between the evening and the night,
    a time in which the light does not consent
    to blind, nor into shadow spill itself;
    not hitting but surrounding matter, and
    embracing it platonically with love.
    As things are thus denied their contrast crude
    of light-and-dark, they are absolved of some
    irrelevant, forgotten sin, and then
    they are themselves more than before, somehow,
    and all who look at them are beautified.
    Our God beholds the world by such a light.

    OH WORLD
    The poet declares his fame
    My household scorns me.
    My friends call me names.
    I have no rest from work.
    I write nonsense.
    Editors leisurely reject my books.
    My God is abased.
    He is crucified.
    They persecute His church like hungry wolves.
    My life is a wasteland.
    Nothing makes sense.
    Oh life, how you hurt.
    Oh unyielding time.
    Oh love, as unbearable as fire is.

    Stupefaction and the days are my tools.
    Cruel world, I am lucky to be alive!


    Poemas de Jose Maria Alvarez Tosigo Ardento

    Jose Maria Alvarez Tosigo Ardento

    Para
    María del Carmen Marí:
    The nobleness of life
    Is to do thus [Embracing]: when such a mutual pair
    And such a twain can do’t, in which I bind,
    On pain of punishment, the world to weet
    We stand up peerless.

    TÁCITO
    1
    Coming out of the mist in the cold
    of a sad sea
    the great health spas float.
    The long wooden walkways
    disappear as in a misted
    mirror
    Lone deckchairs awnings folded. And
    you hear
    the break of an ancient
    wave.
    The boat’s prow
    balances solemnly in the whiteness. I remember my grandfather’s
    old motorcar?End of summer, the
    first
    chills, at dusk; some men
    grappling with boards doors and windows
    in the ramshackle beach-house. And the car, black, huge,
    magnificent, like a funeral
    hearse ? silence of photography: We all
    go up. I see the beach distancing
    from the window the wind moves the palm trees.
    Meanwhile
    I grow old. Some
    Girls go by
    in bare feet on the sand, they protect
    their necks with their arms
    around their jerseys. I hear them
    laugh. Their faces
    are lost in the (fog)mist. The waves break
    slowly. Like smooth
    dying animals
    the moorings creak.
    With the sound of the sea
    the music of some distant
    speakers arrives, an arcade
    of bumpers.
    Lonely
    beach terraces,
    with a glass in my hand
    It has always been
    night. Which is why you love
    Istanbul, sumptuous, and love Venice, I
    and the New York dawn, police
    cars in the rain.
    Yes
    Remember: the Atlantic in the solitude of the quays,
    the grime on the pillars dead rats
    move the water, the
    lights like a ghost train
    a transatlantic liner somebody crosses
    the wet ground, with
    wellingtons, in the frozen
    silence, at the bottom
    of huge metal doors
    Disappearing as of now
    on the calm sea
    the great health resorts destroyed,
    their long mysterious promenades.
    Phosphorescent ladies stroll slowly. The gulls
    go by on the other side of the
    mist. The legs of the table
    stick in the sand,
    shells break. The
    world capsizes. Ah,
    marvellous. We see a memorable fall.
    Contemplate it, acknowledge the gesture give
    a
    tip.
    That child who went
    in his grandfather’s car would have done so,
    the strand distancing itself,
    the palm trees shimmering in the wind. Let
    night pass, drink,
    listen
    to the sea that
    breaks
    against
    the dilapidated spas.
    On the other side of these waters
    Alexandria, Smyrna, Alexander’s Dream, dirty
    backstreets of some port.
    And
    hear that tune wafting
    from the speakers of a bumper’s
    arcade.
    An old
    and sugary and
    stupid
    song.
    One night, in the Piazza
    San Marco, contemplating
    its splendour,
    you thought
    that was
    the perfect place
    to end your life. Yes, there, the last bottle,
    little orchestras
    playing, stunning adolescents and Japanese
    go by,
    the shadow of Ezra Pound.
    Yes, but
    not in winter, you thought,
    although it would be more honourable, save
    one of those wonderful end-of-summer nights
    amidst hundreds of tourists, a coarse waltz,
    your memory like a hoor’s bed. And, you
    one now with the grandeur
    of the Piazza,
    sleep-inducements taking effect,
    deciphering the blurred columns, the domes
    of the Basilica, the music, the voices
    going out in your head. You think,
    perhaps, Las
    Meninas, The Winter’s Tale, Maria Callas, trying
    to maintain a proud
    composure.
    Meanwhile
    the palaces eraze, the water
    rots the foundations, the stones covered
    in moss.
    For
    God’s sake, leave it! Everybody has gone!
    And you rise
    before the moon’s splendour,
    that other moon of your indifference
    There are lights in the mist.
    Distant. Like pearls.
    The sea caresses your tongue. Gold-clad
    women and fascinating motor cars
    go by. You hear
    a song known to the Spanish. The lights of the big wheel. You drain
    your drink.
    Kiss
    death in the mouth.
    Some couples
    embrace, like ghosts
    in the mist of the walk-ways.
    You have
    nothing.
    That sand
    you take in your hand.
    There was a morning
    - the palaces reflected in the Great Canal
    like jewels thrown on a silk sheet -
    I roamed the halls
    of one of those palaces.
    It was full of tourists,
    overwhelmed by luxury;
    one - I suppose - a teacher
    soliloquizing in front of some boys
    on a certain cloth.
    They looked,
    not now as if it such
    were of the past (including
    I, to whom such beauty gave so much consolation) but
    like indecipherable
    signs from another world.
    I thought that those ceilings and paintings,
    furniture and precious
    objects, those clothes, everything, were once
    chosen by somebody (somebody whose life
    we can hardly imagine)
    because it was part
    of his lifestyle.
    We wandering around a dead aquarium,
    scraps of an abandoned dream
    now without any connection
    with our life.
    And I thought of the Stanze
    of the Vatican,
    made for the gratification of a great Pope
    He would
    have smashed his glass against a fresco
    on a delightful night
    And Raphael would have decorated again that wall,
    and perhaps even better.
    Now that beauty
    was something that had
    to be watched over, protected, a unique
    wonder, strange,
    that dies
    in the eyes
    of those who cannot now conceive it.
    But perhaps that was
    my luck. To see the end.
    And like that beauty
    the solitude of my memory.
    And for that reason
    you do not have to fear
    death. Not even
    imagine it honourable,
    proud, spent
    as that splendid jewel
    of the Piazza.
    It may take you one day
    between the burnt iron
    of a car. Or die alone in an hotel. Take a fistful
    of
    sand. It is moist. It is like taking
    a print in the hand. Listen
    to the flotsam of the water
    against the pillars.
    Solemn, abandoned, in the
    mist,
    the great health resorts float.
    The rumour of that sea
    breaks, dark, you almost
    understand everything. You are drinking
    against a background of lights clouded by the mist
    of an arcade of bumper
    cars. Death dances to excite you
    in a concrete lot a stupid
    song. Girls
    stroll by who are abysses.
    Ah, listen. Those are the oars
    of the Greek ships. Hear
    the zzzzzzzzzzz of the gulls.
    passing through
    the mist.
    Humid flesh
    of the heavens.
    The world stops.
    Gods
    of sucide.
    Vivaldi’s violent moon.
    2
    If that alone
    had lasted If we had not read
    Homer,
    Virgil, Tacitus. If no
    ruin
    had reached our eyes
    this column
    would have been enough,
    solitary at the edge of the promontory,
    with just the right height for a man
    to use as a rest, and in the freshness of the pine trees
    contemplating the view
    allows his thoughts to soar
    Column in the evening sun
    Sicily’s immensity. The passer-by
    stops enthralled.
    Everything is madness outside of this ambience.
    And we pile up some logs
    beside her, and we make a bonefire,
    and gazing at the flame we drink wine
    and the sunset like a peacock
    closing in on itself alone and distant
    at the water’s end. Someone recited
    verses of the Lliad, working up
    a challenge and the courage of some men
    in front of the sacred doors.
    How
    the heart
    ingnites how
    the oldest emotion
    revives,
    the flame, the blood, the victory.
    A dog
    that came down from the mountain
    comes closer. We throw it
    a piece
    of bread.
    The column decreases
    in the light
    of a huge night advancing.
    Yes, that clarity.
    Decided by someone
    facing the same Destiny.
    We lie down beside her,
    to gaze on her
    and lick our wounds.
    and 3
    Shakespeare came within inches
    of losing
    his head. It is something
    we should
    reflect on measure
    carefully
    the neck.
    Afterwards
    travel. It is worth
    (nevertheless) – while you roam
    the landscape
    like a cyclorama – it is worth
    meditating a lot on that
    which Montaigne wrote: Necessity is love
    which not only corrupts my
    judgement, but also
    my conscience. And
    Oh, yes, World, pass by!
    Stendhal sat in this
    café.
    (perhaps
    Stendhal has not yet
    sat in
    this
    café) I remember one winter’s night
    the moon was a solemn goddess.
    It lit up
    The gates of Florien
    like golden butterflies in the mist.
    I had been drinking slowly
    when a couple entered and behind them
    a dog.
    They sat
    under one of those agreeable paintings
    by Casa and Carlini. A waiter came
    and served coffee, some cakes.
    He withdrew. And a little later
    appeared carrying a silver
    bowl, full of water,
    and he placed it beside the dog.
    That grandeur cannot be improvised.
    Like the eyes of the shoe shiners
    of Istanbul, like leprosy in Cairo.
    Know that the end of the world
    is nothing more than the vane repetition
    of certain misadventures now known,
    and never with greater interest than that of a
    perfect twilight service.
    Good.
    Shakespeare just about
    saved his head. Don’t forget it. It is something we should
    always bear in mind. It teaches you
    to survive. Our heads have always
    been worth
    little.
    Remember it.
    Remember it
    while the gondolas go by
    like Death’s lips while your life passes
    and you recognize it in some
    fragment
    birds
    pass through the mist. The sea
    breaks against the quays. And
    nothing means
    nothing, history
    rotten flesh,
    ah, and you,
    solitary drinker
    who sees everything
    ah, you,
    who knows the end
    You contemplate
    in the twilight
    facades most serene, see the gold of the world
    go out over the Dogana, Fortune soon still
    in the silence of the winds, you note
    how the city collapses
    have seen time in the waters.
    And what you love, respect, float
    like rubbish in the tide.
    Think about Shakespeare.
    Remember how beautiful this Piazza is
    to die.
    Without knowing anybody. One of those magnificent
    summer nights, the little orchestras play everything
    it is full of unknown
    people. Some insomniacs.
    And drink.
    And you see beauty vanish
    as the moon goes by.
    They say, later: a
    foreigner, yes, perhaps the heart. Before carrying out
    the autopsy.
    What they find.
    Streets that blind the traveller women’s
    faces
    The
    night is madness. It has
    the shine of mirrors. You feel
    the alcohol at one
    with your body,
    it makes you perfect like a verse of Virgil.
    All
    who were have gone
    dying on nights
    like this:
    You finish off
    the last
    drop, leave, note the cold
    on your face, a taxi goes by
    Afterwards there is the desert. Rimbaud crossed it.
    Yes, Rimbaud, that sick fiend.
    Defending
    his money-belt.
    I remember, entering the Jeu de Pomme, by the little exit
    on the left, in the web
    of Fantin-Latour. Ah, one
    of those haughty nights
    amongst friends, drinking, dreaming
    with the glory, beside Verlaine,
    moon of such heavens.
    Ah the verse that doesn’t die.
    Your eyes are wild. Perhaps it is the night
    of Merde
    à la Poésie.
    Toll of bell – I believe -. You know
    others like him visited this portrait
    over the years.
    Verlaine shines.
    That shit
    still looks
    ugly in poetry. He saw
    himself lose his way, while he stroked a green glass he saw
    himself erase in the fog of a dirty back-street, like
    a prostitute
    who retires
    tired.
    In
    the fragile night
    they drink.
    I think
    on
    two subsequent events:
    Ernst Jünger
    contemplates
    from a window of the Majestic
    Paris blacked-out. It doesn’t matter who the victor
    is in this war for
    behind the misted glass
    It ends.
    A head
    that had extended the limits
    of intelligence, courage, tolerance,
    died. In a mirror
    full of blood
    he contemplates
    satisfied
    an undesirable. Time
    of assassins. The young man of the web
    I mentioned had dreamt it.
    And years
    later, in a small town
    in the USA, a young soldier
    enters
    a diner, he carries two rifles, a
    pistol, he begins
    to fire at the people, he doesn’t select, he kills
    at random. He stops firing
    when he is no longer amused.
    Good. There is no need
    to put
    your
    hands
    to your head.
    It is normal
    that it happens.
    And perhaps of all
    who were eating there, it is possible that only the assassin
    held something of life in his heart, perhaps he was the only
    one you could sit down with
    to drink.
    The television reported on it
    immediately. We could see the bodies.
    Time
    of assassins.
    When the lights of the avenues
    shine like a disappointment on the wet footpaths.
    And motorcars go by
    beautiful ladies
    with powerful
    gazes.
    The wind comes full of crystals,
    drags limbs,
    fetus clog the drains,
    and in New York
    they appear at dawn
    stick out their heads from
    holes in the avenues
    white-eyed beings and without hair.
    What they have to do to survive.
    No
    Rimbaud, that sat waiting for them.
    Nor Verlaine, unprecedented shade
    of the moon
    See the albinos,
    habititués of the left-overs,
    their animals cold as soap.
    That is what remains.
    That.
    Many times I have read
    in the admirable Life of Pompeii,
    your death. And to those unsurpressable
    pages I refer.
    But I insist on an image:
    Cut off your head, preserve it
    in order to buy favours
    from Cesar, who will
    frown on the offering (and turning
    your
    face away, cry,
    says Plutarco).
    The body dumped in a bog,
    your free slave, Felipo, washes the remains in the sea
    and with planks from a boat
    he constructs a funeral pyre.
    Then someone approached,
    someone who in your youth had been
    a soldier in the Legion of Pompeii,
    and in the name of that glory he waked the flame
    until the greatest of the captains
    was ash.
    Perhaps those verses
    repeat this gesture,
    and wake
    another corpse:
    he of the Art.
    Because only those ashes.
    Daybreak has a bright
    moon
    of desperation.
    Yes, listen.
    Mind your neck,
    Shakespeare barely
    saved
    his.
    The night
    is beautiful, divine.
    Nor does it matter much
    that a civilization
    collapses.
    Traducción John Liddy
    La noche de San Juan.
    Madrid, Junio 23, 2008.

    TOSIGO ARDENTO
    I

    Lo Pagán, Septiembre de 1983;
    Venecia, Invierno de 1983-1984;
    Taormina, Enero de 1984;
    Milán –París, Febrero de 1984;
    Sevilla – Cartagena, Octubre de 1984.
    II
    Roma (Villa Doria-Pamphili), Junio de 1982;
    Lo Pagán, Noviembre de 1983;
    Locarno, Enero de 1984;
    Cartagena, Marzo de 1984;
    Roma, Mayo –Cartagena, Julio de 1984.
    III
    Cartagena, Diciembre de 1983;
    Lausanne, Enero de 1984;
    Sevilla, Abril de 1984;
    Cartagena, Agosto de 1984;
    New York, Invierno de 1985.

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