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.