READIN

Saturday, July 9th, 2011

🦋 La Alegradora

Scattered throughout Cuadra's Songs of Cifar and of the Sweet Sea are eleven short (even "koanic") poems titled "El maestro de Tarca" -- these seem different from the rest of the text. They are printed in italics, and they all begin with the phrase "El maestro de Tarca was telling us" or "was telling me" or similar. I think these poems might be the framework around which the rest of the book is built... Not sure, but that is anyway an interesting idea. Tarca is not known to Google Maps; other Internet sources suggest it is on the island of El Carmen, off the western shore of Lake Nicaragua. Schulman translates "maestro" as "master"; it could also be translated "teacher". My impulse is to leave the phrase "el maestro de Tarca" untranslated.

I'm interested this morning in the ninth poem of this series, one which Schulman and Zavala do not include in their edition. It presents a few challenges for the translator; key among them is the term "La Alegradora". "Alegrar" is "gladden", so "alegradora" would be "someone who makes you happy" -- span¡shd!ct.com gives it as an archaic term for "jester". This is pretty clearly not the meaning intended in the poem; a little digging around with Google* turns up a blog entry from No-Nan-Tzin [you will get an adult content warning when clicking this link, you can safely ignore it], who tells us that "alegradora" is the Spanish rendering of the Nahuatl term "tlatlamiani", a prostitute in pre-Columbian Mexico.

Well: "prostitute" works semantically in the poem; but why did Cuadra not use "La Prostituta"? Was "alegradora" still idiomatic in 20th-Century Nicaragua? Is the usage intentionally archaic, hearkening back to ancient times (this seems likely)? I believe the Aztec empire included Nicaragua; so this is my working assumption, and I am going to leave "La Alegradora" untranslated. But if a Nicaraguan reader would recognize it immediately as meaning "prostitute", this may be a poor choice.

EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (Ⅸ) El maestro de Tarca me decía: La Alegradora con su cuerpo da placer, no con su recuerdo. Con la mano hace señas con los ojos llama, no con su recuerdo. La Alegradora es el puerto la tierra que sólo es del pobre en la noche.

EL MAESTRO DE TARCA (â…¨) El maestro de Tarca was telling me: La Alegradora gives you pleasure with her body, not with her remembrance. With her hand she beckons with her eyes she calls you hence, not with her remembrance. La Alegradora is the port is the land which the poor man only knows by night.

* The same round of searches also brought to my attention this ode by Aztec prince Tlaltecatzin, who praises his love as a "precious toasted huitlacoche". The original Nahuatl is here.

posted morning of July 9th, 2011: 3 responses
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Monday, July 4th, 2011

🦋 Brandished back against the lances of the sun

Source material for a poem I posted today in comments at Dave Bonta's Morning Porch -- this is from Pablo Antonio Cuadra's Songs of Cifar and of the Sweet Sea (which, happy day, I discover Tony Bigras of turtleislands.net has uploaded in full). Translation is my own, with reference to that of Grace Schulman and Ann McCarthy de Zavala.

Caballos en el Lago Los caballos bajan al amanecer. Entran al lago de oro y avanzan -- ola contra ola el enarcado cuello y crines -- a la cegadora claridad. Muchachos desnudos bañan sus ancas y ellos yerguen ebrios de luz su estampa antigua. Escuchan -- la oreja atenta -- el sutil clarín de la mañana y miran el vasto campo de batalla. Entonces sueñan -- bulle la remota osadía -- se remontan a los días heroicos, cuando el hierro devolvía al sol sus lanzas potros blancos escuadrones de plata el grito lejanísimo de los pájaros y el viento. Pero vuelven (Látigo es el tiempo) Al golpe enfilan hacia tierra -- bajan la frente -- y uncido al carro el sueño queda atrás dormido el viento.

Horses in the Lake The horses come down at daybreak. They enter into the golden lake, and on -- wave after wave the long arched necks, the manes -- into the blinding clearness. And naked boys are bathing their haunches drunk with light they're lifting up their ancient image. They listen -- ears perked up -- to the morning's subtle trumpet and they gaze on the enormous field of battle. And then they dream -- and glimpse remote effrontery -- rising back up to the days of glory, when steel met the sun's proud lances stallions white and squadrons silver the cries of distant birds and of the wind. But they return (Before the whip of time) And struck move slowly back to land -- they bow their heads -- they're yoked to the wagon the dream remains behind asleep the wind.

posted afternoon of July 4th, 2011: Respond
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🦋 Not a soul to tell our troubles to

Woke up with a song ringing in my ears and a poem drifting through my head.

My shadow has no memory of
that frantic, panicked, pell-mell flight --

No pain or expectations, craving,
dying to escape his bondage.

Look, he's crouching, vibrates with
desire that only shadows feel;

He's poised to spring, to pounce, as if
the shadow of some predator,

Some dusky, fleeting contrast on
the sidewalk of my consciousness,

Some ragged blank impression on
the sand dunes of my memory --

We move, the spell is broken, sliding
frictionless along the garden

Seeking our reflection in
the pools of last night's rainfall,

In the golden machinations of the sunlight from the east.

posted morning of July 4th, 2011: Respond
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Thursday, June 30th, 2011

🦋 Breakfast and Lunch

A new poem from Pelele had the happy effect of reminding me of one of my very favorite poems, Kenneth Koch's "Lunch" -- and the funny thing is, I was noticing similarities to "Lunch" even before I looked up to the top of the poem and noticed Pelele's title...

Breakfast

by Eduardo Valverde

Last night I dreamed of you -- or of your father:
a tall man under his hat.
The place I found myself reminded me,
its silence, of a bird -- a bird that’s sleeping,
an engine, maybe, lying in the junkheap.
He came along, his face drawn long, like kids
when they play at grown-up
or like a bankrupt god
who tallies up his mornings carefully
and finds that all that glitters is not gold;
he carried a green bottle in his hands
and the analgesic pain that comes of touching earthly things.

He spoke enthusiastically of the sea's paternal womb,
of land unmapped, unconquered, which begins off in the darkness --
in every single letter of the word, “desperation” --
He spoke of a taste like olives, of the flavor in her breasts,
in hers who never aged but who had brought forth many daughters
each with olive nipples;
of the unease that he feels before the window in a photo
in which a bowl of fruit is standing lonesome on the floor
of the hallway in a vacant house --
or I should say, before the light that’s coming through the window,
an angel hewn of green basalt;
a solid angel, weak Annunciation.

He poured me out a cup and took the bottle by its neck.
Could not remember you; but he said,
with joy in his eyes, he said My kids were like the rattle
of the hills when trains are rolling by;
like a pack of dogs, dogs baying in the distance
to push your weary heart along the journey.
It must have been getting dark, I guess -- a solitary lamp
was turning back to ash his eyes and moustache

And me, I was anxious, I needed to pee;
I felt my dress was falling into shadow --
     its weight returning --
raised my hands to my cheeks and found I was not dying
nor was I really back among the living.

Two images in particular seem like they could have come from Koch's pen, the woman "who never aged but who had brought forth many daughters/ each with olive nipples", and the man boasting, "My kids were like the rattle/ of the hills when trains are rolling by" -- also the general flow of the text and of voice reminds me of Koch. (I have probably intensified this similarity in my translation; but I believe it is present in the original as well.) The "analgesic pain that comes of touching earthly things" is going to stay with me for a long time.

posted evening of June 30th, 2011: 2 responses
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Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

🦋 Accidente

Allí estaba, simplemente sentado allí en el parking del body shop, los guardabarros delantero plegado como acordeón. Me decías qué lástima, tan hermoso y casí nuevo un coche... Querías correr a casa para las pinturas y caballete traer, pero estaba ansioso. Quería ir.

Aquella noche fumábamos hierba, nosotros y Antonia, no podías dejar de inventar cuentos sobre el choque, tú loca, estabas riendo y contandonos lo que ha pasado, quiénes habían resultado herido, cuáles consequencias... Antonia reía tambien, una risa áspera, y su collar de coralina roja temblaba ritmicamente.

posted evening of June 28th, 2011: Respond
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Monday, June 27th, 2011

🦋 Todo el cuento

Les diremos todo a ellos, todo el cuento a Antonia y a sus amigas, todo el cuento desde el inicio. Lo contaremos, como te has despertado aquella mañana, también agotada, repitiendo esas frases melosas y vacías que habías oído en sueños. Como no podía hacer cara o cruz de todo lo y he bajado para preparar café.

posted evening of June 27th, 2011: Respond

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

🦋 El poeta licantrópico

I find myself fascinated by Steven White's statement about Alfonso Cortés, Nicaragua's "poeta loco," that he "was prone to fits of violence that coincided with the full moon" -- I am finding in Cortés' poetry some beautiful fragments without its yet coming together for me as a whole. Inscribed on Cortés' tomb in León (adjacent to the tomb of Rubén Dario) is his poem "Supplication."

Time is hunger, space is cold
pray, pray: only supplication
can satisfy the longings of the void.

Dreaming is a lonely rock
where the eagle of the soul can build his nest:
dream, dream, dream the whole day long.

(I see a couple of references, in the few of Cortés' poems that White includes, to ether -- I wonder if he was a recreational user and if so, whether that had anything to do with his reputation for insanity.)

posted evening of June 26th, 2011: 2 responses

Saturday, June 25th, 2011

🦋 Almuerzo

El signo que se cuelga sobre la puerta de la pupusería se destaca verde e oval contra los ladrillos rojos de la pared. He comprado unos pupusas para el almuerzo, pasaba por allí de camino a casa. Aquí tienes una de queso, una de chicharrón para mi. Vamos, creo que tenemos un poco repollo encurtido en la nevera... y tal vez una salsa. Tardes perezosas.

El peso de la pupusa en mi boca. La masticación agradable me distrae de lo que me decía el médico esta mañana. Es claramente más fácil no pensar en ello, el café sorber, tu presencia sentir... Mirar fijamente al vacío.

posted morning of June 25th, 2011: Respond

Monday, June 20th, 2011

🦋 Poetry from prompts

A parking lot I walk by every morning on my way to work prompted this poem, composed on the way to work this morning and revised on the way home this evening.

Crumpled

Sympathetic gleaming crumpled chassis by the body shop,
I pass her every morning when I'm walking to the train: a shame --
been there two months, I guess she's totalled, looks brand-new...
except for at the front end where her frame is mashed together...
shiny hood is bent in half; bright jet-black paint job powerless
to cover up the damage that's been done.

Update -- another use of the parking lot image.

posted evening of June 20th, 2011: Respond

Sunday, June 19th, 2011

🦋 Sunday Cycling: Red Hook

Someone must know Brooklyn, all of Brooklyn, that’s what I was thinking
Riding past the sidestreets that line Red Hook, names I’ve never heard
Like Visitation Pl. and Wolcott, Coffey St., evocative,
Some modern-day Walt Whitman must have walked down all these paths, must know
The neighborhoods from Red Hook out to Sunset Park and Sheepshead Bay,
Canarsie, know the subway stops in Midwood, where to grab a bite
In East New York -- for all the time I lived here, my familiar steps
Are clustered in a narrow strip around Flatbush, long thin fingers running
South down Seventh Avenue and west along Atlantic, when
I think of Brooklyn what I see’s a small part of the borough, pictures
Culled from my meanderings through Park Slope (mostly),
Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill.      Today, we rode
Our bikes out to Ikea, it was great to see the borough through
New eyes, see corners foreign to my memories, my expectations,
Corners where a million dreams have played out, dreams of glory,
Where the docks begin, where underneath the pavement are the cobblestones
(They’re coming through in places, makes for shaky riding) -- stones
With memories of wartime and of labor struggles old and new, of
Love affairs between the street lamps, lovers whom I’ll never know,
I’ll never know the neighborhoods I’ve never been to, riding
Down the street here, through the crazy sunlight, colors catch my eye. The sun
Shines on a fading shipper’s sign, a sign down by the waterfront,
Old industry is everywhere, these piers, these cranes, these factories,
These crumbling bricks were witness to the unnarrated histories --
A million rises, unmourned falls (a bright red arrow points the way
To Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies, we ride down there and walk the pier,
Trade looks and salutations with the rows of solemn fishermen) --
This new Red Hook’s delectable, a feast of light, we’re riding back now,
Savoring the wind that blows at angles off the waterfront
And thinking thoughts of driving back to Jersey and the week to come.
We hit Atlantic, now I’m back, the Brooklyn that I know and love,
Stop by Damascus Bakery and buy some bread for lunches
For the week, and every place I set my foot rings through familiar;
What new Whitman will I find to map this borough’s soul for me?

Eileen, Ellen and Rick
air-fishing on Valentino Pier.
Lady Liberty looks on.

posted evening of June 19th, 2011: 4 responses
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