Jotabê

(poema pro Jorge Bandeira no aniversário 52 dele, 23/ABR/2020)

Jotabê, Jotabê, quem é Jotabê?

É um homem que veio do igarapé.

E é para lá que deseja voltar?

Tanto faz – ele mora no mesmo lugar.

Jotabê, Jotabê, como é Jotabê?

É um homem nuinho da cabeça ao pé.

E o que ele põe quando se tem que tapar?

Se veste de versos, de sol e de ar.

Jotabê, Jotabê, o que faz Jotabê?

Ele faz é desenhos e livros e play.

Não é no teatro que vai ensaiar?

No palco ele brinca e ensina sonhar.

Jotabê, Jotabê, o que diz Jotabê?

Ele diz que o mundo é nem que você.

E isso, o que pode significar?

Sei lá. Quer saber? Vá com ele falar!

Calavera Bolsonaro

Mucho cobarde se esconde

vilmente tras el gatillo,

pues busca algo en el bolsillo…

que agarrar no tiene dónde.

Un tal cretino que incita

a su gente a la violencia -

sin importar consecuencia

al ruin racismo la invita -

se llama Jair Bolsonaro.

Este bruto brasileño

pone desigual empeño

en promover el descaro.

Su seña reconocida -

con los dedos apuntando

cual pistolas disparando –

lo delata fratricida,

aun cuando sus comentarios

homofóbicos, racistas,

misóginos y fascistas

estimulan partidarios.

Pues hay quien lo apoya, ciego,

como rechazo al partido

que percibe corrompido,

sin ver corrupto el propio ego:

el voto por el malvado

es un voto por la saña

que al público tonto engaña

al sentirse muy halagado,

pero aunque se haga jurar,

promesa hecha por culebra,

por mucho que se celebra,

es imposible confiar.

Así pintaba el ambiente

cuando llegó la Catrina,

vestida de gente fina,

de la situación consciente.

Se acerca al exmilitar,

saboreando el disgusto,

y al malhechor le da un susto

que no logra disfrazar.

“Sai de mim, Morte, depressa!

Aprecio seus favores,

mas não aturo seus pavores.

Seu voto em mim não interessa.”

Le responde la Difunta,

“Como apuñalado fuiste,

pero con vida seguiste,

mi dedo-rifle te apunta.”

Y ahí petateó el capitán

por la Muerte señalado,

el ademán coreado

por los que despertarán,

los que dejarán atrás

a una calavera tiesa

por un Brasil que progresa

como tú, lector, harás.

PORT: Uma “calavera” é um poema satírico da tradição mexicana, próprio da temporada do Día de los Muertos. A calavera retrata o falecimento imaginado de alguma figura pública, de maneira inspirada pelo caráter ou os excessos dessa figura.

ENGL: A “calavera” is a satirical poem, traditional in Mexico during the season of Día de los Muertos. The calavera portrays the imagined passing of some public figure, in a way that is inspired by the personality or excesses of that person.

Ixta y Goyo

Duermen edades ciegas

       pero a veces son activos

Dominan el paisaje

       de la mes(et)a

Una es como de color blanco

       y el otro humeado

Protagonizan leyendas

       contadas entre familia

Majestuosos, representan

       la sabiduría impávida de la naturaleza

Y se siente el retumbar

       cuando ronronean

A Corn Husk Chat

Last Friday, as part of a program called "The Art and Science of Food" hosted by the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities for the students of San Miguel Middle School, I got to share an hour or so with 6th, 7th, and 8th-graders in turn, discussing corn in the Mayan worldview. After talking about topics like the cities of Mayapán, hybridization of maize from teocintle (and its archaeological remains in nearby Oaxaca), and cultivation in la milpa with beans and squash to see how the plants help each other grow, we went over a quick version of the Popol Vuh creation story and the three tries to create humankind: mud, wood, and corn.

The students each got to husk an ear of corn, but before they started pulling off leaves we talked about how the pollen-catching silk strands connect to the kernels, one each, which explains why one ear can have more than one color of kernels ... and about how the Mayan elite would sometimes shape their newborns' heads to resemble an ear of corn. After the husking, we listed the many scrumptious foods made from corn, and we talked about what you can make from the other parts, too - the silk (tea), the husks (wrappings for tamales, among many other uses), and the cobs (fuel, etc.). We talked about metates, comales, and nixtamalization, and we all learned a lot, including me - I had never heard of corn silk tea.

This was a fun and productive bilingual presentation and conversation that engaged a group of junior high students, a majority of whom are the children of immigrants from Mexico and Central America, with the marvelous and delicious traditions of their ancestors.

Kitchen Cosmos

The following post was published last month as my contribution to the blog for the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, where I am a fellow this year for the seminar on food.

Pots and pans, mortars and pestles, pitchers, whisks, knives: the implements for processing, cooking, and storing food represent some of the most elemental and yet creative of human inventions. Because of their familiarity through daily use, these utensils sometimes even become characters in legends, or the focus of certain traditions, of the kind my students and I examine and analyze in the Latin American Cultures course.

In Popol Vuh, the cosmology of the Quiché Maya, cooking tools famously rebel against their masters. The creation story relates that the gods needed three tries to create humankind. In the first attempt, the mud-sculpted proto-humans fell apart. In the second attempt, the mannequin-like figures made of wood could walk and talk, but they had neither heart nor mind, and could not recognize kindness and respect. They were punished by the gods, by their own dogs and turkeys (animals that were eaten), and even by their cooking utensils:

Then the grinding stones said this to them: “We were ground upon by you. Every day, every day, in the evening and at dawn, always you did holi, holi, huki, huki on our faces. This was our service for you who were the first people. But this day you shall feel our strength. We shall grind you like maize. We shall grind up your flesh,” said their grinding stones to them.

Then spoke also their griddles and their pots to them: “Pain you have caused us. Our mouths and our faces are sooty. You were forever throwing us upon the fire and burning us. Although we felt no pain, you now shall try it. We shall burn you,” said all of their pots. Thus their faces were all crushed. (76-77, trans. Christenson)

The mannequins were eventually drowned, and those few who survived became the monkeys.

The third try was the charm: humans were successfully amassed out of different colors of corn dough. In general terms, Mesoamerican belief systems hold that people are made of corn, and corn is kin. Even today there are those who believe that to sell corn is to sell one’s cousin, sibling, or parent–the same failure to recognize kindness and respect that doomed the wooden people.

El diluvio y la destrucción de los hombres de palo. Diego Rivera

Caribbean and Amazonian cosmologies tend to feature gourds as womb-like containers of treasured abundance. In Taino myth, for example, the ocean and all its fish are born from a dropped calabash when Deminán and his brothers try to return the gourd to its safe perch in the clouds. Cuban writer Antonio José Ponte, in his essay collection Las comidas profundas, writes of a tradition in eastern Cuba in which a gourd or a jug is kept in a secure spot out of the sun and away from animals, to be gradually filled with fruits as they come into season over the nine months of a mother’s pregnancy:

Poco a poco, entre el espíritu de la botella, figuración de Las Mil y Una Noches, y el espíritu del niño esperado, empieza a establecerse una relación muy estrecha. Todo lo dulce a la redonda, toda carne de fruta entra a la matriz de vidrio para componer un doble, un niño de tierra. La barriga de la madre y la del botellón se vuelven fermentaciones gemelas (48).

[Little by little, between the spirit of the bottle, allegory of A Thousand and One Nights, and the spirit of the expected child, a very close relationship begins to be established. All that is sweet from the surrounding area, all flesh of fruit enters into the womb of glass to create a double, a child of the earth. The belly of the mother and the belly of the jug become twin fermentations.] (my trans.)

The resulting mixture, a sangría-like drink called aliñado, is imbibed to celebrate the baby’s birth, or even stored much longer and fermented further as the child grows.

These mythological and ritual examples from the Americas blur the lines among humans, food, and food preparation utensils, as co-actors in one environment, to demonstrate an ancient truth: we are not only what we eat or drink, but also the embodied practice of how we prepare and consume it.

Coloquio que sostuvieron el rincón y la esquina

Don Marcos del Rincón dijo,

"Si me acerco a la ventana,

a Tránsito de la Esquina

veré, ella que siempre pasa

husmeando y rezongando

por la puerta de mi casa

a esta hora, cuando amanece,

porque le comen las ansias

de saber mis novedades. 

Por eso, mejor me alcanza

la cortina, aquí adentro,

que, de tela oscura, tapa

mi cuerpo pero no mi oído. 

Ella quiere vistas anchas; 

yo, prefiero lo cuadrado.

Anhelo las cosas cerradas. 

Cada cosa su función,

cada cosa en su lugar. 

Aquí esperaré escondido

a escuchar su lengua mala."

Dijo doña Tránsito de la Esquina al

pasar por la ventana del Sr. Rincón,

"Ay, cómo me fastidia el ruco chismoso

que aquí vive. Nunca sale, apenas asoma

la nariz, y más bien se hace el desaparecido

detrás de su cortina. Se imagina que vengo con escándalos a contar,

cuando tan sólo me hago llegar a ver si está bien,

como quien

se cuida de un amigo, pues. Así que, 

don Marcos, hágase ver, que le traje noticias del mundo de afuera." 

"Aléjese, señora,
porque de sus malas mañas
no quiero yo ni saber.
Desvíe su caminata
a pasar por otras calles
y dejar de molestar."
Mientras lo dijo don Marcos,
no pudo dejar de espiarla.

"Ni que lo estuviera importunando,
don Marcos, no sea Ud. tan pesado. Mire que
está Ud. pálido. La brisa fresca del mar
le hace falta, y el buen beso
de los rayos del sol."

"¡Tengo la salud de un oso!
¡Qué de rayos ni qué nada!
Más bien Ud., doña Tránsito,
luce bastante quemada.
¿No será que tanto sol
le quita todas las ganas
de pensar con su sano juicio?
Su mente ya no está clara."

"¡Uf! Cuide lo que dice, don Marcos, no vaya
a ser que Ud. sea el más indicado para
señalar con dedo ajeno." Doña Tránsito le guiñó el ojo y prosiguió, "Le haré saber que por lo mismo de que yo sí
salgo y veo las gentes pasar y las nubes pasar y los naves
pasar, yo sí veo bien, todo iluminado por el astro rey, y mi salud es la de
la yegua fuerte que sube y baja por los vericuetos de la ciudad."

"Entonces, ¿por qué delira?
Le escucho pero no me habla
como debe ser, en verso,
con rima y ritmo que entablan.
Si no puede mostrar forma
de romance ni cantata,
sus opiniones e ideas
¿cómo voy yo a respetarlas?"

"¿Forma? También la tiene la ardiente luz del sol cuando se filtra por
el verdor de las hojas del bosque, y toda la escena queda ilustrada, como que de oro impregnada. Forma difícil de asir pero fácil de apreciar. ¿O no lo has visto nunca, don Marcos?"

"En mis libros veo todo.
¿Qué no pueden ilustrar
el arte de los dibujos,
la ciencia de las palabras?
Si se trata de un concepto
que merece muchas páginas,
seré el primero en leerlas.
Así, qué el mundo se me abra."

"Yo creo, señor, que eso que Ud. dice de que quiere que el mundo se le abra, es
realmente lo que Ud. añora. Pero Ud, sólo por empecinado,
digo,
por terco, porfiado, testarudo, obstinado e intransigente,
se niega a ver que el mundo se abre al umbral de su
puerta." Doña Tránsito se ajustó la blusa y la canasta que llevaba, y agregó, "Que pase un buen día, y hasta mañana."

Quedó perplejo don Marcos.
Le respondió, "Hasta mañana,"
refunfuñando entre dientes.
Se puso a pelar naranjas;
pensando en soles y mundos
dejaba caer las cáscaras.
Después volvió a sus romances
de maneras anticuadas
que escribía en puño y letra:
metáforas delicadas
de amores por doña Tránsito.
De repente entró una ráfaga
por la ventana y todo se hizo un caos
de cáscaras y metáforas y hojas sueltas que a don Marcos le costó unas horas
para arreglar, pero se fastidió y salió al muelle
para ver llegar y salir los naves y las nubes y fue entonces que
supo que
un romance es bonito pero que no siempre
lo romántico se confina en su forma.





 

The Writers' Stabbing

            If you know what kind of a thing is a knife, you’re not going to grab it by the wrong end. How will you slice an onion with the handle? More to the point, —ouch—, how will you avoid slicing open your own palm with the blade? Which kind of tears do you want, if any? Knowing how to use a knife means knowing where and when and how to slice.

            Like a knife to an onion, an apostrophe slices a word wide open. The word didn’t, for example, precisely indicates where the o from not was cut, or elided, when the contraction was produced. The scarred misspelling “did’nt,” in contrast, shows a sloppy sliver where none was needed.

            Sometimes we see an apostrophe that reveals who holds the dagger, who possesses what: the student’s sins, the writers’ stabbing. We can even tell how many do the possessing; in these examples, there is one student, and there are more than one writers. To the ear, the student’s sins and the students’ sins and maybe even the student sins all sound the same. If we hear the cut at all, it is only the faint whisper between one s and another as the knife comes unsheathed. But we can see the cut, and a writer who desires clarity of meaning should carve with the precision of the surgeon’s scalpel.

            And yet ignorance of technique leads us to a strange reversal in contemporary English, in which people are given to using the handle for the blade and the blade for the handle, a mangled language of bludgeoned jack-o’-lanterns and punctured doorbells. It seems more common to see, lately, bloody botched procedures such as “Davids Pizzas” where “We have dipping sauce’s.” Plurals don’t need an apostrophe operation any more than pizzas need plastic surgery. And as for David, well, maybe someone is trying to suggest that he dispossess his pizzas. Is this just outright confusion, comparable to a misspelling? Is it the result of dependence on, or ignorance of, software such as Microsoft Word? Does it all stem from the anxiety of that persistent Sword of Damocles, the conundrum of “is it it’s or is it its?” My fearful suspicion is that all of this random slashing replicates the unfocused thrashing-about of a seething, unsettled society whose members do not know where or when or how to show, or to use, their weapons.

            Because an apostrophe is most certainly a weapon, and of the most vastly insidious kind of violence visited upon speakers and readers of the English language. You, writer—you!—you are complicit in Kennedy’s assassination when you give it to him like that, for him to possess, as if anyone wants to possess her or his own murder. This is a fundamentally unethical form of grammatical viciousness that, for as banal and accepted as it is, does not stop being a form of violence that affects the way we think about perpetrators and victims, about crimes and consequences. It is the lazy ease of slurred syllables—the unburdening of not bothering to locate a recycling receptacle; the casual, hurtful chuckle at someone else’s misfortune—that compounds wound over wound and adds up to the death by a thousand cuts. There is always an alternative way to recast the sentence, to subvert the strictures of column width or character count, to slice, if at all, elsewhere: the traitor's crime against the nation, the assassin’s murder of the millionaire, the bombs’ destruction upon the city.

            The writers’ stabbing is the apostrophe’s purpose. At its best, it’s the mark of a clear incision, a graceful stroke, a clever slash’s eye-catching curve. Can you cut it?

Manaus entre Emblemas e Espetáculos

A cidade de Manaus cresce além das expectativas. Definitivamente os limites da cidade na imaginação do mundo transbordam o que seria só o turismo da selva. Sem dúvida os turistas da Copa percebem que é uma cidade grande--grande mesmo--e não o que talvez pensavam: "uma aldéia no meio da Amazônia." Os governos municipal e do estado agendaram um número récorde de eventos culturais durante a Copa, e a segurança e receptividade da cidade têm sido louvadas. Tanto foi assim que, após serem realizados apenas dois dos quatro jogos programados, a cidade de Manaus ganhou o título de "melhor cidade sede da Copa."

http://www.silascamara.com.br/silas_camara/not_completa.php?cod=218

O desenho da Arena da Amazônia faz notícia pelos toques de cultura local e de sustentabilidade: a forma de cesto de palha, a função da armazenagem da chuva, o uso da energia solar, o reaproveitamento de materiais do antigo estádio, etc. Contudo fica claro que o preço enorme da construção e o trânsito piorado causaram polêmica, entanto os três operários que morreram por acidentes durante a construção foram lamentados e martirizados.

http://o.canada.com/sports/soccer/world-cup/world-cup-venue-arena-da-Amazonia

O que acho também relevante da Arena da Amazônia é a relação que ela tem com outra construção emblemática de Manaus: o Teatro Amazonas. Estes dois prédios, construidos para a promoção de espetáculos e para a recepção de visitantes estrangeiros (e brasileiros), agora servem como ícones da cidade. O primeiro do século XIX e o segundo do século XXI; o primeiro com capacidade de 685 pessoas e o segundo de 42.000; o primeiro com palco e o segundo com grama. O primeiro foi levantado como um monumento ao Velho Continente no coração no Novo Mundo; o segundo foi desenhado para refletir formas e valores autóctones (o cesto de palha, a preservação ambiental). O Teatro Amazonas até funcionou como cortina de fundo para a apresentação do cartaz oficial de Manaus como cidade sede, fazendo desse jeito um elo entre passado e futuro.

http://m.fifa.com/worldcup/photos/galleries/y=2012/m=11/gallery=the-host-cities-the-2014-fifa-world-cup-braziltm-unveil-its-official-pos-1954609.html

Apoio e concordo com os desejos da grande e perseverante população manauara: que a nova Arena sirva para muitos eventos além da Copa--concertos, jogos, espetáculos--ultrapassando o objetivo literal do "para inglês (vs. italiano!) ver" para ser uma jóia sustentável mesmo.

BRAZIL vs. MEXICO

There's a lot of me wrapped up in that headline, in many ways! What a great game it was today, one of the most exciting draws you could imagine in what was seen nonetheless as a victory for Mexico. Professionally, I've published more about Brazil than about Mexico. But I've taught more Spanish in my Mexican accent than Portuguese in my Brazilian one. If I were for some reason confined to either of those countries for the rest of my life, I would not care - I would be pleased, and I would feel at home. Such rich cultures, such variety. They are the two poles of what it means for me to be a Latin Americanist.

Because of their sizes, populations, and economies, Brazil and Mexico are the Latin American giants. But more than this, they are the giants of the soccer world. How can this be, if Brazil has won five World Cup championships (the record) while Mexico--though almost always a strong team and one of only a few nations to have hosted the World Cup itself twice--has not yet made it to the Round of Eight? It is because they have the largest populations in the world of soccer fandom. To start with the obvious, we can eliminate the global demographic colossi China, India, and Indonesia, which don't have World Cup-qualifying teams, nor do they seem to have the fan base for them. But what about Argentina? It's also an incredibly soccer-crazed nation with a large territory, yet its population is only slightly more than a third of Mexico's. In the Spanish-speaking world, Colombia and Spain have larger populations than Argentina's, but the two populations together are still shy of Mexico's.

Among the teams at this year's World Cup, it's true that the US, Russia, Nigeria and Japan all have populations greater than Mexico's (but--except the US-- lesser than Brazil's). Still, I would contend that the uniformity of soccer passion across practically all sectors of Mexican society (and including millions of Mexicans in the US) means that the nation as a whole is much more invested in its team than are the Americans, the Russians, the Nigerians, or the Japanese.

What this means is that the particular match BRAZIL vs. MEXICO holds the greatest possible combined national interest among the citizens of the countries whose teams are playing. No wonder it was an exciting game. It probably attracted the largest TV audience of the Group phase matches. Perhaps the teams will meet yet again before this World Cup is over!

Wrap

Flee, thought, across the distance.
runninflyinrunniflyscootrunflyflyscootrunningrunningfly
I will catch you.
And the catching of you will be the knowing, the naming of you.

Because a name you must have.
name thing name signifier name word name name
The speed of the whirling dust in your wake as you pursue the horizon,
cloud of plumes scooting at an attainable height,
I will match with my gallop.

Let your name be... ñandú.
ñandú ñandú ñandú rhea
And mine will be gaucho.
And with my shoulder I raise my arm, I swing that with which
I will apprehend you:
three weighted ropes of different lengths, joined at one end.
ora bolas bolas bolas
With these I will capture you.
I will attain and retain and ascertain you,
thought with the heft and hurl of a
rhea.

Even as you flee I have cast my stones:
ora bolas bolas bolas
one to circumscribe you quickly
your legs
patas
step no more
while the second wraps further round to categorize you
tight
tighter
and the third, the longest, encircles you repeatedly to characterize and contextualize you,
tightest
thought brought down for analysis,
quick squeeze succulent
for dissection
and digestion.

But sometimes you thoughts are best, and most enticing,
when unfettered, scattered
clouds of plumes plumes clouds plumes clouds of plumes
across the pampas
and I
can only perceive you
remotely
with longing for your form.

Yes, that's often best.
Knowing you are out there in space
potential not kinetic
is another way of naming,
of imagining.

Flocks of thoughts roam free
and live and die unknown
until the hunt.

Americatlas

Nevados paisajes septentrionales:

longitudes descienden ríos helados,

lagos por canoas atravesados,

pueblos con bienes, redes transversales. 

Cordilleras que acaban tropicales:

cabos, islas, volcanes emplumados,

terrenos por manos pardas sembrados,

abundantes lluvias ecuatoriales. 

El águila y el cóndor, por los vientos,

espían picos blancos, playas mansas,

selvas talladas pero renacidas. 

Sobrevuelan el cono estrecho cientos 

de aves que ejecutan aéreas danzas.

Hasta el finisterra son detenidas. 

Calavera tardía del tiempo libre

Yo traigo el reloj encima.

Tengo las manos atadas,

y al asiento de trabajo,

las posaderas pegadas.

Pues mi amado tiempo libre

se fue, junto a la ventana. 

Las cuatro paredes reinan,

soberbias como murallas

impenetrables. La luz

crea, cuando no se apaga,

una iluminación 

tenue, mas, mejor que nada. 

Pero con los quehaceres

esa luz viene menguada;

y la luz es el tiempo, pues

crece del sol y del agua

todo en este lindo mundo. 

El tiempo de uno no basta. 

Si resto mi tiempo libre

de las horas ocupadas,

tan poco me queda hoy

que se suma al de mañana. 

¡Ay! Se me terminó el ocio,

del poema el manantial.

Quizá al tiempo libre, ¡no haya

modo de resucitar!

These things I know

These things I know -

these things that have not yet made known to me how to refer to them -

these are the things I summon to this poem. 

 

These things I know –

they know me too.

We know each other.

We know through each other

intimately. 

Things known so deeply that memory alone does not attain:

the viscera, the nucleus store them,

but they store these things less than they

are these things. 

 

I cannot take them for granted, these things,

because they act, through me, with me, every moment. 

Even to perceive the use or disuse of these things

is for me to act through these things. 

 

These things I know -

how do I know them?

I read them I laugh them I smell them I eat them

I cry them I squeeze them I hide them

I find them...

 

Maybe these things I know are really one big thing,

and that is the thing about which the ceaseless cycle of learning

is also the act of living. 

 

tarareo

Tarareo
porque sí.

Tarareo,
¿por qué no?

Tarareo
porque así me hago vibrar:
el músico, la música,
y el instrumento de cuerdas
es uno mismo.

Tarareo
una intensidad variable
como un arco-iris de ondas.

Tarareo
tan sólo porque el ronroneo
me es ajeno de especie.

Tarareo
porque así manifesto el bienestar
o bien
ahuyento el malestar.

Tarareo
así como quien come con delicia
y bebe con astucia
y enamora con caricia
todo simultáneo como un acorde
como un acuerdo
entre un corazón y dos pulmones.

Tarareo
porque las palabras engañan.
Si fuera posible,
tararearía
este poemmmmmmmmmmma.

de-cor-ar

A new room, more than one empty shelf,
spaces to fill with something about myself...

Brazilian books, a museum catalog
of Mexican art, a stylized frog
from Colombia made of clay,
a Chilean invitation for a special day,
en eclipse that was a gift for the wall,
more books to display to all
the visitors, some orchestral works from Brazil,
a brightly colored mug from the top of the hill
at Sugarloaf, a Taino statuette,
a Literature in Spanish encyclopedia set,
books on cinematic splendor and Panama's gold,
a compendium of maps from New Spain of old,
an Amazonian atlas, and from Paraty
a wooden boat a colleague gave to me,
a calendar in Portuguese,
and bookending all of these,
works by Fuentes and García Marquez.
But up in the corners where the shelves are darkest,
there are many more spaces to fill...

and it may be that to never fill them, I will.

diaphany

It didn't catch my eye;

my eye caught it,

a play of light and lift. 

You see what you want, after all.

Seek and ye shall find.

Red, slung in an arc between two trees

it pulsed back and forth

in the sunlight that turned green gold.

I wanted to escape from the meeting 

- it hung just beyond the threshold -

to lie in it, to swing in it,

hammock's ghost

suspended between transcendences

firm while soft, round while straight.

But there was no breeze.

The flow and slack 

streamed through the red firehose

that happened to curve and dip 

among the trees -

in this way only did the realm of fact catch my eye.

In the sway of fantasy it mattered not

and I was back on my back

in the red hammock on the slim balcony

overlooking Botafogo

and the threads of possibilities

and continuities 

extending playfully and joyfully

into a

transcendence

as firm as possible for being so soft

as round as possible for being so straight

the web, the mesh, the arc, the arrow

hammock or hose

of me, on me, under me

restraining my pulsing thoughts

and releasing them into the sky,

a diaphany...

Next I looked,

the ghost was gone.

In its lack

I placed the seed

for this poem

Note: I, too, thought I had made up the word "diaphany," with the meaning of diaphanous epiphany. I'm proud to join a chorus willing this word and its meaning into wider understanding:  http://www.stuartdavis.com/blog/diaphany

The shape of your palm

There is no geography

like the shape of a palm,

like the particular map of what is a palm,

to convey to the practiced soothsayer

the angle of the thumb's rays

the direction of the prevailing fingers

the lifelines of high tide flush,

each jointed frond opposing,

thirsty for life, 

splayed to best caress the light

even as the winds spin their prints and whorls 

and something like the bark of a tree 

grows rough

and grows

 hewn.

There is no cartography

like the shadow of a palm,

when it gestures, when it dances

in the splashed moon,

in the heaving tide sucked and spit,

in the celestial hand

to which it clings, it 

cleaves,

for dear

life. 

vista relativa

No Rio de Janeiro
o Morro Dois Irmãos
tem vista espetacular
o Pão de Açúcar
tem vista privilegiada
o Cristo Redentor
tem vista panorâmica

Os favelados do morro
têm vista espetacular
os ricos de Ipanema
têm vista privilegiada
os voadores de asa delta
têm vista panorâmica

Mas no Rio de Janeiro
a vista mais espetacular
mais privilegiada
mais panorâmica
é a vista que têm

ainda
os urubus

Entre Andes y Alpes

Entre Andes y Alpes
anda Aurelio,
astrónomo alemán-araucano.
Astros analiza
antes de la alborada alborotada,
ansioso ausculta
la aurícula de la galaxia.
Acostado abordo
del aeroplano transatlántico,
Aurelio se imagina
sus pasos por la Vía Láctea.
Cuando arriba a Antofagasta,
al Paranal, Atacama,
o cuando asciende en el ascensor
que parte de la estación de Jungfraujoch,
afirma, acierta, agradece
algunos átomos que, al azar,
armaron la arquitectura,
el andamiaje de su anatomía,
para que sea él, Aurelio -
andino-alpino,
astuto astronauta anclado en gráficas - 
el Adán avanzado,
el adelantado audaz,
que abre el espacio
como las mitades de una manzana
algebraica
algorítmica
cabal.

Animating Neruda

"The most important living poet of the Spanish language," an oft-repeated epithet in Roberto Ampuero's The Neruda Case, situates the reader chronologically before 1973, before the September 11 coup in Neruda's and Ampuero's native Chile that led to the death of freely elected socialist president Salvador Allende and the power grab of Augusto Pinochet. Certainly still one of the most important poets--not just in Spanish but in any language--Neruda also makes for a tempting literary character. Not unlike Antonio Skármeta's Ardiente paciencia (1985; germ of the 1994 Italian film Il Postino), in which the master poet befriends a postman and unveils for him the power of metaphor, Ampuero's El caso Neruda (2008; English translation by Carolina de Robertis 2012) animates "don Pablo" through an imagined friendship with the protagonist.

In this instance the protagonist is the Cuban-American detective Cayetano Brulé, already known from Ampuero's earlier novels. But in The Neruda Case we learn the origin of Brulé's profession: it is Neruda himself who "creates" Brulé as a detective--encouraging him to try on that line of work as just one more  disguise in the parade of disguises we all wear in life, as the poet says--and giving him his first case. In his dying days, the repentant poet assigns Brulé the task of searching for someone from Neruda's past, and the search takes Brulé from Chile to Mexico, Cuba, East Germany, and Bolivia before returning to Chile in the final hours of Allende's government. Brulé assumes that his search has to do with alleviating Neruda's cancer, but we learn, along with Brulé, that this particular "cancer" is best understood metaphorically: Neruda is consumed by regrets stemming from his series of lovers--Josie, Maria Antonieta, Delia, Matilde--and wants to achieve a certain peace with his conscience as a dying wish.

The choppy narrative shows us the mistakes and false starts of Brulé's learning curve as a detective, always hinting meta-fictionally at the process of detective-novel writing through Brulé's analyses of the Georges Simenon novels he reads along the way. Neruda has given Brulé the novels, featuring the French detective Jules Maigret, as "how-to" primers for the incipient detective. But both Neruda and Brulé hypothesize the absolute incompetence that the European literary detectives such as Maigret, Holmes, Poirot, Marple, et al would display if forced to operate in their beloved but chaotic Latin America.

Neruda's poetry appears throughout the novel, quoted by admirers and detractors alike. Brulé, often quite frustrated with or disillusioned by Neruda, experiences something of a demystification of the great poet who has so recently (in the narrative's chronology) won the Nobel prize. But chapters written in Neruda's autobiographical voice simply humanize him more than demystify him, and so do the final chapters depicting the near simultaneous demises of the Allende government and of Neruda himself.

An important motif throughout the narrative is "Latin America." At Mexico City's glorious and glorified Museum of History and Anthropology, Brulé has an uncomfortable but profound epiphany: "For the first time, he was clearly aware of the magnitude of disaster dealt to the indigenous people of the Americas by the invasion and domination of white men, whose blood, he could not deny as he glanced at himself in a windowpane, flowed copiously through his veins" (75). He realizes that he could "never again be the same Latin American as he'd been before": proud of the "legendary past of Havana and the vague origins of Valparaíso, [he] now understood that Mexicans, as a people, inhabited a realm unknown to him, rooted in millennial depths unimaginable to someone from an island that had barely five hundred years of recorded history" (75).

Brulé can recognize diversity within the vast geography of Latin America, but also commonality, as in his repeated rejection of European detective methodology as unsuitable in Latin America, or when, sharing the bed of a frank and casual lover in East Berlin, he identifies with "the Latin American school of love, which preferred amorous encounters with tentative beginnings and gradual consummation, wrapped in romanticism, and always initiated by the man." In contrast, his lover's "female emancipation, born of true socialism, made him feel uncomfortable and inhibited." (184).

Brulé is simultaneously undergoing the disintegration of his marriage, and if love is inevitable in a novel about the man who penned Veinte poemas de amor [...], Cien sonetos de amor, etc., then it is depicted here most often as a love of little endurance: Neruda's serial relationships, Brulé's failed attempts to save his marriage, and the tangled love affairs that Brulé must untwine in order to find the information he needs to resolve Neruda's nagging deathbed doubt. I think the novel entertains and engages most as an extended meditation on the ephemeral nature of love, of power, of life itself.