After Rubén

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After Rubén Page 4

by Francisco Aragon


  touched with desolation, offered

  a prayer only the wind in the forest

  could hear, carrying it skyward.

  after Rubén Darío’s “Los motivos del lobo”

  LIU MINGHE SPEAKS

  A hyena upon an animal still breathing, he questioned me

  I was told it would last for days

  His voice clutched my frozen heart

  My lungs burned my temples throbbed—night revolving my eyes

  A silent tribe of spiders began spinning a web in my brain

  Bells occasionally howled—homeless spirits endlessly moaning

  I was handcuffed to a window, so I stood, or hung, from my wrists

  Several of my lower teeth left me during my visit

  To open, with a withered hand, the lid of a coffin, and climb inside

  At first, I didn’t butter my hair

  I breakfasted on air, on rock, on coal, on iron

  My clothes were rotting rags, my bread soggy with rain

  I ate by lowering my head into a bowl

  I ate fever with my watery vegetables

  For sixteen months my hands and feet were shackled

  I slept on boards, or on the ground—a book

  Les Poètes Maudits my pillow, my only companion

  My skin was ravaged with mud, my armpits full of worms

  Enormous province whose sky is flecked with fire and mud

  Weighing on me like a lid

  Pouring down days as dark as nights

  Sometimes the rain mimicked the bars

  Funeral processions—no drums, no music—filed slowly inside me

  Hope wept, stabbing its stalk in my skull

  Sometimes I saw in the sky endless beaches

  I tried to invent new flowers, new tongues, new stars

  Fear and suffering evaporating in the air

  The hallucination of words

  On my hospital bed that smell comes back to me still

  I have dyed my hair black to erase those years

  HELEN SPEAKS

  June, 2017

  Tonight I will sit in the dark

  people the wall of my sorrow

  Roberto was a busser I was a server

  he came to visit an aunt and stayed

  he started talking and I tried

  to ignore him he kept on talking

  smiling and smiling and smiling

  full of smiles and careful words

  we got married had three kids

  settled into a comfortable life

  I wanted to understand the madness

  the sad slouch of justice

  we met in ’98 in Fort Wayne

  years and years went by until

  Eddie’s Steak Shed in Granger

  we lived in Mishawaka

  your husband is being detained

  because he’s a fugitive they said

  my husband’s not running

  from you you didn’t come

  knocking on our door I said

  he came to you he’d been told

  to leave in 2000 I was pregnant

  and sick and so again he stayed

  he’s been moved from Wisconsin

  to Lousiana and more recently

  El Paso Texas one night they

  suddenly told him it was time

  to get his stuff put him in the back

  of a van sped for the border

  he was dropped off forced

  to walk to Mexico the children

  eight-year-old Demetri fourteen-year-old

  Jasmine sixteen-year-old Maria

  are having a difficult time

  since he’s been gone the restaurant

  has received threatening calls

  and angry letters pack your bags

  and go to Mexico said one

  earlier today staring in the mirror:

  your skin is bitter like suffering

  what have you done voting for trump

  with Andrés Montoya

  ACADEMIA ESCOLAR

  Managua, the ’40s

  Her look

  could undo. Not

  the most soothing thing I could say . . .

  The day they said we’d

  be let out early

  a bubbly mood spread

  among us as we planned

  the afternoon—impromptu

  stick ball, that dusty lot . . .

  The Academy’s front gate

  clicked

  shut behind us

  when someone saw her

  behind a car, arms

  folded across her chest.

  I had no reason to, but

  that unexpected sight

  made me flinch—

  an eight-year-old child

  frightened. Think

  about it. A boy.

  Afraid of his mother.

  for my father

  THE CENTURY

  Episode two with Peter Jennings

  —Adolph, as a young man,

  was denied entry to Art School.

  What could be worse than a bitter

  mediocre artist with a plan?

  In the second segment you see

  a physicist at twenty-four, the moving

  picture a grainy gray—he nibbles

  a strawberry, sips a flute of cava, swings

  in his moments of free time

  a racket, his stint at Los Alamos

  intense. The Manhattan Project.

  Today another face—captured,

  bruised—on Good Morning America:

  the screen says Lopez and I see a trace

  of him: my brother at seventeen,

  those postcards home from Camp

  Pendleton, the scribbled pride

  of his “ass-kicking platoon.” Reading

  them I was following him: ten-year-old

  as future marine—like chanting

  oblivious, the rich syllables

  of a word, a slogan

  a country, that man’s name.

  1999

  III

  PORTRAIT WITH LINES OF MONTALE

  A patch of town-sick country

  The old shop window shuttered and harmless

  An odor of bruised melons oozes from the floor

  Among wicker furniture and a mattress

  Mildew like grass sprouts as well

  The delicate capillaries of slime

  Signs of quite another orbit

  The ungraspable gorge

  Sentiments and sediment

  Where my carved name quivers

  His laugh is jagged coughing

  for my father

  WE TALK DOGS

  Or the one Maria found, trotting

  along the banks of the Yuba—

  the river his name, red

  scarf around the snowy neck

  that week of camping, coaxed

  onto the backseat and taken home . . .

  He mentions one—de raza alemana, he says

  and I’m almost charmed by the voice:

  telling how he’d tie his German

  shepherd to a pole, escort her

  to church: Plaza Santo

  Domingo flanked by the park, kiosk

  beside the roasting beef, pleasant

  olor de carne asada wafting

  to the bench after mass

  where they talked—she mostly:

  her sewing, her trip to Panama

  in search of wholesale fabrics . . .

  —I’m trying to picture it: Managua

  in the fifties, my father’s

  plane lifting off, touching

  down, sending for her months later,

  big with Maria, as I’m also

  trying to picture him

  on the other end of the line: in his

  sixties, portly, sugar

  in his blood, a whiff of something

  on his breath as he speaks

  of the Sacramento

  River: pole and gear, s
ixpack,

  Rocky and Comet slinking behind

  —but the car’s busted now, he says

  basting in gravel

  near Chico. He gets to bed

  past three, watching Cristina,

  the Tuesday Night Fights, sunk

  in a beat-up armchair:

  replay of that memorable bout, Aaron

  Pryor delivering a blur of shots

  to the head, Alexis Arguello absorbing them . . .

  During the phone call

  we talk dogs. He had three,

  we had two—something

  I suppose, in common;

  this talk of ours

  a first.

  VOICES

  In bed, yes, during a state

  between sleep and wakefulness:

  she’d speak to me then, spirit

  to spirit—not speech, exactly,

  but a voice from her realm

  to mine, though once she sang

  “Caminito” by Carlos Gardel.

  A large picture of me

  in a white T-shirt taken

  by a photographer friend.

  She had it framed, placed

  atop the dresser. “What became

  of it?” I whispered to her . . .

  I stuffed it in the drawer.

  Didn’t feel like looking

  at you anymore.

  Once, she talked about my shirts,

  the ones I did the plumbing in.

  She’d put them on the pillow

  to trick herself, closing her eyes:

  I still slept, still snored beside her.

  I cursed, swore, spit a palabrota

  and off she bolted. Playa Pochomil.

  Have you seen her, I said, and friends

  pointed to the trucks, so I scoured

  the beach, looking and looking

  till finally I spotted her, crouched

  up on a bluff overlooking

  the surf. I saw you, she whispered,

  calling my name.

  I was testing you.

  While in bed, yes, during a state

  between sleep and wakefulness:

  she’d speak to me then, spirit

  to spirit—not speech, exactly,

  but a voice from her realm

  to mine, though once she sang

  “Caminito” by Carlos Gardel.

  NICARAGUA IN A VOICE

  More than the poems

  —the fruits that sang

  their juices; dolls, feverish,

  dreaming of nights,

  city streets—for me it was

  the idle chat between the poems:

  cordial, intimate almost . . .

  like a river’s murmur

  as if a place—León,

  Granada—could speak,

  whistle, inhabit

  a timbre . . . as if, closing

  my eyes, I had it again,

  once more within reach:

  his voice—my father

  unwell, won’t speak.

  CANCIÓN

  A dog I love growls

  at the sight of me,

  can no longer bear

  his diablos, crazed

  with the here, there,

  how, all around him

  the air howling. I sense

  temptation to dive

  into the void—glint

  of his coat, hint

  of a yelp a blade

  to the throat.

  Unclench, I say;

  look: your ghost

  father swims

  in your ghost mother,

  opens his snout

  in your direction,

  the sound reaching you,

  soothes your sleep,

  puts out the blaze

  in your head,

  is a quilt wrapped

  around you, unfurls

  down the path you tread,

  or flaps in the wind

  while you feed, keeps

  you company, though

  your spirit

  is still a fuse—

  SEASHELL

  (Rubén Darío)

  Half-hidden in the sand

  is where I find it—embroidered

  with golden pearls like the one

  she held, riding over the water

  on a bull. To my lips

  I raise it, provoke echoes . . .

  then press it to my ear

  to hear the bluest fathoms

  whisper of their riches.

  This is how the salt

  of a storm slowly fills me,

  how those sails billowed

  when stars fell for Jason.

  And I listen to the voice

  of a wave—deep

  indecipherable wind . . . (the shell

  is in the shape of a heart)

  for Antonio Machado

  AFTER FRAGMENTS OF JUAN FELIPE HERRERA

  Hands:

  Small, brown, like your father’s, cradle the timepiece he gave you, your eyes looking down at it, your feet half in, half out, the Pacific, your shorts cutoffs, frayed, your T-shirt white, like the one he wears in the photograph, Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, you half laugh a little, lips slightly parted, if only you could talk into the wee hours, that time you visited twenty years ago, instead you mumble to yourself, your legs fatigued, blemished, you hadn’t noticed, phantom days, phantom nights, and now pretending to run along this shore, esta orilla, you have arrived by chance, re-creating him—in this poem

  Eyes:

  Here I am again, attempting to swim, my breast stroke reduced to rubble after decades of sifting, the years, I hadn’t noticed how flabby my arms had become, giggling in the moonlight a distant memory, summer nights we sneaked out, down to that corner of the river no one spoke of openly, side by side we would laugh and lick, laugh and lick, giving new meaning to a phrase, slip of the tongue, and no buttons to undo, no shirts to strain to see through, the rags of our clothes in a heap back at the cabin, instead the wet sand films our arms, our hands, our legs, as we cross, easily, the sea of our gaze

  A WAVE

  of the past as I walk

  by a window boarded-up

  breaks—cold

  in winter and in

  summer hot where

  spiders lived and dust

  filmed everything

  in that storefront

  that was his home. Or

  a madcap air in May

  or a combination

  of words can bring

  a voice to the surface

  —it’s that I . . . at the

  thought of him

  which, more today

  than yesterday,

  is like approaching

  a grave. His calls

  before my first visit

  flickered weekly,

  are ash now. Cities

  changed their names:

  Madrid became

  Corning became Davis,

  South Bend,

  D.C. I know

  the beginnings

  and the ends

  of things. I

  curb myself,

  swallow what

  cannot change.

  But still, it is

  there (he who

  was torn

  away no

  longer

  needs). But isn’t

  it time this grew

  fruitful, time

  I loose myself

  and, though unsteady,

  move on—the way

  the arrow, suddenly

  all vector

  survives the string?

  with Akhmatova and Rilke

  for my father

  HOTEL MIRROR

  Looking I thought: hair.

  And a voice said

  On your head? where?

  Who is that staring back

  with such a round face,

  that paunch? Father

  or son?

  IV


  WALT

  His country of iron where he lives: an older man, fatherly, strong, wholesome, calm,

  his appearance impressive—the furrow of his brow persuades and charms, no end

  to his soul that mimics a mirror, the tired curve of his shoulders draped with a cloak;

  and with his harp—carved from oak—he sings his song like a prophet. He’s a priest

  fueling a wind that promises and promises . . . Fly! he says to an eagle, to a seaman: Row!

  while a chiseled, robust worker hears: Put your shoulder to the wheel! This is the path

  our poet takes

  —magnificent

  face

  after Rubén Darío’s “Walt Whitman”

  BECAUSE THEY LIVED ABROAD

  to write about a loved author

  would be to follow the trails he follows . . .

  —Susan Howe

  —or Rubén’s Parisian phase

  How during those nine

  months he and Amado

  shared an apartment

  in Montmartre

  rue du Faubourg

  their all-consuming flesh

  their melancholy exile

  Stood where Vallejo would

  the melancholia of Darío

  Nervo Vallejo Between them

  shared what they lacked

  We track our own desire

  that soul-is-content paradox

  as in those lines that still

 

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