pulsing beneath the skin
y no saber adonde vamos
ni de donde venimos
Because they lived abroad
I was away for years
What meaning is there
in my head these names
Free as oceans bottles
are what they are
another kind of mirror
material for a start
Consider all of this
an excursus on origins
trace of the word lugar
I will inhabit a place
that doesn’t exist
Hay golpes en la vida
tan fuertes . . . Yo no sé
Managua is Madrid
TO THE OLD WORLD
Days I walked around swathes of you
Whose names slip my mind
I’m thirsty—come to me flowing
Down my throat: billboards posters
Doorplates twittering like parakeets
Through heaven came flying a thousand pigeons
I strode alone through your crowds
Buses in herds rolling by
I stood at the counters of your dirty bars
I ate in your restaurants at night
Often at long tables sharing a bottle of wine
Most mornings a milkman
Clinked glass along a lane
In the perpetual screeching of wheels
I heard a song
And my ears like taillights trail behind to hear it still
The great hearth of you with the intersecting
Embers of your streets—your old buildings
Leaning over them for warmth
And beneath: I rubbed elbows with your shuddering Metros
Some of them bellowing like bulls
The cry of their whistles could tear me apart
The skies above your plazas
Would turn deepening shades of violet
And your waves of traffic footsteps and the smell already
Of chestnuts roasting in a barrel on a corner
Your parks were lungs
Your air crisp enough to taste sprinkled
With sputtering Vespas and horns
Your newly scrubbed
Neoclassic façades I loved looking at
And faces—faces glanced or gazed at
Waiting for lights to change
Once not sidewalks but one wide walk—
Cars streaming up and down both sides of it
With merchant pavilions on my right and left:
Newsagents florists pet sellers and their chirping cages
Or descending stairs for a stroll behind a clear blue
Thundering sheet of water
And let me remember well the white-haired man
Descending ahead of us
Off the plane
How something in me fluttered hearing his vowels
Hearing in the sound of his voice
A message I’d take years to unravel as I venture
To inhabit once again your cities my self
with Apollinaire and Cendrars
I PURSUE A SHAPE
I pursue
a shape
which
to my style remains
elusive
bud
of a thought
that wants to unfurl
that arrives
with a kiss
alighting
on my lips
like being hugged
by David
columns
are adorned
with palms
stars say
I will glimpse
a god
and light
descends
settling
inside me
like the bird
of the moon
settling
on a still lake
and yet all
I obtain are
words wanting
to scurry away
melodious
prelude
streaming
from a flute
boat
of dreams
rowing
through space
and outside
his window
the fountain’s
spout continues
to weep
the swan’s neck
posing the question
after Rubén Darío’s “Yo persigo una forma”
SYMPHONY IN GRAY
(Rubén Darío)
Like glass
the color of mercury
it mirrors the sky’s
sheet of zinc, the pale gray
a burnish splotched
with a flock of birds
while the sun’s disc
like something injured crawls
slowly to the top
and the wind that blows
off the swells
dozes
in a trough,
its bugle a pillow.
Leaden waves crest
collapse—seeming
to groan near the docks
where he sits on thick
suspended rope,
smokes a pipe, his mind
sifting the sand in a faraway place.
An old wolf is what
he is. The light in Brazil
toasted his face. A strapping
storm from China
saw him tilt a flask of gin.
And foams laced
with salt, iodine
recall his curls, scorched
nose, his biceps
like those of an athlete,
his seaman’s cap
and blouse. A screen
of tobacco smoke
lifts as did the fog
off the coast
that blazing noon
he set sail. Siesta
in the tropics. Our wolf
is nodding off—a gray
filming it all, as if the line
denoting the horizon
in a charcoal sketch
were to blur,
disappear. Siesta
in the tropics. Old cicada
is plucking its hoarse
forgetful guitar
while cricket draws
its bow across the one
string on its fiddle.
1916
León, Nicaragua
One evening water—
watching
it fall, the night sweet
silver
the breathing sigh
a sob
the sky’s amethyst
soft—
diluting his tears;
the fountain
mingles with
his fate—
song of my own
cascade
after Rubén Darío’s “Triste, muy tristemente”
VOICES
A scrap, a phrase
that stretch of pavement
I’d phone him from, sweating
past Saint Matthew’s
coming from the Y
along Rhode Island
sun on my face never
his face seen
or touched—now more
than ever: his son-
in-law at the keyboard
not him, answering
the instant message
I’m afraid I
have bad news . . .
The night
we sat or knelt
around her
was something I never . . .
Brother driving all
day part of the night
to join us bedside.
(What was it like,
Ron—your heart
giving out?)
The sky
darkens, the drip
of morphine not
enough, the sound
issuing from her
hard to place—
substitute
for breath:
/>
the interval
between each
lengthens . . .
What were some
of the stories?
The first one
you recounted
that day I can’t
be sure. Was it
about the time
you toked
up? The warm
breeze
a comfort, you said
as I started
the cassette.
Where does it
begin, this need
to preserve?
Yours was strong
and sure, easy
to listen to, not
what one
might expect—
sturdy as the metal
table and chairs
in the patio
we lounged on.
Driving you
to Sebastopol
for treatments.
Learning the route
by heart. That July
on leave, I swooned
in ways I hadn’t
those years
you lived north
of us—San
Rafael, Sonoma,
Santa Rosa,
Petaluma . . .
Was recording
you a way of
releasing you?
The months
you lived
as a child
among cousins
in Managua
who didn’t
know a word
of English
your voice
was a bridge.
Is a voice
on a tape
a bridge?
Sounds
the living
make,
the dying,
the dead.
for Maria Aragon (1956–2004)
In November of 2012, Arizona State University issued a press release announcing the acquisition of a privately-held collection of manuscripts created by Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío. The collection consists of 900 or so handwritten pages of poetry, essays, stories, and personal letters, nine of which revealed for the first time an intimate relationship between Darío and famed Mexican poet Amado Nervo. Shortly after ASU made its announcement, the Nicaraguan novelist Sergio Ramírez published an article in which he denounced the letters as fake.
JANUARY 21, 2013
Dear Sergio:
Your depiction—in Margarita,
How Beautiful The Sea—
of my homecoming to León in 1907
once again filled my arms with bouquets
that dampened my silk suit, baskets of flowers
and fruit, which I accepted with a nod
though leaving them in the hands of my entourage,
a cambric handkerchief wiping the sweat
dripping down my face and neck.
And as I opened a path for myself, village
folk pressing around, their lips at my sleeves,
a little boy with curly hair led the way
clutching the flag of Nicaragua.
I loved how you had Momotombo,
years later in 1916, blow—
moments after I drew my last breath,
the volcano producing a deep rumbling,
sending people into the streets,
a spatter of sparks lighting the sky.
I wasn’t aware (of course) of what came next—
your novel placing me there, in that room:
the doctor’s scalpel blinking like a star
in the moment it traced the incision
on my forehead, my scalp folded back, the saw’s
fine teeth biting into cranium, he
feverishly snipping ligaments, holding in his hands
my brain, seconds later proclaiming:
“Here it is—the private vessel of the muses!”
More than cringe, I blushed
at being handled with such care.
Perhaps you’re surprised by this letter?
You shouldn’t be. Anything is possible
in this racket of ours. But artful
is not how I’d describe that piece
you penned last November. You see:
those letters to Amado were real.
I bargained with myself, rewrote them
to preserve them, precisely because I knew
what would happen—you know
as well as I: he would have destroyed them
after reading them: What will people say?!
(he with wife and children) held sway . . .
I was in New York shortly after New Year’s
in 1915 heading home, when I wrote to him
one more time. But you were right
and I’m mildly embarrassed to admit it:
I told a little lie on those sheaths
of Hotel Astor stationery in Times Square:
the poem I enclosed wasn’t composed
in Barcelona expressly for him:
it was a piece of juvenalia, I know, but one
I had a soft spot for, and which I re-titled
and dedicated—to him. It was a running joke
between us: sending each other our fluff.
And yet, it’s ironic Sergio: thank you
for being complicit, for hinting at
my understory. How did you manage to nail
those final hours? I was indeed lying curled up
on my side, wrapped in a thick, gray blanket, snoring
lightly, my mouth slightly open as my fingers gripped
the silver crucifix that Amado—yes, Amado Nervo—
had given to me in Paris
when we shared that apartment
in Montmartre, and that I always carried
with me. I’d like to think that, somehow,
you knew—and know—this truth.
I’m waiting for the day when you,
the world, stop fighting it. I am
dead, and the dead are very patient.
Love,
Rubén
WINTER HOURS
Look
at him, curled
in a large, plush
chair, wrapped
in sable fur,
fireplace glowing
just beyond, the angora
nosing the fabric
of his shirt,
a porcelain vase
beside the folding
screen, draped
with silk, his eyes
subtle filters
allowing sleep
to seep through. He enters
in silence, takes off his
gray coat, pecks
the slender rose
of his face, a fleur-de-lis
—Amado wakes, smiles, snow
general over París.
after Rubén Darío’s “De invierno”
BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT
. . . you in my
Kodak memory
he says, looking
up at her from his seat—
his speech from the beginning deliberate
and slow, touching
her with it
while she, who seems at ease,
touches him back—is that
so . . . and where you
getting off at? . . . shifting
her weight from foot
to foot, one hand above, her fingers
curled around the bar . . .
—You don’t need it
was his opening,
having noticed the compact piece
of equipment, The Body
Maker . . . while the other
is at her thigh, forming
a hook around the handle
of her see-through
shopping bag
POEM BEGINNING WITH A FRAGMENT OF ANDRÉS MONTOYA
the taco vender/reciting/darío/in a moment/of passion—
I swear it was him that night, 2012, late July . . .
We we
re hoofing it down Guadalupe looking
for a dive—how many were we and who? He’d hauled
his camión from Fresno to Austin, swapping one
heat for another. La princesa está triste . . . ¿Qué
tendrá la princesa? Was it you, Lety, gritando “Let’s
do Hole in the Wall, or is it the Local with that
taco truck in the back!?”—I swear it was him
that night, 2012, late July . . . We were seated
around two, three mesas in the open air talking
shop: Era un aire suave, de pausados giros:
“You’re from the Mission?” “Yeah.” “¿Y eres
Nica?” “Sí.”—“¡Que cool!” . . . We were hoofing
it down Guadalupe looking for a dive—and found
carne asada, barbacoa, carnitas, al pastor
for Leticia Hernández-Linares
CREED
I soared across the sky to peer
down at you all.
Each flap bringing me closer—
your idea of heaven.
No, I don’t believe.
My prayer’s a sheet of ice
scrutinized
by unforgiving heat.
Now my words are air.
Without remorse I compose—
hold you inside me.
Saints are sliced in four.
I sing the rhythm of their days.
Spirit endures, soft
as a kiss, calling
us to chorus, to convene
antepasados en el desierto.
To swallow what they teach.
for Carmen Calatayud
v
MY RUBÉN
notes on a trajectory, a controversy
I
La princesa está triste . . . ¿qué tendrá la princesa?
Los suspiros se escapan de su boca de fresa
“Tell me the one about the princess,” I’d say, and she’d readily utter these two lines. Except for a set of aqua-blue encyclopedias, ours wasn’t a household replete with books. And yet, during my childhood, this arrangement of words about a sad princess sighing through strawberry lips would float free from my mother’s own lips. Standing at an ironing board, on the couch watching a telenovela, seated at the kitchen table removing tiny pebbles from a pile of uncooked pinto beans. Nothing kept her from retrieving this poem—one she had to learn in the early forties as a school girl in Nicaragua, though she never went beyond the sixth grade. You might say, then, that my mother’s favorite Rubén Darío poem had become part of her DNA, her breath—something she passed on to me.
After Rubén Page 5
