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OK, to change the terrain, here, for good or ill, are some translations
I've been working on (still am--guaranteed to change within the hour) of
poems by a 28 year old Tijuana poet and translator, Heriberto Yépez.
MANIACS AND CRAZIES
ubiquitous gimps with matted hair
and greasy clothes
walk through bottleneck streets
digging through piles of garbage the remains
of school lunches and restaurant scraps plunging
their hands and muzzles into boxes of the mixed leftovers
of chinese takeout
harvesting half-rotten lettuce tossed into the street by taco stands
hovering around food vendors
their only hope for a bit of warm food
although the taco makers' blood-spattered aprons terrify them
reminding them of the horrors of psych wards.
Maniacs recycling dried-up vegetables outside cut-rate wholesale markets
eating cats and pigeons that they kill and cook
on dead-end streets using their armpits as cupboards drinking water
from gutters in public parks or puddles
in the asphalt's potholes gathering soda bottles
searching the manholes of despair for aluminum cans
panhandling for empty bottles and scraps of bailingwire
their features a mockery of the face of the world outside
and of the catacomb
within.
Crazy monks
possessed mendicants
the brutish blind and the disabled who calculate
the profits of disability
encountered on the avenue asking for coins
in exchange for foul breath blown into the faces
of the sane the deformed tapping
their plastic cups all day on the cracked sidewalk
pressing grotesque faces to shop windows
pissing on phallic telephone poles and dumb fire hydrants
crossing the streets naked their skin burned and blistered
fondling secretaries from high-class companies and the others
who work to exhaustion in sweatshops
bothering students about to graduate into god-knows-what
making faces at executives waiting for the light to change according to
the government schedule of corruption.
Incurable maniacs tugging at the shirt-sleeves of passersby and scratching
at windshields
letting their beards grow as their teeth fall out because of infections and
they lose their eyebrows
pushing tipsy shopping carts with broken wheels
grimacing, addressing orations to the streets at large
these products of social engineering
deaf-mute heroin addicts
demanding alms
the more depraved in hiding
anywhere, in bus shelters
empty lots on a bench beneath the eaves in wait
for victim or benefactor.
The police gather them in, but the authorities at the local psychiatric
hospital
don't want to know anything about them the deranged
are migrants who lost it because of the sidewalk's heat
drug addicts who've never come down
foreigners cut off from home
unemployed workers who a few months back
lost jobs and minds men and women
divorced from their families social outcasts
shouting nonsense and denunciations
while clutching the transfigured rags they wear in place of pants
street crazies on every corner
screaming, crawling,
suppurating, stinking
perverts fences pickpockets muggers
of tourists and Indians, punching-bags
nurseries of gangrene
abductors of children rapists runaways
roasted by the sun wrecked
by the noise of cars and at night
chilled to the bone.
Even jumpier from the sounds of gunshots in the streets
than the rest of us they're always
in motion bumping
through the crowd run down
by traffic
the maniacs and crazies of a city
that spits at them cold showers beatings
and coins rubbed thin by avarice which is why
no longer frightening
they hide from view at nightfall
when abandoned buildings become terrifying and the drugstores
have shut their streetlights the shoestore clerks
have left for home and there's no sound
but the other crazies, and they huddle against the gratings of the few stores
whose alarms don't go off at the merest touch.
Then the street crazies beat their heads with their fists they hide
from each other they sleep
in cardboard cartons discarded by consumers and pizzerias
in barrels or wrapped
in shredded blankets
the world of the employed, the normal
(those who pay the rent and wash their cars)
rehearsed in their minds as they fall
into the second part of a dying voyage
because each time the city's day threatens
to turn to night
a certain proportion
of its crazies die..
THE SUN SETS AND THE LEAVES FALL
The sun sets
behind the mountains
an old man
seated in the shade of his brush-covered shelter
stares into the distance
and talks
stares at nothing
a worn-out old Pai-pai in the shade of his shelter
but the sound of voices
of a people sobbing
and dancing
echoes
from the hillsides
nothing left of them
but the old and these murmurs
we barely hear them
the old man lowers his head
stares at the ground
speaks in his language
praying perhaps
or remembering words
that no one else remembers
words that must be gathered
from this derelict land,
musing in a low voice
that nothing remains for his people
but to die to wait for
forgetfulness to strip their faces,
while the four winds howl
for something to be done
before everything ends
and there's nothing left
but drooping heads
what will come of this
the old men ask themselves
our forefathers must be complaining
begging for tranquility
people say
they hear it everywhere
the old man says
we can do nothing
we indians
nothing
nothing can be done
we also will fall like the leaves
one after another.
(after Fernando Olmos Cañedo, Pai-pai)
THE LIFE OF A CUCAPÁ WOMAN
Now I have a gas stove
And my house is no longer
this twisted body
beside the fire
my grandfather made.
My new house is furnished.
I have a store-bought stove,
but it suffocates me,
and I prefer to cook
outside, on an open fire.
I love doing my chores
at night.
Many people ask me,
"What are you doing? What,
you don't have gas?" I do,
but cooking beans
makes me happier
if they bring me wood.
I love doing my chores
at night.
In truth, sir, no one
maintains our ways here
any more. It's just
I cook at night.
And sometimes, when another Indian
visits me I gorge myself on
speaking Cucapá.
Because I love my language,
and when I speak it
I seem to see
and see again
all of my people
who now are gone.
(after Adela Portillo, as interviewed by Everardo Garduño)
ON THE "UNUSUAL" LIFESTYLE OF THE CUCAPÁ INDIANS AS RECORDED BY R.W. HARDY,
BRITISH LIEUTENANT, WHILE EXPLORING THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA
We tend not to argue among ourselves,
nor do we steal the property of others.
We live contentedly together,
our neighbors are happy with us.
In war we are invincible
in peace affable.
Valiant, not vengeful, our women
care for the children.
How different the Christians are!
They drink fire
they think of this drink
as we think of our gods
the fire they drink makes them crazy
They wager their families
They murder their friends
They rob one another
Their leaders are tyrants
The cross gives them authority
to persecute the weak
and deceive the strong
How different the Christians are!
Their old men give bad advice
and the young men have made us suffer
merely by approaching us.
We are prepared to make peace,
but our warriors have sworn
never to allow themselves
to live among white men.
How different the Christians are!
(After Robert William Hale Hardy, Travel in the interior of Mexico in
1825, 1827 and 1828, London 1829)
AT THE BUS TERMINAL
stacks of cardboard boxes
sealed with tape
or twine
peddlers, immigration cops
a crowd of
newcomers everywhere
so confused that they've lost
even their shadows
others lurk suspiciously
wandering the area
circling
looking for a smoke
a smoke
or matches
to extract
messianic crack fumes
behind wrecked cars
abandoned two months before
where tickets are sold
for non-existent third-class buses
people sleep
behind the newsstands
resting their heads on suitcases
steal food
from waiting room benches
or lean against vending machines
that swallow coins and kicks
they settle into phone booths
to weep
or to cut meth crystals
the new arrivals
look like they're not going anywhere
adrift, they'll settle
on the outskirts
of this new city
selling their belongings
or someone else's car
for a taxi
or they assault outsiders, robbing
those just off the bus
at Gate C
or search through the contents
of refuse heaps
or break into warehouses
or join the stream of human traffic
or spend the cost of a return ticket
on a fast hand-job
the listless unemployed
who hang out
on streetcorners
ending up here like all the others
peddlers, immigration cops
the crowd of
newcomers everywhere
so confused that they've lost
even their shadows, trapped here,
begging a driver for a lift
to the limbo of some other terminal.
ON COAHUILA STREET
in rancid dives with gaudy fronts
the sleazy joints of Cahuila Street
coyotes and mixed-up go-betweens
mumbling beggars
strippers with hairy underarms
freaked-out hustlers, fat pimps
con men with twisted eyes, pushers flashing rings and chains
transvestites with enormous bullet-tits
wait for clients and connections
fat fifteen year old girls
crowd out the landscape
whores whose lipstick
is the fog
gringos in bilingual taxis
losing their credit cards
getting their balls rubbed for 2 bucks
On Coahuila Street
repair shops, hash houses, jalopies
and cadavers are harvested by tow trucks
emaciated immigrants follow northwards
the trustworthy wind
which chills them to the bone
–three blocks away
is the metal barrier that separates them
from the US
yards of phosphorescent fabric
shredded in the tumultuous rape
of a lone Mixteca, her clothing
a tent of cloth
second-hand shops and hot merchandise
long distance phone booths for making calls
as short as hope
needles shattered tattooing the casts on broken arms
you can buy
cops, stereos, warm beer
at the billiard parlor–a front
for unstepped-on meth and the essential address
of the tomb of Juan Soldado*
who grants the miracle of invisibility
needed to cross the border
invisible to the migra,
invisible to the migra,
motels with tortuous stairways
where prostitutes too long in the sun
introduce you to death
without even removing their bras
another rip-off
On Coahuila Street
the sidewalk is covered with piss and mortuary candles
black-market currency exchanges, dust covered taco shops
and newspaper stands
none of them matter
none of them matter
On Coahuila Street
the public bathrooms are almost as scary
as the mind
body shops are more humane
than people
and a tall tale about a urinal with wings
come to dispense justice
could panic all the city inspectors
into scattering like rats
gap-toothed marquees and neon lights
on their last legs
on Cahuila Street
the girls the girls
On Coahuila Street
civilization is shut off
at 10 a.m.
when the uproar starts again
drag queens and witchcraft
on Coahuila Street
On Coahuila Street
life's like that
* "John the Soldier," Juan Castillo Morales, local saint, patron of illegal
immigrants and criminals. A private in the Mexicn army, he was
courtmartialed and executed in Tijuana in 1938 for the rape and murder of a
little girl. Popular lore has it that he was innocent of the crime, which
had been committed by one of his superiors. He is buried three blocks from
the border. His feast day is June 24th, when hundreds gather at the
cemetery to honor him. Many miracles have been credited to his intervention.
THE BEGGAR'S LIGHT
at the end of this drainpipe
I live in
there's a light,
at the end of the tunnel
I see light, really, this time
it's not a hallucination
like those others I've seen before.
I see the light at the end of the tunnel
and emerge
it's not
the city's dirty light
nor the police car's immoral light, the ambulance light
or the cold light of the signs on stores
much less "the light at the end of the tunnel"
it's the light of other beggars
in the mouth of the tunnel,
burning garbage
in a metal drum
EACH SUMMER
once in a while
a tumbleweed
rolls down the boulevard
in Tijuana
a spiny ball
just shy of 6 feet wide
interrupting traffic
surprised, drivers
stop short
leaving
a line of skid-marks still darker
than the pavement
rear-ending
each other
joking, someone call it
nature's revenge
once in a while
each summer
a spiny ball
descends whatever hill, perhaps
from an empty lot
lost in the outskirts, and rolls
down the streets
like a sly intimation
of the desert's
imminent return
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