I've thought much on this, and piece I want to forefeature is by the great
Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo. It's the 18th piece from his book Trilce, I had
to omit the accents in the Spanish, thanks to plain text limitations, but
this to my mind is poetry on the level of the Shakespearean soliloquies or
choruses from Sophocles. Vallejo was actually an uneven poet, but when he
hit the heights he was mind-boggling, Trilce was in part written during a
period of imprisonment in a Lima gaol on trumped-up charges of political
agitation, but the beauty of the poem is in its combinations of perfect
rhythmic timing, supercharged emotion AND an implied metaphysics of absence.
If one looks at lines like ' a un nino de la mano cada una' they have a
perfection equal to the Latin poets at their best, while the wonderful
'cursing' sounds of 'Criadero de nervios, mala brecha' really spit out
venom. And the sound play on the initial 'Oh' that descends to the 'Ah' is
excruciatingly beautiful. And as for 'entre mi donde y my cuando',
literally 'between 'my where and my when', wow! This is great and
intelligent poetry that simultaneously has the same charge of feeling as the
blues.
Here it is:
Oh las cuatro paredes de la celda.
Ah las cuatro paredes albicantes
que sin remedio dan al mismo numero.
Criadero de nervios, mala brecha,
por sus cuatro rincones como arranca
las diarias aherrojades extremidades.
Amorosa llavera de innumberables llaves,
si estuverias aqui, si vieras hasta
que hora son cuatro estas paredes.
Contra ellas seriamos contigo, los dos,
mas dos que nunca. Y ni lloraras,
di, libertadora!
Ah las paredes de la celda.
De ellas me duelen entretanto mas
las dos largas que tienen esta noche
algo que madres que ya muertas
llevan por bromuradas declives,
a un nino de la mano cada una.
Y solo yo me voy quedando,
con la diestra, que hace por ambas manos.
en alto, en busca de terciario brazo
que ha de pupilar, entre mi donde y my cuando,
esta mayoria invalida de hombre.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
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