Lectura
The black ink
dances with the white
sky of the page
scribbling the footsteps
of the dancer
pensive swirls on the flow,
the tapping of a bastón
Between the rhythms of
the walk.
The Argentinian proceeds
in the haze of dark-milonga
Some slivers of light
enough to discern a house
or a tiger in front
pending.
A writer, a collector of literature
gatherer of legends
Flowing with and against the classics,
a tourist always
in the realm of the Tango
bars of the port, Portuario
Buenos Aires,
night alegre of swift feminine.
In The Book of Sand Borges
Pointed to the Habanera Cubana
As the origin of Tango.
In the salon dance
I only read the silk
and the red lipstick
the outline of speech.
Enjoy the tilt of the steps
knives of the mustache,
the black dress swirls
pressing against the
black panties,
the netted socks
rise like
Geometric squares painting,
arithmetic of desire-baile
upward nalga tinges of
skin porcelain tan ginger,
black stockings
reverberation dizzy of the squares,
Latinos all the ports
black café rises from the Greca,
La China, Averroes Andalucía
The two circles of the word
Moon in English,
German of Goethe the moon
is a man.
Viejo I disagree with you
on Lorca
dismissed him as mere folklorist
A painter you said,
in the story “La Secta del Fénix”
Without mentioning his name
You scribed “Los gitanos
son pintorescos e inspiran
a los malos poetas”
but I rise with “Poet in New York”
mornings of mint tea bread dipped
in Olive oil my Berber stance
in the chills of North African
Mornings
the section “Calles y Sueños”
el Granadino hints of Arab blood
opens free in Vein-Verses,
previous tradition peninsula rhymes
sliding down the walls of
The Alhambra.
Other momentos I understand
Borges,
if focus upon Romancero gitano
folklore enclosed,
the customary coplas
Bright
Lorca’s paintings hang
in the museum of my memory.
Spain stain like
ancestral Nasari blood,
Granada swimmers
Latin/Arabic
in the sea of dawn New Dialect:
Castilian: Spanish.
The same words of Borges
tangano of accordion/guitars
Another country/time
old encyclopedic. A Swiss
watch mechanic at labor.
Each time I scope a butterfly
I think of Nabokov,
from a Caribbean balcony
upon glance saw groups
Of yellow flowers flying,
coming from the river
headed toward the mountains.
Season is that I caution to
avoid stepping on Caterpillars
Orugas
so as not to destroy paintings
in process
their souls fidgeting
with shape design,
the symmetry of desire,
one caterpillar looked like it had
the haircut of the British rock
group The Beatles.
Vladimir discovered new species
of butterflies
such was the concentration
The leisure.
the estate in Saint Petersburg a valley
comfortable prairie vodka extension of
liquid papas.
Ithaca New York dreamscapes,
warmer winters for him.
Seasoned writer would never
action upon a young girl,
but thought profoundly upon it
La ninfa to commit the sin
of his “loins,” in writing, ah Lola
atrévete, ven otra vez
ponla al revés,
Lolita was his writing muse
La Beatrice, his Dulcinea
for me Lolita has always
been a book about writing,
encounters illegal suspense
plotting intense scenes of pleasure.
“Ada” another Latina name
momentos of sharp scenery
exhaustive narrative,
narrow down to his “13 Stories”
crossing the Atlantic my airplane
warmth, the cold ocean below,
wind, clouds form y dissolve,
page turn time watch stare
soar like a bird frog
jumping rock to rock,
New York/Casablanca
New York/Madrid
again Madrid/New York.
Un moment Vladimir
what you mean you don’t
like jazz,
Sit down careful to listen
same way read Dickens’s
Bleak House what?
he wrote of his distaste
for Jazz-music in Speak, Memory.
read him with soft
Thelonious Monk ballads
Sunken floating in the back
improvs of jazz crawling
down like roaches wall
words in piano concert with his prose
keys
insects marching line vertical, now
a left turn to where, antennas sonar
aware of distances and texture
insinuations, sudden drops of
the plaster of Paris paint,
occasions of caves-wall bumps
where the temperature alters.
Hot episodes of hands
usage finger popping manual
vagina virgin
pages like new hair
of Lolita or Dolores
of my pains,
auburn prose
of lost Russia,
grandiose St. Petersburg.
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca
Known in the world of literature as Federico García Lorca, referred to popularly as Lorca, the last name of his mother. In the Latino tradition we use the last names of both parents, the middle name is always the father’s and the most important of the names. For some reason his maternal last name prevailed. The quiet and shy Andalusian poet born in the sector Fuente Vaqueros, a large extent of rural land of Granada, a farm area owned by his father. His mother taught school locally and was a piano player, a skill that she passed on to her son. Lorca’s youth was full of the music of Debussy, Chopin, and Beethoven. As a lad he made relations with flamenco, helped to organize concerts and competitions. He was a close friend of the composer Manuel de Falla; we could say that Lorca is a good example of a musician turned poet; he was also a gifted graphic artist. He flirted with Theater some years till he finally settled into writing poetry and essays; his theater pieces were eventually published and have been performed throughout the entire world. Lorca was sent on a journey to America by his wealthy family, he boarded the SS Olympic a ship à la Titanic along with his friend and teacher Federico de los Rios, their destiny was New York City. In New York he enrolled at Columb
ia University and ran smack into the cold climate of the people, the hurried indifference, the anonymous hordes, rows of ants marching mindless, yet he was excited by the bubbling metropolis. Theater his main interest, New York City great Broadway of the Teatro like a feast for his mind, as afternoons were of solitudes writing to melt the sky scrapers. Took notes observed fascinated the joy of his youth, the Caribbean was not far and the tropics were calling him as well, took another ship to Cuba joined the rumba there; in Santiago he heard the music and observed the dancers. In New York he had met Langston Hughes and in Cuba he encountered Nicolás Guillén. Lorca was alive with new forms sprouting as he opened up into free verse. The style of the Gypsy Ballads what turned Borges off, he saw the gypsy as a theme, something raw that he reached for, his friend the filmmaker Luis Buñuel criticized the work didn’t round well into Lorca’s folklorist attitude, Salvador Dalí more supportive saw it as just a phase his friend was going through; there are within the Romancero gitano poems of fine imagery, the color, love desire death, jealousy themes so ever present in Spanish culture poignant in Andalusia, essence in Lorca. I had the honor to be invited along with Judith Ortiz Cofer* and some other writers by the Fundación Federico García Lorca, which was housed in the facilities of La Residencia de Estudiantes, the famous school of the 20s which was host to many of the important literary figures of Spain as students and professors; Juan Ramón Jiménez was a teacher there, Pedro Salinas, Lorca, Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel. They were all young, full of energy and excitement, they exchanged ideas, Dalí and Buñuel plotted together the film Un Chien Andalou. The ideas of the twentieth century were explored as something modern was happening. We met family members of Lorca like Manolo Montesinos and Laura García, both had spent time in the United States and spoke English with an Americanese swing. From Madrid we ended up flying with the family to Granada and in Fuente Vaqueros saw the old family house still in the rural setting, entering we beheld some of Lorca’s paintings hanging and an old piano settled in the living room. Back in Madrid at the Residencia where we stayed the dorms we were in were the same rooms once habituated by Dalí, Lorca, Salinas, Juan Ramón; we never found out which rooms any of the particular poets might have inhabited, but it was a special excitement to be within so much historical creative air. Walking Granada with the Lorca’s beholding Middle Age structures popping along with the modernity. Splendid sights to behold from windows, as we drank rum and danced salsa, out the window was the Grand Mosque of Granada, feeling all the time the spirit of Federico amongst us. Granada con-con-gana.
*Judith Ortiz Cofer—Puerto Rican American author of novels and essays just passed away. I hereby recall that she went to Lorca’s house with me. Sweet of temperament beautiful Judith your words always in my eyes, spirit more ever within heart. Descansa.
Cante Jondo
To Laura García and Manolo Montesinos
The tongue makes
a trembling sound
moving as in a wet kiss.
Moisture is the Granada
afternoon people of ginger
flesh, dresses fly like red
Rioja wine flags in
the precious air, preciosa
that I want you such
Green
Green desire yearns
“Verde que te”
eye suck color shapes
Andalusia black hair
Arabic culos night thighs
of moon circles.
There visiting with
Laura y Montesinos
familia de Lorca
in Charge of La Fundación
Lorca at the Residencia
de Estudiantes
where infinite drinks of
cultura were swallow flow,
the dorms one room Salvador Dalí,
another Pedro Salinas,
somewhere the dormitorio of
Maestro Juan Ramón Jiménez,
convulsive afternoons in the
free experimental school
a Latin Oxford,
John Cage sound music
slicing through the books
of Breton’s surrealism,
whatever Lorca, Salinas
were reading, Azorín, La Celestina,
Mio Cid, el Hugo, the French.
Morning jump with excitement
questions of the night before
poetry is memory of
inquiry desires just so many
questions, begging
the possible colors.
that respond.
Einstein spoke there
relevant to relativity,
of what gravity the pull of
Grammar, the buttons and pins
commas, dots, commas mark
of question entry sentence
upside down erect finality
Castilla.
Of lengua the glamour, decor
standard yet personal
once you know the scale
you can break it.
Blow as John Coltrane,
Albert Ayler leave it alone.
Juan Ramón el Andalus universal
Modernism at its edge.
come the fascist hordes of Franco
Juan Ramón ended in Puerto Rico
on the island he died
rested a while when Franco passed
his family took his remains
back to Spain, as he had wished.
Pedro Salinas arrived on the
island as well to contemplate
the sea, the insistent waves,
the black hair Marias
morenas
in the tropics they come in
cinnamon skin, trigueñas.
The seashells of his metaphors
mixing philosophy with the Carib,
Salinas too died in Puerto Rico
and remains resting by the
eternity of the ocean waves
Inspiring,
his bone feet pointing
Everness
toward the azulie waves.
In 1932 Agustín Lara
the Mexican composer
wrote the song “Granada”
the song sailed into my ears
from a distant window
while I sat in the Residencia
reading loco Lorca local,
invoke the shine of orange flesh
Illumed out of black shawl.
The walls of la Residencia
melted memoirs,
such possibilities,
for those who ate air,
composition of the mountain
persona
springs into river currency,
Now
Lyrics of Johnny Albino
Come from the depths. Caverns
Caribe gone, alive but . . .
“Dios quiera que tu vayas,”
If you remember of me,
Sonos of the language
Scape in Eye
Living again/
Uno nunca se puede ver
The past is futuring,
“Fatalidad ah vives”
Motion stand
If there dance,
It now when.
The function is seen
Been Andalucía Granada*
Kalendro.
*Ġarnāah the Arabic name,
From the Persian for pomegranate.
Don Quijote
The cold upon such mornings caress the fingers of this North African winter. The debaba-fog of the Mediterranean floats above the medinas hazing, twirling, dimming the geometric tiles rushing towards the water fountains, cool cats darting in the crepuscular dawn light. The cold enters through your nostrils and all the pores of exposed flesh, it rushes quickly to the center of your bones from which it eventually escapes back out. It is an implosion. That is where the mambo is. Mierda I am translated here shit from the tropics trembling. In Africa mofos. Realize that my whole life is translation, first it was from bucolic town to the inspires of New York bu
ildings, reaching, growing with time a jump from the East to the West Coast. Everything translates transforms. Current in Morocco above us is the Mediterranean, flamencos between Europe and Africa. My family house here is translation, with my woman and my son we move in and out of the Spanish, the Arabic, the French always deciphering content, English bounces around as well. It is how we function as family reviewing words so that we are all on the same page and in comprehension. The three of us bump into words, review them translate them back into the Spanish which is our base language. Up before the 6:30 a.m. call to prayer on a cold November morning I open the huge Bible like book of Don Quixote in English translation. The translator of this English version is Edith Grossman. She has translated mostly contemporary Latin American writers, García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa a couple that I know of. To tackle this monster from the Middle Ages she must’ve taken more than one deep serenade of siestas; I kept going back from the Spanish version to the English and I could see that she captured the spirit of Cervantes’s voice, made it echo in our contemporary “Americanese” English as she herself comments in a beautiful little book Why Translation Matters: “Good translations are good because they are faithful to their contextual significance. They are not necessarily faithful to words or syntax, which are peculiar to specific languages.” Translating Spanish to English I have discovered that many times in English you have to put the phrase backwards, turn it inside out for it to make reading sense. Edith has captured the spirit of the language and manages to paint it over into English. Delightful. This reading in English of el Quixote would be my second reading; there is a saying in Spanish that the novel Quixote has to be read three times in one’s lifetime, once as a youngster, another during middle age, and finally another time as you age and are cured like a good bottle of Rioja wine. My first reading of the book was back in the hot moisture of Puerto Rico, swinging upon hammock the back balcony of my mother’s house in el Barrio El Guanábano, a popular neighborhood, listening to the boleros and the Salsa flowing from a local cafetín (small bar) and the sound shuffle of the dominoes upon an old worn wooden table, I had hung a Taino hammock there for the very purpose of reading, and I do declare a hammock as the best place to read a book, it is a uniqueness like it invented the distinctive singularity of the float of lectura, the ease of shifting body positions, outdoors with the natural light of the tropical day has no comparison, my favorite reading time was and is always in that part of the day when the sun is sliding down, I would read till the darkness made it impossible to proceed. Finally the black ink of the letters melts into the dark tinge of the approaching night. Strung out in the Caribbean wondering about the small enclaves of Castile de la Mancha. Voices from the local street mix into the Middle Age drama “mira Mariano está abierto el Checo” horizon yonder the breasts of the mountains sprout alongside villages Albacete, la Mancha fortresses and merges castles out of the landscape, sudden a house appears en la mesesta forms levels from which pours a barefoot girl named Minerva walks to my nose a musk of deer horns hay wire, in the barrio there is Sonia brown and auburn hair, OJOS. The prose encloses me in a cocoon; distant geographies appear-disappear, stretch of isolated mountain villages, is it there or is it here, cuál? Mountain people everywhere signature the same, Don Quixote de la Mancha de Plátano. One night it was dark late yet I wanted to continue reading, I was somewhere in the outskirts of Toledo, a huge lake during sun fall gave it the semblance of dark blue ink, turned the balcony lightbulb on, two pages pass when I hear a sound, swish swift noise it was a Praying Mantis out of the night the size of a helicopter with its green cape slams into the wall next to me, next a flying roach huge, eventually insectology-bichos of weirdest categories, slaves of light arrive in waves, objects with no names that I can think of, I had to get back in before I got bitten, eaten, or something. The publisher of Cervantes’s book sent most of the copies to the New World to the Americas, to the new Spanish lands, a shipment of them was swallowed by the ocean off of Havana, it was the early 1600s, the fish read the soaked text, a batch made it to Lima, Peru, from there El Quixote arrived into Cuzco, center of the Incas. Cervantes was planning to come to the Spanish Americas last years of his life but he never realized it. His book made it, phenomenon. There is in the novel Muslim-Morisco characters and situations, Zoraida, Hebraic insinuations, Cervantes even invented a fictitious Arabic author to whom he attributed the second half of the novel published ten years after the first part appeared. The novel was set within the drama of the Moors and Jews being expelled from Spain. I had heard of El Quixote all my life, it sat in the culture, in the language, and people talking would mention it. Unamuno called it a second Bible. My first reading of this novel, I burnt into the gravity of the language, the situations and the settings of the novel, the characters set in the Middle Ages yet sounding so immediate to me as I was turning the pages, encountering my own barrio experience. How many times swinging in the sway of the suspended hammock did I not sail into sleep and awake in a dream of El Quixote. Sueño.