We present this work in honor of the 55th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Pablo de Rokha Chilean 1894 – 1968
To Winett
Oh, peoples! I am like the total fuck up of the world. The song face to face with Satan himself, dialogues with the tremendous science of the dead, and my pain spurts blood at the city.
Even my days are what remains of enormous antiques, Baby, last night “God” cried between worlds that go like this, alone, and you say: “I love you”, when you talk with “your” Pablo, without ever hearing me. The man and the woman reek of tomb; my body crumples onto the brute earth the same as the red coffin of the wretched.
A total enemy, I howl through the streets, A horror more barbarous, more barbarous, more barbarous than the baying of a hundred dogs left to die.
We present this work in honor of the 35th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Enrique Lihn Chilean 1929 – 1988
In your opinion one love erases another and so it is, dear, yet in love not everything belongs to the dart and quiver— false starts—or is part of the wound that bewilders all pleasure, all grief twin of death, metaphor for birth The victims of Eros survive the crime that, joyfully, they’re passive agents of its authors in a mysterious moment and they don’t forget at least I don’t: my memory of you remains, independent of love as in that painting by Magritte where the dawn sky still hasn’t dissolved night in the street nor its precious moon: a light curdled in the streetlight that darkly illuminates that road It’s true, the oxymoron is no more than a figure of speech and can be guilty of premeditation Not so myself, at least I hope not, if I tell you: one love doesn’t erase another Memory, also, in its way loves and, as someone said, “There is no forgetting.”
A red glow. A furtive ray rocking the grove. Silky and shiny sateen is, unnerving the needles of the vast pine wood.
Sateen tainting carmine amid the grass and on the moss. Lit carmine burning in the hollow of the ivy. Carmine Carampangue of satiny blood smoothing the satin skin. The skin that strokes, snakes and seeks caressing the emerald with the tail of the dead, the sparkling of the green foliage lashed violently by the wind at the edge of the blue ell of the chasms, here at the beginning of the valley.
Sateen is made of blood and shiny and of treacherous velvet the fabric of the figures that now flame in the sun like knife light. Terrified under the splendor, in the blades cut by the beam, figuring holy cavities amid the murmuring nets of the forest. What silence. Of green firmament or inner bell. The woman pricks up her ears in amazement. Flame is the dress that covers her, fire the stunning skirt.
The humid rips in the lamé, pure spell of reflection, turning into blood the green virginity of the forest. The lamé splits in the green, creating blue flares in its mirror. In the simile, the bristling of a millenary, radiant tapestry:
Long drool of a silenus, Beelzebub, crawls, and the forked garrulous currents of an agitated mob of curling snakes Oh, the Leontine and Egyptian eyes of hieratic herons and owls.
Everything is velvet.
The sinuous mane of an ancient woman the black silk of a vibrant butterfly the sacred muscles of nocturnal panthers.
Iridescent volcanoes curl their spit in the distance in the distance like large, huge comet tails.
We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Vicente Huidobro Chilean 1893 – 1948
Let poetry be like a key Opening a thousand doors A leaf falls; something flies by; Let all the eye sees be created And the soul of the listener tremble.
Invent new worlds and watch your word; The adjective, when it doesn’t give life, kills it.
We are in the age of nerves. The muscle hangs, Like a memory, in museums; But we are not the weaker for it: True vigor Resides in the head.
Oh Poets, why sing of roses! Let them flower in your poems;
We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Óscar Castro Zúñiga Chilean 1910 – 1947
I.
I will start to live in each rose And in each lily that your eyes will see And in every bird trill I’ll sing your name So that you‘ll never forget me.
II.
If you cry as you contemplate the stars And your soul fills with impossibilities, It’s because my loneliness has come to kiss you So that you’ll never forget me.
III.
I will paint a rose colored horizon And I will paint blue wallflowers And I will guild the moon on your hair So that you’ll never forget me.
IV.
If asleep you sweetly walk Through a world of diaphanous gardens, Think of my heart that dreams of you, So that you’ll never forget me.
V.
And if some evening, at a far away altar, You hold another’s hand, and you are blessed, When the golden ring is placed on your finger, My soul will be an invisible tear In the eyes of the moribund Christ So that you’ll never forget me!
Before my window four roads meet. They called from east, west, south and north, And into the royal night to greet The call my vagrant dreams rushed forth.
Yearning by every path to move, My baffled heart could follow none, Forever with the moon in love, With what is dead or what is gone.
Four tempting roads for phantasy, Beneath the flowers and warbled odes… Oh, would that my poor heart might be Perfume diffused over all those roads!
We present this work in honor of the Chilean holiday, Navy Day.
Elicura Chihailaf Chilean b. 1952
I am old, and from a blooming tree I look at the horizon How many airs did I walk? I do not know From the other side of the sea the setting sun has already sent out its messengers and I am departing to meet my ancestors Blue is the place where we go The spirits of the water carry me off step by step Wenulewfv / the River of the Sky is barely one small circle in the universe
In this Dream I shall stay: Stroke, oarsmen! In Silence I move away in the invisible song of life.
Poets Corner 