In honor of Cinco de Mayo, we present this work by one of the city of Puebla’s finest poets.
José Joaquín Pesado Mexican 1801 – 1861
In hot career or ranging far and wide, gentle huntress, you speed your onward way, abandoning upon the gusty air the tossing feather of your gallant hat.
Over brake and barrier, without pause, panting, your impetuous courser bounds, and across the arid torrents storms, beating the boulders with his thudding hooves.
And before you, chaser of the wild, the peopled mountain yields, and in its glass the tarn exhibits you victorious.
The mob breaks forth in turbulent applause, and to the sudden clamour of your name the mighty forest, sonorous, made reply.
We present this work in honor of the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death.
José Gorostiza Mexican 1901 – 1973
Filled with myself, walled up in my skin by an inapprehensible god that is stifling me, deceived perhaps by his radiant atmosphere of light that hides my drained conscience, my wings broken into splinters of air, my listless groping through the mire; filled with myself—gorged—I discover my essence in the astonished image of water, that is only an unwithering cascade, a tumbling of angels fallen of their own accord in pure delight, that has nothing but a whitened face half sunken, already, like an agonized laugh in the thin sheets of the cloud and the mournful canticles of the sea— more aftertaste of salt or cumulus whiteness than lonely haste of foam pursued. Nevertheless—oh paradox—constrained by the rigor of the glass that clarifies it, the water takes shape. In the glass it sits, sinks deep and builds, attains a bitter age of silences and the graceful repose of a child smiling in death, that deflowers a beyond of disbanded birds. In the crystal snare that strangles it, there, as in the water of a mirror, it recognizes itself; bound there, drop with drop, the trope of foam withered in its throat. What intense nakedness of water, what water so strongly water, is dreaming in its iridescent sphere, already singing a thirst for rigid ice! But what a provident glass—also— that swells like a star ripe with grain, that flames in heroic promise like a heart inhabited by happiness, and that punctually yields up to the water a round transparent flower, a missile eye that attains heights and a window to luminous cries over that smoldering liberty oppressed by white fetters!
We present this work in honor of the 130th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Ignacio Manuel Altamirano Mexican 1834 – 1893
Come, embrace me, never remove your arms from round my neck, never hide your lovely face from me, don’t run away shyly. Let our lips meet In an endless, burning kiss. Let the hours, slow and sweet, Flow by just like this. Doves fall silent in green tamarind trees; spikenards have exhausted their supply of scents. You’re growing languid; your eyes close with fatigue, and your bosom, sweet friend, is trembling. On the river bank Everything droops and swoons; The rosebays on the beach Grow drowsy with the heat. I’ll offer you repose on this carpet of clover, in the perfumed shade of orange trees in bloom.
We present this work in honor of the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Luis de Sandoval y Zapata Mexican d. 1671
The Luminary of the Birds expires, of the wind that winged eternity, and midst the vapors of the monument burns a sweet-smelling victim of the pyre.
And now in mighty metamorphosis behold a shroud, with every flower more bright; in the Cerecloth, reasonable essence, the vegetable amber dwells and breathes.
The colours of Our Lady they portray; and from these shades the day in envy flies when the sun upon them shines his light.
You die more fortunate than the Phoenix, flowers; for he, feathered to rise, in ashes dies; but you, Our Blessed Lady to become.
Don’t try to talk me out of clumsiness with the delusions of your crazy mind: my reason is both light and firmness, firmness and light like rock crystal.
Like the nocturnal pilgrim, my immortal hope does not look at the ground; seeing nothing but a shadow on the road, only contemplate the splendor of the sky.
Vain are the images that it carries your child spirit, dark sanctuary. Your soul, like gold on the mountain, it is virginal and therefore impure.
Through this twitching vortex, and eager to shine, I fly or crawl, caterpillar in love with a spark or eagle seduced by a star.
Useless is that with tenacious murmur you exaggerate the set in which I get entangled: I am haughty, and he who encourages pride wears a buckler impenetrable to fear.
Trusting the instinct that pushes me, I despise the dangers you point out. “The bird sings even though the branch creaks: like he knows what his wings are.”
Erect under the blow in the stubbornness, I feel superior to victory. I have faith in myself; adversity could take away the triumph, but not the glory.
Let the vile pursue me! I want to attract envy even if it overwhelms me! The flower on which insects perch It is rich in hue and perfume.
Evil is the theater in whose forum virtue, that tragic, stands out; is the sibyl with the golden word, the shadow that makes the star stand out.
Lighting is burning! I’m on It will be the raging fire that consumes me! The pearl sprouts from the wounded mollusk and Venus is born from the bitter foam.
The clear timbres of which I am proud they must come out of the slander unscathed. There are plumages that cross the swamp and they don’t stain… My plumage is one of those!
Strength is that my passion suffers! The Palm it grows on the shore that the waves whip. Merit is the castaway of the soul: live, sink; but dead, float!
Let go of your frown and let your voice lull me to sleep! Comfort the heart of the one who loves you! God said to the water of the torrent: it boils! and to the river of the margin: embalm!
Make up, woman! We have come to this valley of tears that brings down, you, like the dove, for the nest, and I, like the lion, for combat.
In poetry there’s no happy ending. Poets end up living their madness. And they’re quartered like cattle (it happened to Darío). Or they’re stoned or wind up flinging themselves to the sea or with cyanide salts in their mouths. Or dead from alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty. Or worse: canonical poets, bitter inhabitants of a tomb entitled Complete Works.
To pose in my hand – I invite the landscape, invite it to call itself into question, and then give to it a dream of abyss for ingestion, in the spiral hand of heavens with a human shape.
That by loosening the moorings in the river the mountain to its marbles will speak so that a frozen sigh leading to its peak might hold the worth of fruit in a double summer.
To the cloud, I might proselytize the risks posed by height and morning light, then argue that the low tide is not on the rise, but rather every hour, set alight.
To make a shadow tame within a rosebush, at its very gut (To add to love what is subtracted on its name and feed the remains to a dovecote of naught).
What if the sea might abandon its pearls and then step out its shell… ! What would happen to these frothy swirls if instead of splashing all over, they lay forgotten?
Who knows if the stone that at every turn is a wonder, to join the exact exedra would be prone, fountain-garden-love-tumbler.
What if the benign lane that comes, goes and is, becomes impassable on account of a blunder without aim: a magnetic waterfall that rendered it pliable.
Will the trees be able to put in motion all their elementary schools of chirping? (I feel my desires go mixing and mingling Like townspeople at a wedding celebration).
Over there, the river is a boy, but it is a man here, One that gathers dark leaves in a creek. Everybody calls him by his name, without sneer and strokes him like a dog, one that is meek.
Which season should my guests want to get off at? In autumn or in springtime? Or will they wait till the foliage speaks of harvests like an angel announcing apples at its prime?
And when the guests finally arrive – within myself –, the gentleness to which every corner of my being attests shall leave them alone and, as a sign of happiness, will show a set of ten fingers that rests untouched but by poetry, alone.
Poets Corner 