When the earth with the naturalness of women “mujer is more than senora or senorita”— receives openly at the first rains, I think of nothing then but you.
I set out from the Port of Acapulco on the twenty-third of March And kept a steady course until Saturday, the fourth of April, when A half hour before dawn, we saw by the light of the moon That a ship had come alongside With sails and a bow that seemed to be of silver. Our helmsman cried out to them to stand off But no one answered, as though they were all asleep. Again we called out: “WHERE DID THEIR SHIP COME FROM?” And they said: Peru! After which we heard trumpets, and muskets firing, And they ordered me to come down into their longboat To cross over to where their Captain was. I found him walking the deck, Went up to him, kissed his hands and he asked me: “What silver or gold I had aboard that ship?” I said, “None at all, None at all, My Lord, only my dishes and cups.” So then he asked me if I knew the Viceroy. I said I did. And I asked the Captain, “If he were Captain Drake himself and no other?” The Captain replied that “He was the very Drake I spoke of.” We spoke together a long time, until the hour of dinner, And he commanded that I sit by his side. His dishes and cups are of silver, bordered with gold With his crest upon them. He has with him many perfumes and scented waters in crystal vials Which, he said, the Queen had given him. He dines and sups always with music of violins And also takes with him everywhere painters who keep painting All the coast for him. He is a man of some twenty-four years, small, with a reddish beard. He is a nephew of Juan Aquinas,* the pirate. And is one of the greatest mariners there are upon the sea. The day after, which was Sunday, he clothed himself in splendid garments And had them hoist all their flags With pennants of divers colors at the mastheads, The bronze rings, and chains, and the railings and The lights on the Alcazar shining like gold. His ship was like a gold dragon among the dolphins. And we went, with his page, to my ship to look at the coffers. All day long until night he spent looking at what I had. What he took from me was not much, A few trifles of my own, And he gave me a cutlass and a silver brassart for them, Asking me to forgive him Since it was for his lady that he was taking them: He would let me go, he said, the next morning, as soon as there was a breeze; For this I thanked him, and kissed his hands. He is carrying, in his galleon, three thousand bars of silver Three coffers full of gold Twelve great coffers of pieces of eight: And he says he is heading for China Following the charts and steered by a Chinese pilot whom he captured …
In honor of the Battle of San Jacinto, we present this work by one of Nicaragua’s most layered poets.
Ernesto Mejía Sánchez Nicaraguan 1923 – 1985
I
I rehearsed the word, its size, the stage it requires. I took it by the lips, placed it carefully in your palm. Don’t let it escape. Grasp it! Count till two (the most difficult task). Open your hand: a star in your palm.
II
I would close each night with a dream. I would conjure someone in a secret spot. I would count numbers. And someone, whom you didn’t suspect, would be born within the shadow, and didn’t shape his body from the obscurity; rather from a limpid air, separate, he would fashion his self. I would count numbers. Someone, perforating the silence, was born like a glass angel, like an empty child. He made himself into a living emptiness. I kept on counting. He approached my lips. Lovingly, he proved adhesive to my flesh. The most fitting skin, the most fitting, enveloped me. I kept on counting. I repeated, the same numbers, but now with his voice. As he was born each night in different shapes, and to not find myself mistaken, I placed that angel in a hiding place; and I placed on him his number.
III
To pacify solitude, pick a virginal day. Keep all your books beneath seven locks. Carry an apple beneath the purest tree. Have no fear, the Evil one won’t perturb you. Say these words, as if they were true: Solitude, I love you, I believe in you, don’t abandon me.
IV
After great joy, the afterglow of wine or women, I am certain that I will see you in mirrors, in still waters. Before surrendering yourself to delights, cup some water in your left hand, raise it to your mouth, tell it these words as if they formed a kiss: Just as wine and women cleansed my mouth of words, so, miraculous water, cleanse my invisible body from within.
V
I learned a prayer to intone only at night; to pacify sleep, make your eyelids transparent: Adonis, cleanse my eyes, stay by my bedside while I surrender myself to nocturnal death, instantaneous death. Dream me a pure angel, let him accompany me forever, but let the angel be a woman.
VI
There are limpid days, erected from a silken air. Neither demon nor angel penetrates them. But solitude then engages in the struggle. It would have proven futile, dearest, to summon her. Futile, for homogenous and hermetic air, seals lead over one’s voice. Beseech her, at the very least, without stirring lips; like this: adversarial companion, I join you.
VII
In the same place where I summoned the moon, let her appear. Because I repeated the exact word until my voice turned hoarse. Because I said: there, in the same place where I summoned the moon as pale as She, let her appear. Let this take place; let it be not a lie.
VIII
Sometimes, Ernesto, I have heard you say: an ill-fated demon has seized my body. Don’t fear. Carefully shut the door and window; the air will darken; remain still, quietly tell him: Angel, angel, angel, three times, and you will see how tame he becomes, and he will seek your company. Most surreptitiously, light a redolent cigar from the Indies, fashion three whites rings with the smoke; thus, a column forms; now imprison him.
IX
To learn the precise date in which the virgin must weep because of the smudges on your pedigree, tie one of her headscarves around the calendar, don’t say a single word; daily, pin a white lily to her chest: wait till it flushes.
X
There is a demon who whispers in your ear: Careful. They’re deceiving you. Always doubt what they tell you. Break the circle. The best amulet is in your hand. Repeat his words: Careful. You’re deceiving me. I always doubt you. Break the circle. His evil verb won’t return, for you drowned it in your own saliva.
XI
To discern if the fruit of her womb be male or female, let your hand unveil the shadow before her eyes; let her pronounce a name without recalling the night of blood. If she say: distaff. Or: swallow. A woman shall shower joy upon your hearth. If she say, for example: amaranth, a boy shall plant a kiss on his mother’s cheek. Should she remain mute, be not saddened. He shall speak on her behalf; for a poet will have come into the world.
XII
A blind dove fluttered into my darkness. I hadn’t kindled a fire. I hadn’t intoned the incantation. She came to tell me: It isn’t true that I don’t love you enough, but my mother would bolt upright in bed, panting. Night: a star that is great, yet obscured. I told her: Dove, blinded from a pure blindness. And she regained her sight. But who shall now utter the verb, now that she is mute, unable to pronounce it.
XIII
Often, I said: the fountain. Said: the waters. I invoked the necessary images to meet in friendship. They sought to please me, and they became a mirror. So. With my hand, I raised the invisible, impalpable curtain, and there were eyes behind, eyes within, and listening from within the wall, I heard distant echoes, indecipherable chatter. Within its own depths, the mirror, too, was deceiving me. Because of that, I said: Let it shatter! Day by day, one by one, after my morning ablutions, I would shatter them; but, Oh, the shards! They multiplied me. There was the mirror, and I deceived myself as I gazed back from each one. Often, I said: moon, stars, vast night. Frenzied, I would repeat these words, I would magically repeat their names to obtain by the twitching of my lips, a mirror which wouldn’t deceive me. And I pronounced a word, a single word: Love. Then, of a sudden, the perfect, indelible mirror, its surface the smoothest, did not merely reflect the dimensions of the bathroom, but its body matched my own and our space, an exact contemporary to my origin: A different Narcissus was born from my side, born from my own self, now infallible, because from opposing waters I repeated myself, contemplated myself.
Sweet monstrous beings like the automobile moan for you. Homogenous things, even things purified like carbon, moan for you. Everything from the first stone your schoolmate threw to the last stone that will be hurled against you—oh adulterer to be!— moans for you. Because of the slimmest and most sufficient reason for your existence like your fifteen-year-old leg, because you learned to speak and things are still amazed to hear themselves repeated in your mouth because your breast is a little universe in which we can adore God’s roundness.
It’s time to prolong the rhythm where silence rests create vertigo maybe the horror sharpen the irony die laughing at myself caress the edges of silence with pure words. The sun hides its light every dawn In time my space increases or decreases and my love goes crazy Palm trees wave high behind their green background the ants in a row are arranged low long tasks in short life but my wait is neither high nor long. When tilling the land, certain fruits have a bittersweet flavor. Yes. Thus the pale hours of fear soften me until I spread my desires on the avenues where sadness lies. There everything is mine and I have nothing the orange tree blooms when the dust sweeps the afternoon.
We present this work in honor of the 55th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Alfonso Cortés Nicaraguan 1903 – 1969
I love you, old tree, because day and night you generate mysteries and fate in the voices of evening wind or birds at dawn.
You adorn the main square and your thoughts are more divine than human ideas as you point us toward roads with proud branches full of sound.
Jenísaro, all your old scars are inscribed in your folios the way time falls and keeps falling. But your fresh and joyous leaves sway in the highest reaches of infinity, while humanity makes its way ahead.
Blessed is the soft and gloomy winter sun, boyfriend of the mountain, which is united in the tender rumor of the fresh river. Ancient songbook owner of the plain, who loves the green fronds, as Gioconda’s lips love sweetness .
Mischievous winter sun, rival of the wheat fields for your blonde beauty, say: Do you make yourself a rainbow to kiss yourself when singing about the rain?
Why this concern with a total stranger who opens and shuts doors at the supermarket
why bother hoping he has a great day that some customer amongst those who throng in and out will see in him a special talent that catapults him to stardom that on his way home he’ll find a winning lottery ticket in the gutter that through the door I’ve watched him open thirty times his favourite actress will enter smiling and (o miracle!) grant him a great big hug
why don’t I concentrate on something worthwhile as I wait in the car for Luis in front of the busiest shopping mall in Managua where a worker attempts to earn a living hauling the heavy chain of trivia
only to be exposed to my intense observation an accessory to my imagining of another’s life in which this poem might be of use to an Everyman who has won my fleeting affection.
Ever since he was a very young boy, he would jump for joy when the cool rain fell from the heavens. Jets from the roofs, your rumor had the divine silence of melancholy. The children with their hands covered their ears, and listening with astonishment to the deep sounds of the heart, which sounds as if it were the sea, they felt a supreme desire to cry. And as by the rain, everything was interrupted, things were bathed in a color of oblivion. And their minds wandered in a divine leisure, very propitious to the tales of Sinbad the Sailor. The rains of my land taught me lessons… with Ali Baba, the forty thieves pass. And they sang my dreams in the rainy night: Aladdin’s lamp, miraculous lamp! And as the rain falls, the oldest maid he recounted his stories in an ambiguous way. Another of the miracles that I sing about in the rain is that, when its lymph falls, my city puts on a new mantle , that when it is washed… I think of one of those austere and impeccable Dutch cities: a washed city, without dust , brand new, where the cleanliness of his blessed prayer reads… All roads are like a flower of adventure for the sweet Quixote of the Sad Figure.
Poets Corner 