You are so forgetful! Yesterday you left behind here, over the piano that you no longer play, a bit of your ailing girl soul: a book, forbidden, of tender memories.
Intimate memories. I opened it, carelessly, And knew, smiling, your deepest woe, The sweet secret that I will not tell: That you mention me no one wants to know.
…Come, take the book, you faraway, full of light and daydreams. Crazy romantic… Leaving all your loves here, over the piano!… You are so forgetful, absent-minded!
We present this work in honor of the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Gloria Fuertes Spanish 1917 – 1998
I’m sad and I do not know why; I’ve drunk love, and I’m still thirsty. I’m alone… and I don’t know why I would like to know, but I won’t tell… I’m alone and I don’t know why, I would like to kiss, and I don’t know who. I’m in love… and I don’t know what. I would like to know… and it can’t be. I’m sad and lonely… and I don’t know why.
We present this work in honor of the 95th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Carlos Mondaca Chilean 1881 – 1928
Who could fall asleep, as a child falls asleep; smile between dreams to the dream of pain; and dream of friends and dream of affection; and slowly sink into a greater dream.
And walk through life sleepwalking, eyes wide open on an inner world, with sealed lips, eternally mute, attentive only to the rhythm of your own heart…
And go through life without leaving a trace… To be the poor stream that evaporates in the sun… and lose one night, as a star dies, that burned thousands of years, and that nobody saw it…
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.
This microphone with its cable coiling around it, bows to me. I walk up to it, open my eyes open my book open my mouth. That’s right, I open my mouth wide and begin my story. They say I speak too softly, that I am practically mumbling, that they can’t hear the screams piercing. I open my memory like a rotten cantaloupe.
They say I have not managed to forcefully convey the pitiless rage of the cattle prod. They say that in matters such as this nothing must be left open to the imagination or to doubt. I take out the Amnesty report and begin speaking through that ink. I urge: “Read.” I, in my turn, coil around my bowing accomplice, this microphone. I urge action as a prescription, information as an infallible antidote and, one every knot is untied, I recite my verses. I resist. I am whole. This microphone with its cable coiling around it, bows to me.
We present this work in honor of the 145th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Pyotr Vyazemsky Russian 1792 – 1878
I have outlived most things and people round me and weighed the worth of most things in this life; these days I drag along though bars surround me, exist within set limits without strife. Horizons now for me are close and dreary and day by day draw nearer and more dark. Reflection’s dipping flight is slow and weary, my soul’s small world is desolate and stark. My mind no longer casts ahead with boldness, the voice of hope is dumb — and on the route, now trampled flat by living’s mundane coldness, I am denied the chance to set my foot. And if my life has seemed among the hardest and though my storeroom’s stock of grain is small, what sense is there in hoping still for harvest when snow from winter clouds begins to fall? In furrows cropped by scythe or sickle clearance there may be found, it’s true, some living trace; in me there may be found some past experience, but nothing of tomorrow’s time or space. Life’s balanced the accounts, she is unable to render back what has been prised away and what the earth, in sounding vaults of marble, has closed off, pitiless, from light of day.
We present this work in honor of the Mexican holiday, Revolution Day.
Estrella del Valle Mexican b. 1971
Juliette Seven Five: A country lies at the bottom of the maps, between the nooks of lineups, on the Mike Romeo One Nine frequency, Ninety-two degrees west. Seventeen degrees north. With many of the seas that lash in its favor or against it, depending on which side of the map you’re on. A country with eternal depressions, blue mountains, and incorporeal dreams above sea level. A country with imperceptible people, with kids, men, women who get lost when they are so young who are at the intersection of the objective. A country with thousands of migrants who try not to see each other while they cross the line between sanity and the greatest country. A country with a single chain of communication, a single bank, a single army of God, a single tiny family that manages the stage of a tiny nation like its ambitions and it has a king, albeit a little one.
A land slumbers under a blanket of coffeed weeds With lashings of withered wreaths numb on gravestones A broken fence, a lone gatekeeper, a shroud of trees Keep the memoir of ghosts who can only sleep When relatives insist on visiting, bringing new flowers Which they then water with tears and dress in silence
The broken branches which are gathered under trees The faded epitaphs speaking to the sun about memory The dried leaves cracking with the reticence of rainfall The shade from the high weeds crowded into themselves The people crouching to straighten fallen headstones On their beloveds’ graves, then murmur their departure
The footfalls fading from the streets The trees departing from the avenues The sweat evaporating from the skin Remote traffic sounding like gossip
A lone gatekeeper standing by the gate Adding up thoughts of differences and loss.
Poets Corner 