Notes on a Return to the Ever-dying Lands
Arturo Desimone’s series on Latin American poetry for The Drunken Boat Poetry Review.
ALLEGRO VIVACE
FOUR POEMS
BY MIROSLAVA ROSALES (El Salvador, 1985)
and a prelude to Rosales’ yet-untranslated poetry collection “República del excremento (antología personal mínima)”
Destruction
And my mother gave me refuge from knives,
gunpowder, rain, quicklime,
for nine months in her womb,
she thought of seagulls for my heart,
of sunflowers, interstellar dust, clematis,
and gave me her rivers, her grains of aurora and oats,
her milk, her heat,
her word, source of blood and melody,
and built for me with her hands, with her mouth,
a world of silence and aluminum.
And I grew up
to be aware of destruction,
that the surest word is death,
that sunflowers exist no longer, my yard open to the sun,
the cypress round which I played always alone in the afternoons,
the galaxy that I watched from my telescope as a girl,
and now I live in the winter mist of a ghostforest,
on a journey to the centre of catastrophes,
and now there’s no way back.
Now there’s no way back.
Translation by Dylan Brennan
Audio link to “CANNED COAL BIRD’’ recited by actress Ayesha Mendham, on The Drunken Boat soundcloud station
Erika
Where’s your Nicaragua now?
Where’s your laugh like a nightclub
like a plagueless summer of abundant mangoes
like a morning of skylarks in the window
like a gust of splendid parakeets?
Where’s your electric-fenceless sky
with no watchmen at the gates?
Where’s your sea and the caress of her waves?
Where are the daisies of the city
(killer of the small
of the bread seekers
of those who self-consume like altar candles)?
This country is a death ticket
a prison
in continual decline
for your daily devoured sex
for your 28 gunshot heart
for your unlistened-to symphony.
Nobody knows your real name
a virgin in this carnival of wolves
in this fetid accumulation
in this warren of cocaine.
One day you’ll be
an unidentified corpse.
translation by Dylan Brennan
Editor’s note: in the interview, Miroslava talks about having accompanied a North American photographer who went to red light districts of San Salvador — this gave the poet an opportunity to get to know prostitutes there, many of whom are from Nicaragua and under the surveillance of gangs.
canned coal bird
By Miroslava Rosales
transl. Jessica Rainey
inside the screech
I am a canned coal bird
alone
in every aisle
alone
in a sky that spans a credit card
plastic temple in the hand
sky of plastic and ash
and I
alone
insubordinate flare
firefly
a metal in grief
falling through the cash machine
into the shopping mall pit
into the grave of work days
endless lines
banks
shops and sculpted hair extensions
lines
a catwalk of ants on the rope with no end
watch out
the fire approaches
extinguisher extinguisher
here come the extinguishers
here come the joys of waking
here come the offerings the prayers
the caresses of teddy bears all come into my life
I ride the escalators seeking the sunrise
and I am a coin dropping over the edge
into a cellar I feel trapped
seeing myself in the shop windows alone
the mannequins loyal to the shining night
such a joke those frozen models
and my voice
I don´t recognize
I don´t recognize my voice in this screech of bats
in the same old café
words
like steel
vomit
explosions
rain
all this rain at night
all this rain swiftly entering a body
and draining its vitality
sunrise in the shop window
you see?
an uninstalled heart
in the café
with no one
I ambush dreams, a cigarette quickly burns out
vast networks make newspapers
trade in the ephemeral makes me laugh
life in paper money
life burnt out by paper
efficiency efficiency child
the ghosts tell me
the ghosts throb in the metal
and I
alone
my word an antenna in this sphere
Published in Theatre under my Skin. Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry (Kalina Press, 2014)
allegro vivace
love a single syllable
of electric waterfalls and snowstorms
of planes and kites
doorway to my flaws and shipwrecks
we climb to the same heights
love you taste like níspero honey and oats like an endless earthquake
like melon in a courtyard of clarity and tenderness
like a month of sea air and dolphins
like a kiss beneath a gateway of daisies and polished stars.
love
I have also seen you diluted in days of alcohol and cocaine
in the voice of robert johnson and the electric howls of ginsberg
in dizzy spells
and short-circuits
something about edges entices you until you become one
a solitary and noisy midnight
without sedatives
love
your word is an obelisk that appears on this page without warning
a wellspring where I acknowledge my wounds
you know how much of my foliage was felled in the war
but in this country we come to an allegro vivace
Translation by Jessica Rainey
Published in Theatre under my Skin. Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry (Kalina Press, 2014)
“From the Decapitated Country’’ Dylan Brennan’s prologue to Rosales’ untranslated República del excremento (antología personal mínima)
“país país país país país” — her country is the República del excremento, a place populated by “madres decapitadas y ninfas sarnosas” where life is cheap and depravity is king. Yes, this is poetry that has a social element. The kind of poetry we had forgotten about, poetry that has something to say. Something that needs to be said. Sometimes the metaphors and allusions are useless and the poet needs to simply state the facts as they are. In “Keysi en el barrio El Calvario” Rosales does just that:
En el barrio
el cadáver pequeño de un ángel es encontrado
envuelto en una sábana
This is what happened. This is where it happened. Don’t you dare turn your eyes away from this. Rosales forces us to confront reality, something necessary in a world ever more easily bypassed by online trivialities. But there is beauty here too. “La visita íntima” reminds us that, though we must not fail to acknowledge the horrors that surround us, we must also go on living and, indeed, loving:
¿Por qué no besas mis pezones
y los muerdes
como manzanas en fiesta de año nuevo […]?
The invitation to love takes the form of a question and questions are central to these poems, for it is in these questions that we find the other themes of Rosales’s work, namely love and hope. In “Niña con caramelos y albahaca en el corazón” the young woman who “sabe del peso de la noche y del semen” asks:
¿Algún día morderé la paz?
¿algún día seré un melón luminoso en el centro de un jardín?
The question does two things. It contrasts the beauty of an imagined alternative with the harsh desperation of reality. However, it also presents the possibility of future relief. In intensifying pathos it also depicts the potential for overcoming suffering. Rosales loves her characters, loves her country. For that reason she depicts it as it is while allowing for the possibility of hope:
¿Cuándo serás la música del alba y no de la rabia endurecida?
Make no mistake, Rosales’s voice is her own, but somewhere, no doubt, Roque Dalton is reading, smiling and approving. A fantastic collection of poems.
POEMAS EN IDIOMA ORIGINAL
Erika
¿Dónde quedó tu Nicaragua,
tu risa juguetona parecida a una discoteca,
a un verano de abundantes mangos y sin plaga,
a mañana de alondras en la ventana,
a una ráfaga de espléndidos pericos?
¿Dónde el cielo sin cerco eléctrico,
sin vigilantes a su entrada?
¿Dónde el mar y sus olas de caricias?
¿Dónde las margaritas para la ciudad
(homicida con el pequeño,
con el que busca un pan,
con el que se consume como un cirio)?
Es este país el boleto a la muerte,
la cárcel,
en deterioro progresivo,
para tu sexo devorado diariamente,
para tu corazón con 28 disparos,
para tu sinfonía nunca escuchada.
Nadie sabe tu verdadero nombre,
virgen vos en el carnaval de los lobos,
en este fétido hacinamiento,
en esta colmena de cocaína.
Serás un día
«cadáver no identificado»
pájaro de carbón en lata
en el chillido
soy un pájaro de carbón en lata
sola
en cada pasillo
sola
en el cielo que expande una tarjeta de crédito
templo de plástico en la mano
cielo de plástico y cenizas
y yo
sola
insumisa luz de bengala
luciérnaga
un metal en tristeza
cayendo al cajero
al agujero de un centro comercial
al féretro de las jornadas de trabajo
siguen las filas
los bancos
las tiendas y sus cabelleras de vidrio
las filas
un desfile de hormigas en la cuerda que no cesa
alerta
el incendio se acerca
extintor extintor
vengan los extintores
vengan las alegrías de verse despierta
vengan todas las ofrendas las plegarias
las caricias de osos de felpa a mi vida
Buscando el alba subo las gradas eléctricas
y soy una moneda que cae al precipicio
y es un entrar a sótanos esta sensación
de verse frente a las vitrinas sola
los maniquíes fieles a la noche reluciente
qué risa estos modelos de congelador
y mi voz
no me conozco
no me conozco en este chillido de murciélagos
en el café de siempre
las palabras
como acero
vómito
estallidos
lluvia
cuánta lluvia en la noche
cuánta lluvia se adentra de pronto a un cuerpo
y se adueña de sus energías
el alba en la vitrina
¿sabías?
un corazón desinstalado
en el café
sin nadie
asalto sueños a un cigarro que pronto se apaga
el periódico es una red de kilómetros
me río del negocio de lo efímero
la vida en el papel moneda
y se quema la vida con el papel
eficiencia eficiencia niña
me dicen los fantasmas
los fantasmas palpitan en el metal
y yo
sola
mi palabra una antena en esta esfera
