After Rubén
Page 4
touched with desolation, offered
a prayer only the wind in the forest
could hear, carrying it skyward.
after Rubén Darío’s “Los motivos del lobo”
LIU MINGHE SPEAKS
A hyena upon an animal still breathing, he questioned me
I was told it would last for days
His voice clutched my frozen heart
My lungs burned my temples throbbed—night revolving my eyes
A silent tribe of spiders began spinning a web in my brain
Bells occasionally howled—homeless spirits endlessly moaning
I was handcuffed to a window, so I stood, or hung, from my wrists
Several of my lower teeth left me during my visit
To open, with a withered hand, the lid of a coffin, and climb inside
At first, I didn’t butter my hair
I breakfasted on air, on rock, on coal, on iron
My clothes were rotting rags, my bread soggy with rain
I ate by lowering my head into a bowl
I ate fever with my watery vegetables
For sixteen months my hands and feet were shackled
I slept on boards, or on the ground—a book
Les Poètes Maudits my pillow, my only companion
My skin was ravaged with mud, my armpits full of worms
Enormous province whose sky is flecked with fire and mud
Weighing on me like a lid
Pouring down days as dark as nights
Sometimes the rain mimicked the bars
Funeral processions—no drums, no music—filed slowly inside me
Hope wept, stabbing its stalk in my skull
Sometimes I saw in the sky endless beaches
I tried to invent new flowers, new tongues, new stars
Fear and suffering evaporating in the air
The hallucination of words
On my hospital bed that smell comes back to me still
I have dyed my hair black to erase those years
HELEN SPEAKS
June, 2017
Tonight I will sit in the dark
people the wall of my sorrow
Roberto was a busser I was a server
he came to visit an aunt and stayed
he started talking and I tried
to ignore him he kept on talking
smiling and smiling and smiling
full of smiles and careful words
we got married had three kids
settled into a comfortable life
I wanted to understand the madness
the sad slouch of justice
we met in ’98 in Fort Wayne
years and years went by until
Eddie’s Steak Shed in Granger
we lived in Mishawaka
your husband is being detained
because he’s a fugitive they said
my husband’s not running
from you you didn’t come
knocking on our door I said
he came to you he’d been told
to leave in 2000 I was pregnant
and sick and so again he stayed
he’s been moved from Wisconsin
to Lousiana and more recently
El Paso Texas one night they
suddenly told him it was time
to get his stuff put him in the back
of a van sped for the border
he was dropped off forced
to walk to Mexico the children
eight-year-old Demetri fourteen-year-old
Jasmine sixteen-year-old Maria
are having a difficult time
since he’s been gone the restaurant
has received threatening calls
and angry letters pack your bags
and go to Mexico said one
earlier today staring in the mirror:
your skin is bitter like suffering
what have you done voting for trump
with Andrés Montoya
ACADEMIA ESCOLAR
Managua, the ’40s
Her look
could undo. Not
the most soothing thing I could say . . .
The day they said we’d
be let out early
a bubbly mood spread
among us as we planned
the afternoon—impromptu
stick ball, that dusty lot . . .
The Academy’s front gate
clicked
shut behind us
when someone saw her
behind a car, arms
folded across her chest.
I had no reason to, but
that unexpected sight
made me flinch—
an eight-year-old child
frightened. Think
about it. A boy.
Afraid of his mother.
for my father
THE CENTURY
Episode two with Peter Jennings
—Adolph, as a young man,
was denied entry to Art School.
What could be worse than a bitter
mediocre artist with a plan?
In the second segment you see
a physicist at twenty-four, the moving
picture a grainy gray—he nibbles
a strawberry, sips a flute of cava, swings
in his moments of free time
a racket, his stint at Los Alamos
intense. The Manhattan Project.
Today another face—captured,
bruised—on Good Morning America:
the screen says Lopez and I see a trace
of him: my brother at seventeen,
those postcards home from Camp
Pendleton, the scribbled pride
of his “ass-kicking platoon.” Reading
them I was following him: ten-year-old
as future marine—like chanting
oblivious, the rich syllables
of a word, a slogan
a country, that man’s name.
1999
III
PORTRAIT WITH LINES OF MONTALE
A patch of town-sick country
The old shop window shuttered and harmless
An odor of bruised melons oozes from the floor
Among wicker furniture and a mattress
Mildew like grass sprouts as well
The delicate capillaries of slime
Signs of quite another orbit
The ungraspable gorge
Sentiments and sediment
Where my carved name quivers
His laugh is jagged coughing
for my father
WE TALK DOGS
Or the one Maria found, trotting
along the banks of the Yuba—
the river his name, red
scarf around the snowy neck
that week of camping, coaxed
onto the backseat and taken home . . .
He mentions one—de raza alemana, he says
and I’m almost charmed by the voice:
telling how he’d tie his German
shepherd to a pole, escort her
to church: Plaza Santo
Domingo flanked by the park, kiosk
beside the roasting beef, pleasant
olor de carne asada wafting
to the bench after mass
where they talked—she mostly:
her sewing, her trip to Panama
in search of wholesale fabrics . . .
—I’m trying to picture it: Managua
in the fifties, my father’s
plane lifting off, touching
down, sending for her months later,
big with Maria, as I’m also
trying to picture him
on the other end of the line: in his
sixties, portly, sugar
in his blood, a whiff of something
on his breath as he speaks
of the Sacramento
River: pole and gear, s
ixpack,
Rocky and Comet slinking behind
—but the car’s busted now, he says
basting in gravel
near Chico. He gets to bed
past three, watching Cristina,
the Tuesday Night Fights, sunk
in a beat-up armchair:
replay of that memorable bout, Aaron
Pryor delivering a blur of shots
to the head, Alexis Arguello absorbing them . . .
During the phone call
we talk dogs. He had three,
we had two—something
I suppose, in common;
this talk of ours
a first.
VOICES
In bed, yes, during a state
between sleep and wakefulness:
she’d speak to me then, spirit
to spirit—not speech, exactly,
but a voice from her realm
to mine, though once she sang
“Caminito” by Carlos Gardel.
A large picture of me
in a white T-shirt taken
by a photographer friend.
She had it framed, placed
atop the dresser. “What became
of it?” I whispered to her . . .
I stuffed it in the drawer.
Didn’t feel like looking
at you anymore.
Once, she talked about my shirts,
the ones I did the plumbing in.
She’d put them on the pillow
to trick herself, closing her eyes:
I still slept, still snored beside her.
I cursed, swore, spit a palabrota
and off she bolted. Playa Pochomil.
Have you seen her, I said, and friends
pointed to the trucks, so I scoured
the beach, looking and looking
till finally I spotted her, crouched
up on a bluff overlooking
the surf. I saw you, she whispered,
calling my name.
I was testing you.
While in bed, yes, during a state
between sleep and wakefulness:
she’d speak to me then, spirit
to spirit—not speech, exactly,
but a voice from her realm
to mine, though once she sang
“Caminito” by Carlos Gardel.
NICARAGUA IN A VOICE
More than the poems
—the fruits that sang
their juices; dolls, feverish,
dreaming of nights,
city streets—for me it was
the idle chat between the poems:
cordial, intimate almost . . .
like a river’s murmur
as if a place—León,
Granada—could speak,
whistle, inhabit
a timbre . . . as if, closing
my eyes, I had it again,
once more within reach:
his voice—my father
unwell, won’t speak.
CANCIÓN
A dog I love growls
at the sight of me,
can no longer bear
his diablos, crazed
with the here, there,
how, all around him
the air howling. I sense
temptation to dive
into the void—glint
of his coat, hint
of a yelp a blade
to the throat.
Unclench, I say;
look: your ghost
father swims
in your ghost mother,
opens his snout
in your direction,
the sound reaching you,
soothes your sleep,
puts out the blaze
in your head,
is a quilt wrapped
around you, unfurls
down the path you tread,
or flaps in the wind
while you feed, keeps
you company, though
your spirit
is still a fuse—
SEASHELL
(Rubén Darío)
Half-hidden in the sand
is where I find it—embroidered
with golden pearls like the one
she held, riding over the water
on a bull. To my lips
I raise it, provoke echoes . . .
then press it to my ear
to hear the bluest fathoms
whisper of their riches.
This is how the salt
of a storm slowly fills me,
how those sails billowed
when stars fell for Jason.
And I listen to the voice
of a wave—deep
indecipherable wind . . . (the shell
is in the shape of a heart)
for Antonio Machado
AFTER FRAGMENTS OF JUAN FELIPE HERRERA
Hands:
Small, brown, like your father’s, cradle the timepiece he gave you, your eyes looking down at it, your feet half in, half out, the Pacific, your shorts cutoffs, frayed, your T-shirt white, like the one he wears in the photograph, Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, you half laugh a little, lips slightly parted, if only you could talk into the wee hours, that time you visited twenty years ago, instead you mumble to yourself, your legs fatigued, blemished, you hadn’t noticed, phantom days, phantom nights, and now pretending to run along this shore, esta orilla, you have arrived by chance, re-creating him—in this poem
Eyes:
Here I am again, attempting to swim, my breast stroke reduced to rubble after decades of sifting, the years, I hadn’t noticed how flabby my arms had become, giggling in the moonlight a distant memory, summer nights we sneaked out, down to that corner of the river no one spoke of openly, side by side we would laugh and lick, laugh and lick, giving new meaning to a phrase, slip of the tongue, and no buttons to undo, no shirts to strain to see through, the rags of our clothes in a heap back at the cabin, instead the wet sand films our arms, our hands, our legs, as we cross, easily, the sea of our gaze
A WAVE
of the past as I walk
by a window boarded-up
breaks—cold
in winter and in
summer hot where
spiders lived and dust
filmed everything
in that storefront
that was his home. Or
a madcap air in May
or a combination
of words can bring
a voice to the surface
—it’s that I . . . at the
thought of him
which, more today
than yesterday,
is like approaching
a grave. His calls
before my first visit
flickered weekly,
are ash now. Cities
changed their names:
Madrid became
Corning became Davis,
South Bend,
D.C. I know
the beginnings
and the ends
of things. I
curb myself,
swallow what
cannot change.
But still, it is
there (he who
was torn
away no
longer
needs). But isn’t
it time this grew
fruitful, time
I loose myself
and, though unsteady,
move on—the way
the arrow, suddenly
all vector
survives the string?
with Akhmatova and Rilke
for my father
HOTEL MIRROR
Looking I thought: hair.
And a voice said
On your head? where?
Who is that staring back
with such a round face,
that paunch? Father
or son?
IV
WALT
His country of iron where he lives: an older man, fatherly, strong, wholesome, calm,
his appearance impressive—the furrow of his brow persuades and charms, no end
to his soul that mimics a mirror, the tired curve of his shoulders draped with a cloak;
and with his harp—carved from oak—he sings his song like a prophet. He’s a priest
fueling a wind that promises and promises . . . Fly! he says to an eagle, to a seaman: Row!
while a chiseled, robust worker hears: Put your shoulder to the wheel! This is the path
our poet takes
—magnificent
face
after Rubén Darío’s “Walt Whitman”
BECAUSE THEY LIVED ABROAD
to write about a loved author
would be to follow the trails he follows . . .
—Susan Howe
—or Rubén’s Parisian phase
How during those nine
months he and Amado
shared an apartment
in Montmartre
rue du Faubourg
their all-consuming flesh
their melancholy exile
Stood where Vallejo would
the melancholia of Darío
Nervo Vallejo Between them
shared what they lacked
We track our own desire
that soul-is-content paradox
as in those lines that still