ALVARO MUTIS

Alvaro Mutis has become one of my favorite writers. i'm posting a poem of his here and hope you enjoy it.

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Tequila

by Alvaro Mutis

translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander

—for María and Juan Palomar

Tequila is a clean flame that clambers up the walls
and shoots over tiled roofs, relief to despair.
Tequila isn’t for sailors
because it blurs the navigational instruments
and dismisses the wind’s tacit orders.
But tequila, on the other hand, enraptures those returning by train
and those driving the train, because it stays faithful
and blind in its loyalty to the rails’ parallel delirium
and to hurried greetings in the stations
where the train pauses to testify to
its inscrutable destination, errant, subject to the inevitable laws.
There are trees under whose shadow it is wonderful to drink it
with the parsimony of those who preach in wind
and other trees where tequila can’t stand the shade
that dims its powers and in whose branches it stirs up
a flower blue as the warnings on bottles of poison.
When tequila waves its fringed, serrated flag,
the battle halts and armies return
the order they intended to impose.
Often two squires accompany it: salt and lime.
But it is always ready to start the conversation
without any more help than its lustrous clarity.
From the start, tequila doesn’t recognize borders.
But there are propitious climates
just as certain hours suggest it, knowing full well: to fix
the time when night arrives at its stores,
in the splendor of an afternoon without obligations,
in the highest pitch of doubt and hesitation.
It is then when tequila offers us its consoling lesson,
its infallible joy, its unreserved indulgence.
Also, there are foods that call for its presence:
those springing from the ground from which it, too, was born.
Inconceivable if they didn’t bond with millenary certainty.
To break that pact would be a grave breach with dogma
prescribed to allay the rough job of living.
If “gin smiles like a dead girl,”
tequila spies on us with the green eyes of a prudent sentry.
Tequila has no history, no anecdote
confirming its birth. It is so from the beginning
because it is the gift of the gods
and, usually, when they promise something they aren’t telling tales.
That is the office of mortals, children of panic and habit.
Such is tequila and so it will be
keeping us company
all the way to the silence from which no one returns.
Praise be, then, until the end of our days
and praise the daily effort toward denying that end.

Alvaro Mutis was born in Bogota, Colombia, in 1923 and educated in Belgium. Since 1956 he has lived primarily in Mexico where he has worked for Columbia Pictures TV. Mutis has published several volumes of fiction, including The Adventures of Magroll. (1996)

Forrest Gander’s most recent books of poetry are Deeds of Utmost Kindness and Lynchburg. With the poet C. D. Wright, he edits Lost Roads Publishers and works outside of Providence. (1996)

The Ides of March

REMEMBERING THE JUNGLE

If we could only

Remember how the

Words worked, the ones

That helped change the seasons

So that no one would notice

Until time itself had piled

Up snow or leaves or

Rain upon rain into the center

Of a month, but we

Could not. Here faces were burned

Off, limbs were regarded

As cord wood, milk spilled

From mouths. We could not

Begin to disguise our disgust

Of the shape dreams made

On the walls of our villages.

Someone said the wands had been

Taken from the area long ago.

Still, we could see lights in the jungle

Night occasionally. They were music.

They were our voices.

We thought they were our homes on fire.

HOW CAN WE SING KING ALPHA’S SONG IN A STRANGE LAND

The captain he come down and tell

Us come to the forest. We need

To see the trees. We tell the captain

We have seen the trees and now we

Sleep so we can work in the morning

Time. But the captain say ‘Come now!”

We come up the country to where

The trees were cut down and there was

Rain coming down, coming down hard on

Where the trees were cut but nowhere

Else just where the trees were cut.

How can this be? We asked the captain.

But the captain is a believing man and he

Tell us to make up the tents and go

Before morning come. The rain

Where the trees were come down

Harder and harder and begins to make

The ground very damp so things

Sink in the ground. Pretty soon

The big trucks are very deep in the ground

Above the wheels and the cars go away.

But the rain that is where the trees were

Does not stop and we come all over

With a fear in ourselves and we take

The tents and go to the north

Where we can see the hills.

The sky looks like it is full of water

From the holes the rain comes down,

Just where the trees were cut down.

It looks like columns of rain.

Rain is broken water. Maybe it will

Not stop. The captain says go so we

Go and sleep high on the hills.

We hear the animals leaving all night.

It is a frightful sound with this dark

And the rain coming down so hard.

It did not stop until noon the next

Day but we were gone. The captain he

Tell us to keep going so we travel. Keep on.

THE DAY

So small, the day, standing slightly

Bow-legged, hand on its collection

Of hours, a goofy grin on its face.

I walk with you down a street

Bright with all the tea in China.

There is wild music in the signs and colors.

There are perfect clouds a-roil above.

The buildings giving everything a just

Washed look, like the way your eyes do.

And sun, leaning into the street,

Scattering the cars before it comes

Swooping into your face. I cannot

Tell it from you or your from it.

Here it seems as if every day looks

This way. We watch it hitch its

Thumbs in its belt and follow

It from bookstore to school yard

As if it really could go on into tomorrow.

BUNCH OF IMAGES I LIKE

CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER

Here are a few illustrations from the de Quincey book by Lawrence Chaves from the Illustrated Editions New York printing of the classic 1932.

Thank you Mr. Door Tree.

THE CAPTAIN'S PRAYER

The following is the Captain's prayer from Alvaro Mutis' novella The Snow on the Admiral translated by Edith Grossman

THE CAPTAIN’S PRAYER

from The Snow of the Admiral

Alvaro Mutis

High calling of my protectors, those who have gone

before me, my constant guides and mentors,

come now in this moment of danger, extend your sword,

with firmness uphold the law of your purpose,

revoke the disorder of birds and creatures of evil omen,

wash clean the hall of innocents

where the vomit of the rejected congeals lieke a sign of

misfortune, where the garments of the supplicant

are a blemish that deflects our compass, makes our cal-

culations uncertain, our forecasts mistaken.

I invoke your presence at this hour and deplore with all

my heart the manacles of my equivocations:

my pact with man-eating leopards in the mangers,

my weakness and tolerance for serpents that shed their

skin at the mere shout of lost hunters,

my communion with bodies that have passed from hand

to hand like a staff to ford a stream, and on whose skin the

saliva of the humble is crystallized,

my ability to contrive the lie of power and cleverness

that moves my brothers away from upright steadiness in

their purposes,

my carelessness in proclaiming your power in customs

offices and guardrooms, in pavilions of sorrow and on pleas-

ure boats, in guard towers along the border and in the corri-

dors of the powerful.

Wipe away in a single stroke all this misfortune and in-

famy, save me,

certain of my obedience to your bitter laws, your abu-

sive haughtiness, your distant occupations, your desolate

arguments.

I give myself completely to the domination of your unob-

jectionable mercy, and with all humility I prostrate myself

at your feet

to remind you that I am a traveler in mortal danger, that

my ghost is worth nothing, that those who perish far from

home are like trash swept into a corner of the market,

that I am your servant and am helpless, and that these

words contain the unalloyed metal of one who has paid the

tribute

owed to you now and forever throughout pale eternity

Amen.

Here are two poems by Taylor Graham I really enjoyed. Hope you do as well and that she doesn't mind.

Taylor Graham

HOW THE STORY GOES

From heath-land to plain to escarpment,

broken reed at water’s edge, we’ve

searched for the bridging point, a way

across. Past summer, the air’s still

full of wasps, yellow swarms like tiny

ticking clocks too fast to count how time

passes into fall. We find their

paper-nests empty, deserted as winter.

I keep a paper-journey, journal

of passage place to place, always later.

Green rooms of grain-fields scythed.

Click-tick of rats in stubble, dry music

that repeats in dream. Night

watches, fires seen as far as the horizon,

swarming distant light. Life is always

a flight risk, time indigenous

as a rodent’s tooth. A king in exile

seeks home, memory, his mind. And so

we wander. How does this end?

Shadows drain color from landscape

on the other side. In time,

the page I write is paper consumed

to pulp. Tomorrow

we might find the bridging point.

MESSAGES TO EARTH

—Taylor Graham

We sent our Curiosity to Mars. But waiting

is so difficult for humans. What could we ever

solve? death, or love, peace, or hunger, life?

Late at night, might a computer record blips

from space, to chart them like French

or German for tense, mood, and person?

I follow rabbit-trails of dream in my sleep.

But my hair reaches out wild in all

directions, antennae for receiving signals.

One who knows names of stars

gazes into the night sky focusing on

the brightest body, visible at solstice

this bleakest time of year when the soul

seems ice-crystal. Planet or star?

Are its pulses a Morse code we might

decipher, to learn a language beyond

our grammar, our tongues to pronounce,

our human translations?

New Year

I liked these house images a friend of mine put up on Facebook. The poems are from last month at Medusa's Kitchen. Enjoy. Happy New Year.

O ALL THAT IS TRUE


O all that is true and beautiful
In the story books of children
Are the lights that make her
Skin glow so that the Powers
And the Principalities come
To sing before the Throne of her smile.

And she sees everything. The rat
Gnawing its way into the soldier's
Body, the claw and eyes of a great
Bird depends on her lovely eyes
And this dirt is made to run
With blood again and again.

O I believe in life. The sun cresting
The morning with its new light.
O I believe in love and all who do
Not are the enemy of truth.

And still they will come and bend
Their heads to please you but you will
Have wonder holding your hand,
The perfect shape of everything.

______________________

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

Make no mistake, the darkness
Will come to the perfect world.
These songs are but the wings that carry
Us into those green and breezy hills.

The red deer move on the top
Of the hills. Their shadows are
Bright yellow and look like flame.

You won’t find anyone if you climb
Up past the house and the barn,
Where the cabbage has been planted.
It looks like a bouquet for giants,
But purple with leaves big as
An adagio lost on a plain
Or a field of ice. We, yes, we can
See you even there. See the sun
Is coming even at this hour to take
Itself from the tops of waves,
Huge sheets of light full from the
Leaves of trees. We wait by the camp
Fire, telling stories.