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Wingka Elegy

on nine eleven seventy-eight
antonio, exiled
from argentina two years before,
made the tape deck play
tangos from five to midnight. you silently
smoked into your bottle of beer, and I
suffered mine, complaining
about the sad concertina
music and words that didn't get
through to me. you said "it's five
years now they killed the president
back home." i had forgotten
the date, and knowing
the general line of events i asked
you to detail your life and friends,
Raúl, down there below the equatorial
belt. my curiosity revived
the hurt, your eyes roamed where i
could not follow. you quoted
Neruda and García Lorca by heart.
i didn't understand the lines
but the melody of solitudo
made me wish i did.
"dale café. mucho café!"
you finally said. the sound
was bitter like coffee
too long on the heater,
yet cold like whips,
or shots in thirty-six at love
drawn away from the Alhambra.
your throttled throat became
a mask denying the essence of
your exiled being and the core
of our existence. you
nobodified the being of
this human Raúl, this me,
that human Federico,
those friends you'd lost,
humans scattered on the lawn
en el estadio de fútbol.
los ningunearon. los ningunearán.
tears suppressed,
truths we attempted to say,
memories we tried both
to keep and to forget
were meant to re-somebodify
those ninguneados para los generales.
we can't restore their bodies, nor
can we complete the poems
that had been drowned
by serving generals' coffee.
we can only hope to keep
alive the love that went
with them. to remember is pain,
but not to remember is
to kill them again, to nullify
what keeps them close to us.
los alguniemos,
Raúl, let's chant for them
"La poesia es un arma
cargada de futuro."
our fears, our tears, our beers
are but guns loaded
with past coffee.
remember singing "Venceremos" once
a las cinco de la tarde.


Footnotes

1 - "Wingka" is a Mapuche word. The Mapuche are the pre-Hispanic inhabitants of Central and Southern Chile and Argentina. Using "wingka", meaning "stranger", they refer to the Hispanic people in that same region.

2 - "Dale café. mucho café" means "Give him coffee. Much coffee". Allegedly one of the Spanish Generals, Queipo de Llano, used this phrase to authorize the killing of Federico García Lorca outside Granada in the early morning of August 19, 1936. (Hence the reference to the Alhambra.) In this phrase, "café" is an acronym for "Comite de Accion de Falange Espanola", the death squad of "los cuatros generales" that shot the poet.

3 - The verb "ninguenear" (from "ninguno", "nobody") is a neologism Octavio Paz created in his study on "máscaras mexicanas" (Mexican masks) to describe the process of becoming nobody from somebody (by wearing the mask). It could be translated by "nobodification". For the purpose of this poem I created a word for the reverse process: "algunear" (from "algún", "somebody"). "Mask" in Octavio's context has to be applied to spiritual and psychological masks as well. The essay by Paz is a study on exiles as well. (The essay is part of "El laberinto de la soledad".) A grammatical explanation: "los ningunearon" is past tense ("they nobodified them"), "los ningunearán" is future ("they will nobodify them", and "los alguniemos" is imperative ("let's somebodify them").

4 - "La poesia es un arma..." is the title of a poem by Gabriel Celaya. The phrase translates to "Poetry is a weapon charged with future."

5 - "Venceremos" is a revolutionary song from Chile (words: Claudio Iturra, music: Sergio Ortega), written I believe in 1970, that had been widely sung by those supporting Allende.

6 - "a las cinco de la tarde" ("at five in the afternoon") is taken from a poem by Federico García Lorca, titled: "Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías" (Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías)

Not surprizingly, I'm impressed by this poem with its flow and brimming content, Tom. I'll print it and your valuable notations and study them later. I'm so glad you've returned to the Forum. You know I mean that [or I wouldn't be saying it].

~ Elizabeth

I cannot help commenting your poetry Tom and I appreciate very much your capacity to open to other cultures and other realities than yours.
Thank you for your poem!

Thank you for your words of kindness.

Elizabeth, I know.

Sandra, I believe the only way to overcome the limitations imposed by the places and people we come from is to embrace different cultures.

Einstein, probably when accused of his theory of relativity not adhering to 'common sense', once said something like: "Common sense is the body of prejudice acquired before we're seventeen."

There must be a way out of it.

Thank you again.

Tom

I love the poem, tom. Spanish has a rhythm that lends itself to poetry, song...

I thought I heard Gabo in there but it could be the Spanish.

Thank you, Linda.

You're right about the rhythm. Just now, as I'm rediscovering the language, I'm overwhelmed by the power of well set Spanish words.

I haven't read García Marquez yet. He's on my short list for many years now, but I somehow never managed it. Your observation could be a reason to plunge into Gabo's work now. Since you seem to be familiar with it: do you have any suggestions where to start? (I got my dictionary at hand... )

Thanks again.

Tom

Try "1 000 years of solitude"

Thanks Jo. You're about 900 years off though.

Thanks

I'll try "Cien Años de Soledad" then.

Oh, I just wanted to add something re: Gabo, I read very recently that he finished and gave to his publisher a completed manuscript, however, he is 76 and in very poor health. Whether he sees his latest work published is a question only his Drs. can answer.

tom, you gave yourself away! I was just about to post a poem under a guest appearance but now that I know you're out there....some other day perhaps.

linda_lakeside wrote:tom, you gave yourself away! I was just about to post a poem under a guest appearance but now that I know you're out there....some other day perhaps.

That was gorgeously written. How often do you write?

i didn't understand the lines
but the melody of solitudo
made me wish i did.

Beautiful.

Another one I recommend by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is "Love in the time of Cholera", which I picked up for 25p in a local library. This one is a bit easier to read than "100 years of solitude", but just as good. I've had some good bargains when the library sells off their well-used stock I'm sure he has just recently had a new novel published, it was mentioned by someone here recently. There is also an autobiography just published too, "Living to tell the tale"

Innocent Errendira (sp?) is one that I saw in a dog of a movie. It is in his collected stories, I think. Errendira is mentioned (but briefly) in 100 yrs. - I love the refrain of her Grandmother: "Errendira, before you go to bed, don't forget to feed the ostriches and water the graves." Irene Pappas played the Grandmother - she was perfect - the movie was not. As far as I know, that is the only thing he's allowed to be put on film. Thank goodness. I don't know who would have an ego so big as to think they could interpret his work on film.