Dawn

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Now the roosters are singing.
Natalia, your rooster’s already sung, sister,
Justo, yours has already sung, brother.
Get up off your cots, your bed mats.
I seem to hear the congos awake on the ohter coast.
We can already blow on the kindling – throw out the pisspot.
Bring an oil lamp so we can see the faces.
A dog in a hut yelped
and a dog from another hut answered.
Juana, it’s time to light the stove, sister.
The dark is even darker because day is coming.
Get up Chico, get up Pancho.
There’s a horse to mount,
we have to paddle a canoe.
Our dreams had us separated, in folding
cots and bed mats (each of us dreaming our own dream)
but our awakening reunites us.
The night already draws away followed by its witches and ghouls.
We will see the water very blue; right now we don’t see it. – And
this land with its fruit trees, which we also don’t see.
Wake up Pancho Nicaragua, grab your machete
there’s a lot of weeds to cut
grab your machete and your guitar.
There was a owl at midnight and a hoot owl at one.
The night left without moon or any morning star.
Tigers roared on this island and those on the coast called back.
Now the night bird’s gone, the one that says: Sc-rewed, Sc-rewed.
Later the skylark will sing in the palm tree.
She’ll sing: Compañero
Compañera.
Ahead of the light goes the shade flying like a vampire.
Wake up you, and you, and you.
(Now the roosters are singing.)
Good morning, God be with you!

~Ernesto Cardinal~
(translation by Mark Zimmerman)

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What can I say in my drab prose about this beautiful poem….

Just listen to those words “Our dreams had us separated, in folding
cots and bed mats (each of us dreaming our own dream)but our awakening reunites us“

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The Parrots

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My friend Michel is an army officer
in Somoto up near the Honduran border,
and he told me he had found some contraband parrots
waiting to be smuggled to the United States
to learn to speak English there.

There were 186 parrots
with 47 already dead in their cages.
He drove them back where they’d been taken from
and as the lorry approached a place known as The Plains
near the mountains which were these parrots’ home
(behind those plains the mountains stand up huge)
the parrots got excited, started beating their wings
and shoving against their cage-sides.

When the cages were let open
they all shot out like an arrow shower
straight for their mountains.

The Revolution did the same for us I think:
It freed us from the cages
where they trapped us to talk English,
it gave us back the country
from which we were uprooted,
their green mountains restored to the parrots
by parrot-green comrades.

But there were 47 that died.

~Ernesto Cardenal~

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Ernesto Cardenal, poet, revolutionary, Sandanista, Minister of Culture in the revolutionary government which came to power in Nicaragua in 1979 after deposing the dictator Somoza. Ernesto Cardenal, Catholic priest, who defied Pope John Paul’s orders to disassociate himself with the Sandanistas to stand by his people.

There was this poem of his which had these two beautiful lines:

We have always wanted something beyond what we wanted

and

The bourgeois begins to go astray at his mother’s breast

Today I post these poems by Nicanor Parra and Ernesto Cardenal to celebrate the victory of the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, to celebrate the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, to cheer the first Aymara Indian, Evo Morales, to become the President of Bolivia…

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The Last Toast

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Whether we like it or not,
We have only three choices:
Yesterday, today and tomorrow.

And not even three
Because as the philosopher says
Yesterday is yesterday
It belongs to us only in memory:
From the rose already plucked
No more petals can be drawn.

The cards to play
Are only two:
The present and the future.

And there aren’t even two
Because it’s a known fact
The present doesn’t exist
Except as it edges past
And is consumed…,
like youth.

In the end
We are only left with tomorrow.
I raise my glass
To the day that never arrives.

But that is all
we have at our disposal.

~Nicanor Parra~

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Something Like That

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PARRA LAUGHS like he’s condemned to hell
but when haven’t poets laughed?
at least he declares that he’s laughing

they pass the years pass
the years
at least they seem to be passing
hypothesis non fingo
everything goes on as if they were passing

now he starts to cry
forgetting that he’s an antipoet.

00 00 00

MY CORPSE and I
understand each other marvelously
my corpse asks me: do you believe in God?
and I respond with a hearty NO
my corpse asks: do you believe in the government?
and I respond with the hammer and sickle
my corpse asks: do you believe in the police?
and I respond with a punch in the face
then he gets up out of his coffin
and we go arm in arm to the altar

00 00 00

THE TRUE PROBLEM of philosophy
is who does the dishes

nothing otherworldly

God
the truth
the passage of time
absolutely
but first, who does the dishes

whoever wants to do them, go ahead
see ya later, alligator
and we’re right back to being enemies

00 00 00

~Nicanor Parra~
(translation by Liz Werner)

Chronos

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In Santiago, Chile
The days are interminably long:
Several eternities in a day.

Like the vendors of seaweed
Travelling on the backs of mules:
You yawn – you yawn again.

Yet the weeks are short
The months go racing by
And the years have wings.

~Nicanor Parra~

——————————–
Nicanor Parra was a beautiful poet, often overshadowed by his more famous compatriot and comrade, Pablo Neruda.

Born in a small town of southern Chile in 1914, Nicanor Parra “has taught us – has forced us – to come to poetry with new eyes. More than that, he has made us look with new eyes at all the things of this world : airplanes and pencils, crankshafts and flies and pianos. He has redefined the poem in such a way as only a few have done. And in doing so he has redefined the world in which the poem is written and the hand that writes it …”

There was this one line in a poem I read by him as a teenager which has stayed with me forever

In America liberty is a statue

unfortunately, I just can’t seem to find the poem now.

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Do not stand by my grave and weep

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Do not stand at my grave and weep:
I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the softly falling snow,
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the field of ripening grain.

I am in the morning hush,
I am in the grateful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight.
I am the starshine of the night.

I am in the flowers that bloom.
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing.
I am in each lovely thing.

So do not stand by my grave and cry.
I am not there.
I did not die.

Mary E. Frye

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Again this is a poem which I have not read earlier, but discovered it while spending a whole evening aimlessly wandering the internet. There was this post-script at the end of this poem:
Throughout the years, this poem has appeared in many places and in many forms. The original was written in 1942 by Baltimorean Mary Frye on the back of a brown paper bag. Frye wrote the poem for a friend whose mother had died in Germany; the daughter had been unable to attend the funeral because of World War II.

ON A TIRED HOUSEWIFE

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Here lies a poor woman who was always tired,
She lived in a house where help wasn’t hired:
Her last words on earth were: ‘Dear friends, I am going
To where there’s no cooking, or washing, or sewing,
For everything there is exact to my wishes,
For where they don’t eat there’s no washing of dishes.
I’ll be where loud anthems will always be ringing,
But having no voice I’ll be quit of the singing.
Don’t mourn for me now, don’t mourn for me never,
I am going to do nothing for ever and ever.’

An anonymous poem

I have no idea about this poem and found it while searching for some poems posted in this blog. But since I like lyrical manifestos, I decided to post it too…. Does anyone know anything about this poem?

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Raat Tinter Sonnet (Sonnets for 3 A.M.)

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Shudhu tai pobitro, ja byaktigoto| gobheer sondhyay
norom, achchonno aalo; holde-mlan boi-er patay
lukono nakkhatro ghirey akasher mato andhokar;
athoba atwar chithi, madhyoraate lajuk tandray

durer bondhu ke lekha| Jishu ki paropokari
chhilen, tomra bhabo? Na ki Buddha kono samitir
manoniyo bachal, porishromi, asheetir
mohogrosto sabhapoti? uddharer sottadhikari

byatibyasto pandader jagajhompo, chamor, pahara
eriye achhen tNara udasin, shanto, channachhara|

~ Buddhadeva Bose ~
……………………………..

Only the personal is holy.
A shaded lamp
Then evening deepens: darkness spread like a sky
Around the hidden star of a yellowed page;
A letter written in the shy half-sleep of midnight,
Idly, to a distant friend. Do you think that Christ
was a philanthrophist? Or Buddha a committee chairman, hard-working,
venerable, loquacious,
nibbling vain saliva? Far from the drums and watchmen
All the wholesale vendors of salvation,
Deftly they walk their ways of vagrancy.

(Translation from Bengali by poet himself)

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Thanks to Bishnu for sharing this poem.

Skipping Without Ropes

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I will, I will skip without your rope
Since you say I should not, I cannot
Borrow your son’s skipping rope to
Exercise my limbs; I will skip without

Your rope as you say, even the lace
I want will hang my neck until I die;
I will create my own rope, my own
Hope and skip without your rope as

You insist I do not require to stretch
My limbs fixed by these fevers of your
Reeking sweat and your prison walls;
I will, will skip with my forged hope;

Watch, watch me skip without your
Rope; watch me skip with my hope –
A-one, a-two, a-three, a-four, a-five
I will, a-seven, I do, will skip, a-ten,

Eleven, I will skip without, will skip
Within and skip I do without your
Rope but with my hope; and I will,
Will always skip you dull, will skip

Your silly rules, skip your filthy walls,
You weevil pigeon peas, skip your
Scorpions, skip your Excellency Life
Glory. I do, you don’t, I can, you can’t,

I will, you won’t, I see, you don’t, I
Sweat, you don’t, I will, will wipe my
Gluey brow then wipe you at a stroke
I will, will wipe your horrid, stinking,

Vulgar prison rules, will wipe you all
The hop about, hop about my cell, my
Home, the mountains, my globe as your
Sparrow hops about your prison yard

Without your hope, without your rope,
I swear, I will skip without your rope, I
Declare, I will have you take me to your
Showers to bathe me where I can resist

This singing child you want to shape me,
I’ll fight your rope, your rules, your hope
As your sparrow does under your super-
vision! Guards! Take us for a shower!

~ Jack Mapanje ~

A Malawian poet.

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Aparna who introduced me to this poem had this to say “he was imprisoned by the malawian government for a while. the reason this poem is so dear to me is that it narrates the reselience of the human spirit even when faced with the worst of situations. imprison, kill, torture, demean, do whatver you want, but the human spirit never dies, never stops hoping and most importantly never burns out!”

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Mother

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Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb
Mother do you think they’ll like the song
Mother do you think they’ll try to break my balls
Ooooh aah, Mother should I build a wall
Mother should I run for president
Mother should I trust the government
Mother will they put me in the firing line
Ooooh aah, is it just a waste of time
Hush now baby, baby don’t you cry
Mama’s gonna make all of your
Nightmares come true
Mama’s gonna put all of her fears into you
Mama’s gonna keep you right here
Under her wing
she won’t let you fly but she might let you sing
Mama will keep baby cosy and warm
Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe
Of course Mama’s gonna help build the wall

Mother do think she’s good enough for me
Mother do think she’s dangerous to me
Mother will she tear your little boy apart
Oooh aah, mother will she break my heart
Hush now baby, baby don’t you cry
Mama’s gonna check out all your girl friends for you
Mama won’t let anyone dirty get through
Mama’s gonna wait up till you get in
Mama will always find out where
You’ve been
Mamma’s gonna keep baby healthy and clean
Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe Ooooh Babe
You’ll always be a baby to me
Mother, did it need to be so high.

~ Pink Floyd ~

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