CASCADIASOLIDARIA

Poems and Translationsby Phil Neff

Maximón, San Andrés Xecul, Iximulew2

Dedicated to“El Mono” Victor Leiva,

Guatemalan artist & youth activistkilled February 2, 2011.

The systemEduardo Galeano (Uruguay)The machine persecutes youth:locks them up, tortures them, kills them. They are the living proof of its impotence. It throws them out:it sells them, human flesh, to foreigners.The sterile machine hates everything that grows and moves.It is only able to multiply jails and cemeteries.It produces nothing but prisoners and cadavers, spies and police, beggars and exiles.To be young is a crime.Reality commits it every day at the hour of dawn;and also history, which is born anew each day.This is why reality and history are prohibited.

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Poems

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Interment (For those who have not lived to see justice)

The General's sickroom is a cell—through drapes a glimpseof bloody bougainvillea,an elegant spiral of razor wire.Withering fingers grip the stock of a rifle,shove home a bayonet to its depths,grasping at satin sheets.The voice that severed the raw will of conscripts,exhorting conquest of coward morality,is silenced in fevered gasps.Somatic provinces in open revolt,its body becomes shadowof the blood-slicked torture chamber.His will be an honorable death,unstained by official infamy.Military-school comrades will send their condolences,bouquets stinking with hollow awarenessof their creeping fates.The General will be congratulated in stateby high society, by the economists,for a life spent crushing the dreamsof peoples whose dreams mean nothing to their world,except as things to be crushed,and feared.

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The General yet sleeps fitfully,suffocating on a goose-down pillow.Silent men and women come to his bedside,dressed brightly, as for a carnival procession.The celebrants carry heavy sacks anchored to their foreheads,small wooden boxes balanced like crowns.The lids are lifted with an echoof laughter disinterred.A sudden cry—the notes of laughter crystallize their air,falling in a rain of shattered bones.With a sighing of machetes the sacks are slit open—in the dream of the celebrantsthe General drownsin a torrent of ashes.

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Blasphemies for San Simón

Pilgrims, we enter your sanctumthrough a courtyard of hungry kittens,unstable helices of flies,hermetic diagrams on the wallsglimpsed in passing.Within you reign imperiousover the ghosts of a thousand melted prayers.Your priest stirs the charring blood-resin smokeof a caramelizing axis mundiin celestial dyed sugar,compass rose symmetry of hen’s eggs,murmurs a litanyto your holiest of places and incarnations—“San Simón de San Andrés Xecúl...San Simón de Zunil...San Simón de Santiago Atitlán...San Simón de San Andrés Itzapa...San Simón de Nahualá...San Simón de San Jorge La Laguna...

“Volcan Tajamulco...Volcan Santa María...Volcan Santiaguito...Volcan Pacaya...Volcan Chicabal...Volcanes de Agua y de Fuego...”

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Maximón,you beautiful bastard!Maximón, vindictive and beneficentin your blessings and curses!I imagine yousitting by some crossroadnot far from Hell,in resplendent motley, mustachiosand stunna-shades glinting,sharing a jointand a flask of firewaterwith your old friend Papa Legba,telling dirty jokes, whistlingancient lecher, you accostour passing souls, laughing,“Pinches gringos turistashijos de la gran puta...”while Saint Judas hangs outnearby in his olive tree,watching with mournful X'sin his eyes...San Simón de San Andrés Xecúl…Volcán Chicabal…Infinite Iximulew,I offer you nothingbut these dozen white candles,and this black flower makes thirteen.* San Simon aka Maximón is a Guatemalan folk saint of mysterious and ancient origin... Papa Legba is a

Vodou deity that shares some interesting similarities with San Simon.

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Q . E . P . D .

Only a scent of sulfurat the scene of the assassination—no carnations spilled along the roadsidein floral epitaph,where the congressman,party of “mano dura,”manager of the Fuentes Georginashot-springs resort,was machine-gunnedby unknown assailantsa few days past.Routine political violence.The dead man's brother keeps vigil,guarding the gate to the spring—paramilitary mourning-garb,rostro preocupado.Tourists pass by the truckload, witnessesto no miraculous discolorationof the bitter volcanic waters—obscure vapor rises ceaselesslythrough primeval foliage.

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Ixcán haiku

Sunset-colored soilbeneath my feet, horizona soil-stained sunset.Ravenous jungle,devouring in being devoured—a spray of orchids.Glittering spiders' eyesunder the headlamp at night—brighter than dewdrops.Fireflies flyingamidst the swarming of stars.Water, a mirror.

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Carnivore

A glimpse of carnagethrough the door of the butcher's shop—purple private interiority,yellow glistening huddle of chickens,pungent being pendulous on the meat hook,fly-ridden ethereality of flesh.

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The clouds in Guatemala

In Guatemala the cloudsslide down the skirts of the volcanoesinto the caldera lake,rustling and roaringwith the rain approaching—We swam this morning off the rocks,you floated away around an outcropand I was alone with the warm waves and my body,sensual and small beneath clear sky—Now the hammock is an empty orbital arc on the balcony,a cool breeze slips through the windowand the mountains go hazy across the lake—Pumice flows in the guttersas if fallen with the rain—Moisture seeps through the dust,quenching bones in the hurricane mud—Gold teeth sown by the hand full in the clandestine hillsare germinating in the rich soil—In fields of maize shiveringunder the highland mistsnew ears come up red as sunrise—

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Casa de dios, puerta del cieloVolcán Santamaría

At the peak a small firewas already burning, smoky and heatless;rough tents and people gatheredunder the shrouded morning sun.Lightheaded, sweaty and shiveringin a hidden world of cloudy currents,I waited for the vista to reveal itself.A cry cut the fog—I took it for a child's,pobrecita, tired, cold and hungry—But there was something heavier in that crythan a child’s whine—the straining voice of a womancloistered in a brushy thicket on the slopeweeping prayers so close to the sky,and amidst graffiti-stained, devotional bouldersinscribed with Maya glyphs and Cristo vieneI saw a man kneeling,facing the veil of clouds,another man standing at his sidewith one hand on the kneeling man's head,the other stretched out to the gauzy sun.

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Lying on pumice-dusted grass I listened—¡Soy un pobre pecador, señor!the circle of worshipers raising dissonant voices—¡Tengo nada para pagar mi deuda a usted, señor, sólo mis palabras!mingling moans in the house of god, at the door of heaven—¡Todo es posible en la sangre de Jesús!off-key hymns swept away by the wind—my rarefied faith a swirling vaporin the impoverished atmosphere,pale shadows parting,towns glinting in the patchwork valleyslike flashes of light on frozen waves,a crooked spine of volcanoes, ancient steeples,expansive lowlands joining the horizon,perhaps the sea.

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Translations

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And you were snuffed outHumberto Ak'abal (Guatemala)Like a tiny candle-flameafter a night's vigil,your eyes were losing light.There was nothing more to see.The bellslet fly their dovesof pain.And you were snuffed out.

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StonesÁmbar Past (México)I hadn't been born.The voice that spoke from a boxhad its music and its woman.She looked after the stonesand sang in the root of the sky.She wanted to lull us to sleep.And so the men came to kill people.Well. Never mind!We won't speak any more now.Only, please, don't kill the musician.Haven't they seen that man is bornof music?Don't let them kill him.But was ended.That devil woman, yes,she who was taken by the devil,she fucked us all!But where did he go? He disappearedin the full light of day.Elegant, black,that's how it was:

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The creator of the worldcame to defend the music,but he died.They stabbed the woman,dragged her by the hairand she diedcut to pieces by their machetes.She spoke up and that's why they wanted rid of her.I didn't hear anything.They said that she was the Temptress.Three stones fell on the wind,scored by the criesof a people hexed.The thunder startles me.Earthquakes and stormsenter me. I openand let forth hailstones,swallows, urines, prayers.I call on the most hiddenand the stones speak to me.We rose up against the boss.We put up our market.It's the soldiers who write history.Those of us who don't know how to readtell it differently.18

from XXIIFelipe Márquez (Venezuela)A horse mounts my infancyguided by the compassof aimless dreamsAgony, the fluent doubtof the tightrope-walker astonishedupon the tense threads, parallellike words of chessEvery poem is a cemeteryof living wordssustained by the game of reasonCorpses toll like bellsPedigree of lime and boneThe spider weaves its destinyTrappedPursuing the traceof an unforgettable caravanToday I contemplateadversityEncrypted wintry footfallsArms crossed under a full moonStitched smilesScraps of memory

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Pride in defeatpushing away the hoursdisturbedTo demonstrate is to admittender defeatMy path through life implies actions and retreatsFive senses are not enoughto take in the worldAnchored before the dockI enjoy the movement of a boatIn vain I try to impose my wayof inhabiting the instantSlow footfalls of forgettingDeep breathingof the religious mantisYearning for voices and mirrors of memoryUnhurried, covered in cloudsOnce in a while disturbedby thunder of a distant stormI am sleepy for no reasonbeyond the deadIf they ask me for an explanationI yawn and smile

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We will open our lungs to an air without poisonJorge Hernández Pieldivina (México)Facing any border,Facing any comedy or pantomimebeauty and lucid eyes.The men of the lie change like the days.Facing this, the knife-brushstrokes kneaded with living flesh;thus the wound on naked skinuntil a New Age is born flashing between two or more clouds,to sing it from our throats: No more clots, let the blood flow!Only our dreams galloping like a storm.

The Sun falls out of its orbit fucking your eyes.Crime is momentary on the threshold of timeand in the folds of springthe resinous lineage of life keeps its secrets.Immense coincidences,avarice of split fruits,ransom from eternal unrest—swarming of blood—light that unites usand love followed by bewitching suns biting the path it leaves.

I take up the angels' cry in the pulsing of your heart.To start the day I give you my song,my builder's hips,the howl of my iron-clad truths.Life life life—Says who?

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The riotsRoberto Bolaño and Bruno Montané (Chile)When the riots come the old Chilean poetswill come out to the street to see what's going onWhen the riots come anguish will rent a roomin a hard-luck hotel and will lie there until it commits suicideWhen the riots come the old Chilean bricklayerswill grow wings and be able to play at falling from buildingsand the birds will walk the streets tiredof only building nestsWhen the riots come the old Chilean singerswill intone boleros in the lost dives of the desertand they will be phosphorescent as the bird which chased the minersWhen the riots come the old Chilean lawyerswill be able to spend all day at the movies—the silvered desert of seatswhere commandos light fires to heat food—those men will talk about anythingWhen the riots come the old Chilean mutineers will cryof nostalgia and sorrow for no longer being aliveand the toilets will explode and the plumbing on the black horizonwill be a pure knot soaked with shitWhen the riots come the ancient Andean rangewill collapse so that the Argentinians can come to Chileon foot, and the power-brokers will have to go to Switzerland to skiif they still feel like skiingWhen the riots arrive at the old Patrona of Chilethey will attend a brothel, taking advantage of the circumstances

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When the riots come the old Chilean military-menwill dance a cuenca along the seaand all the whales will come up to see such a marveland they will open their whale jawsso that there will be thousands of Jonasesall over the worldWhen the riots come the old, the oldest Chilean loverswill say goodbye goodbye for everAnd the eyes of the young will be polychromaticlike a time machine,they will be moist and beautiful like leaves torn by the windWhen the riots come

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Every pore a cascade:SofsofsofMario Santiago Papasquiaro (México)For Norma Sverdlin, en memoriamOasis softly opens Desert's fly the famous “age of reason” liquefies them every pore a cascade/vines of skin sprout in clustersThe right flanks/the backtracking steps of the clock have stopped painting mottled on hips born for the Sun on the ankle-bracelets of their beachesDunes hard to shatter asphalted with glue in place of blood aqueducts petrified with fear are no longer the crater-sensation the cloud-hemoglobin which gathers/gives to suck fingernails pull oxygen by its straps the robe-pulse which makes gleaming wings the impulse-carnival/the phosphorescent swelling of these bodiesStaircases of eroticized light the hot fruit-petal of their lips

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May voice of lightning without place may the feathered skirt of the manatee-mermaids owners of the only imagination-kiss not mutilated sing splash spill scatter here the electrified nerve-cobblestone of their plazas/their internal viaductsOasis softly kisses Desert's Popocatépetl-lightning rodEyes of water-eruption & poultice fig bloods/on the verge of birthing & suicideThe nomad wind sweats the shirt sweeps the cunt/trapeze: balance: pirouette & with this juice the feet & heights of these deltas give warmth: refreshOasis kissesSofsofsofthe fly fever that bur/bur/burof her beloved desertThe nomad wind takes/by the udders derailed streetcar of Desire Heading toward what ovary-sensation? Heading toward which unpierced mouth of Desolation?SofsofsofBur/bur/bur

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IndexThe system, by Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay),from Días y noches de amor y guerra

PoemsPhoto: Cronos, Cementerio General, Quetzaltenango, GuatemalaInterment (For those who have not lived to see justice)Blasphemies for San SimónQ.E.P.D.Ixcán haikuCarnivoreThe clouds in GuatemalaCasa de dios, puerta del cieloTranslationsPhoto: 30,000 by Nicolás Guagnini (Argentina)And you were snuffed out, by Humberto Ak'abal, from Tejedor de PalabrasStones, by Ámbar Past, from Huracanafrom XXII, by Felipe MárquezWe will open our lungs to an air without poison, by Jorge Hernández Pieldivina, from Diez poemas y once poetas InfrarealistasThe riots, by Roberto Bolaño and Bruno Montané from Diez poemas y once poetas InfrarealistasEvery pore a cascade: sofsofsof, by Mario Santiago Papasquiaro from Diez poemas y once poetas Infrarealistas

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Lago Atitlán, Sololá, Iximulew

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Iximulew 5126Cascadia 2011