Incantation

 

Raúl Gómez Jattin

The habitants of my village
say I'm a man
despicable and dangerous,
And they are not very wrong
Despicable and Dangerous
This is what they have done to me
poetry and love
Respectable habitants
Stay Calm
that it’s just me
I usually harm

 

 

 

The chief Zenú

Raul Gomez Jattin

 

The Gómez Fernández Morales and Torralbo arrived

with that dead Christ, threatening and incomprehensible

to change our lives customs and death

¿Did they have it so bad in Spanish land

That they crossed the sea in their sailing canoes

to come live with us forever?

In my opinion they are nice and good

but Easter is our florid time

and if they want to pray they can but they should not want to

prevent us to go to the marsh

to seek the Icotea the stifle and the bird Chavarrí

I particularly like the Gomez and Torralbo

and among them Tomas de la Cruz Gómez

that although he was a canon he knew how to talk and laugh

He knew everything and more and did not get into my beliefs

Ever since he was killed for being a revolutionary

-the Spanish army- and placed his head

in an iron cage close to the river shore

I have not spoken to anyone as intimately as with him

May his God remember his soul

For my part I have prayed to mine to take care of him

To don Tomas and help him forget what he suffered

Sincere Love Song

Raul Gomez Jattin

 

I promise not to love you eternally,

or be faithful until death,

or walk holding hands,

or fill you with roses,

and passionately kiss you forever.

I swear there will be sadness,

there will be problems and arguments

and I will look at other women

you will look at other men

I swear you're not my everything

nor my heaven, nor my only reason for living,

but I miss you sometimes.

I promise not to desire you always

sometimes I’ll get tired of your sex

you’ll  get tired of mine

and your hair sometimes

will be annoying on my face

I swear there will be times

where we will feel mutual hatred,

we will wish to end it all and

perhaps we will end it all,

but I can tell you that we will love each other

we will build, share.

¿Now do you believe that I love you?

 

 

 

 

 

Almost Obscene

Raul Gomez Jattin

If you wanted to hear what I say on the pillow

the flush of your face would be the reward

These words are as intimate as my own flesh

that suffers the pain of your relentless memory

Can I tell you ¿Yes? ¿Would you not seek revenge one day? I say:

I would kiss that mouth slowly until it turns red

And in your sex the miracle of a hand that gets lower

at the most unexpected  moment and by random

its touched with the fervor that inspires the sacred

I'm not evil I try to make you fall in love with me

I try to be honest with how sick I am

and enter the hex of your body

like a river that fears the sea but it always dies in it.

Small Elegy

by Raul Gomez Jattin

Why should I keep being a tree

If the summer of two years

Tore my leaves and flowers

Why should I keep being a tree

If the wind does not sing in my foliage

If my birds migrated elsewhere

Why should I keep being a tree

unoccupied

Unless for those who hang

From my branches

Like rotten fruits in autumn.

Gabriela Mistral

Seeing Him Again

Gabriela Mistral

¿And never, never, not even in nights filled

with tremor of stars, nor in the dawns

virgins, not even in the sacrificed afternoons?

 

¿At the edge of none existent pale path,

that encircles the field, at the edge of nothing

tremulous fountain, white moon?

 

¿Under the braids of the jungle,          

while calling him it’s become dark,

nor in the cave where my scream comes back?

 

¡Oh, no! To see him again, no matter where,

in the backwaters of heaven or in a boiling vortex,

under placid moons or in lurid horror!

 

¡And be with him every spring

and every winter, in an angsty

knot,  around his bloody neck!

Gabriel Celaya

Tell me how you live, how you're dying

Gabriel Celaya

 

Tell me how you live;

just tell me how to spend your days,

your very slow hatreds, your cheerful gunpowder’s

and the confused waves that carry you lost

in the changing foam, of sudden whiteness.

 

Tell me how you live;

come to me, face to face;

tell me your lies (mine are worse),

your resentments (I also suffer),

and that stupid pride (I can understand you).

 

Tell me how you die;

nothing yours is secret:

the nausea of emptiness (or pleasure, its the same);

unforeseen madness of any live moment;

hope that delves stubbornly in the emptiness.

 

Tell me how you die;

how you abandon – sage-,

how-frivolous-you shine of pure fugitive

how you end with nothing

and you teach me, of course, to stay calm.

 

 

From "quietly talking, 1945

Vargas Llosa

POEM for THE EXORCIST

 Vargas Llosa

 

My life seems without mystery and

 Monotonous

 whom I see

 of way to the office

 rushed mornings.

 The truth is very different.

 Every night I go out and fight

 against an evil spirit

 that, using

 costumes-dog, cricket,

 cloud, rain, vague,

 thief is

 infiltrate the city

 to spoil human life

 sowing

 discord.

Despite their costumes I

always discover

and horror.

 It has never gotten trick

nor defeat.

Thanks

to me, in this city

still possible

happiness.

But the night fighting me

leave exhausted and bruised.

In return for my

skirmishes against the enemy,

 I ask some leftovers

of affection and friendship.