verso-per-verso

An overwhelming, proletarian, and dreadful evening

Being a proletarian you know everything is hard. Hard to travel from home to school and at night on way back home. Hard to be in time for one’s duties, as it is the school for me. Hard to gain a little space for the self development. Hard not to desperate for un-comforts and constant annoyance coming from the surround. Hard to be yourself and keep stood ahead violence and threatening.

····After all, I, as common people, aspire to major futilities. Probably a car, why not? I would surely love it. Also probably, however, having a higher social status would surely take me away from this odd job for which I give you a glimpse on this internet site. I would be so frivolous so I would forget my attractive pleasure for artistic stuff. I wish that never happened, however futile I turned.

····In any case, what would it be of me and of my art —however mediocre, but art— without difficulties and without unease? We would surely turn vainer, more frivolous and un-aimed. Difficulties have a sort of hidden worth, it is what I have seen. Best artists have lived gloomy or painful lives. I do not want to get to those extremes. I refuse, though, to escape from real, beautiful and decaying world; to cast out my senses for the sake of conformity and equality. To equality I prefer equity: not to be the norm, but to be the exception.

····It is hard to be the self and the selfish. One is constantly exposed to newer and more disturbing waves. But this is not where this text, since I started it, aimed to take you. What I wanted was to say that today I had an overwhelming day. As the proletarian that I am, besides I had to suffer all the inconveniencies of travelling by public transport, I had, and I think because of the rioters obstructing many avenues in the city, to make an odyssey to get back home. One bus, the subway, one bus and another, and a lot time waiting for each of them. I got really angry. Now I am trying to convince you that in every problem there is a secret worth, and I myself do not seem to be following my own claim. But what I am really trying, and, in fact the cause for me to write, is to find a consolation by saying to myself: find this dreadful occasion its artistic side! Not once, but may times in past you have, why not again?

····And in this point my seek for ‘the artistic’ is what has driven me to bringing back another poem of my own. Furthermore, I have found that it has much to do with the theme of me —not to abandon the vanity, but it could also be you— as the public passenger; only that in this poem the ambient is a diurnal and —as you will see— rural experience:

[Are you wondering why I should use a text in English to present a poem in Spanish? It is just in order to make a futile and whimsical contrast. Remember vanity is the main theme of this blog, ha-ha.]

Espejos (El omnipresente)

Cuando ves tu reflejo
en el vidrio pulido
—viajas en el microbús—,
de súbito tu imagen se disipa,
tus ojos se ofuscan para dejarte
ver················································· más allá;
y ya no eres tú en el espejo,
es el mundo externo,
los verdes campos.

Así, a veces
te pierdes, distinto
en las miradas indiferentes
de ellos, los árboles o los humanos;
no dejas de existir,
pero eres más grande, te extiendes a todos lugares y a todos tiempos
(Creerían los demás
que en ninguno
eres
)
.

Entonces,
es como hacer el amor al paisaje,
como fertilizar con infecundos ojos
los retozantes cultivos;
como ser un Dios
omnipresente,
omnipotente.

*
Ahora duerme
·······················ya
······························tu sopor,
como ayer....
acaso mañana despierte
y te de nuevamente las gracias:
ojos de la inmensidad,
manos de la creación,
espejos para palparla.

[Note: If you see spotted lines, they are in substitution of spaces, I was not able to use them on the damned editor. ]

Alexis R. V.