AS IF YOU’D remember Isabel
of the hopscotch underneath your patio’s mamoncillo tree
of the rag dolls that were our children
of the boats from Havana
loaded with . . .
When you had golden eyes
like a peacock feather
and your skirts were stained with mango
As if!
you don’t remember
Whereas I didn’t you notice today
haven’t they told you
Keep throwing pebbles at the sky
searching for a place where I can put my feet at ease
Making and unmaking figures on the skin of the earth
and my children are made of rag and my dreams are made of rag
and I still play dolls under the lights of
the stage
Isabel peacock eyes
now that you have five kids with the mayor
and a chauffeur in his Sunday best takes you around town
now that you wear spectacles
when we see each other you shoot me a “how’s life”
cold and impersonal
As if I had one of those
As if I still used one of those
THE POETS, my darling, are
horrible men, they are
monsters of solitude, avoid them
always, starting with me
The poets, my love, are
to be read. But do not heed
what they do in their lives
THANK YOU LORD
for making me weak
mad
childish
Thank you for these prisons
that set me free
for the pain that began with me
and does not cease
Thank you for all my supple frailty
Like your bow
Lord Love
The Adoring God
I am a God in my town and my valley
Not because they adore me But because I do it
Because I bow before whoever gives me
a few granadillas or a smile from his land
Or because I go to its rough inhabitants
to beg a coin or a shirt and they give it to me
Because I guard the sky with the eyes of a sparrowhawk
and I name it in my verses Because I am alone
Because I slept seven months in a rocking chair
and five on the sidewalks of a city
Because I look at riches in profile
But not with hate Because I love whoever loves
Because I know how to grow orange-trees and vegetables
even in the heat Because I have a compadre
whose sons and wedding I baptized
Because I am not good in a way that is known
Because I love the birds and the rain and its wildness
that washes my soul Because I was born in May
Because I know how to thump a thieving friend
Because my mother abandoned me precisely
when I needed her most Because when I am sick
I go to the charity hospital Above all because
I only respect whoever respects me Whoever works
every day for bread that is bitter and lonely and wrangled
like these verses of mine that I steal from death
A Likely Constantine Cavafy at 19
Tonight he will take part in three dangerous ceremonies
Love among men
Smoking marijuana
And writing poems
Tomorrow he will get up after midday
He will have broken lips
Red eyes
and another piece of paper for an enemy
His lips will hurt from having kissed too much
And his eyes will burn like lit cigarette butts
And that poem will not express his sorrow
Five Poems
Raúl Gómez Jattin
translated from the Spanish by James Rumsey-Merlan and Camila Vélez Valencia
Listen to “[AS IF YOU’D remember . . .]” read in the original Spanish by the poet:
Raúl Gómez Jattin was born in Cartagena, Colombia in 1945 but grew up a few hours inland in Cereté, a small town on the banks of the Sinú River. His mother Lola Jattin came from a Lebanese immigrant family and she spoiled the young poet with pistachios and kibbehs. Jattin’s father Joaquín was a respected lawyer and he encouraged his son to memorize Balzac’s prose and Rilke’s poetry. In 1966 Raúl moved from the hot coastal hinterland to the country’s cold, mountain capital. In Bogotá he quickly grew bored with his studies and decided to quit in order to become an actor. His acting career was short-lived but relatively successful. He had a booming voice and a natural instinct for burlesque that served him well on the stage. He began experimenting with drugs and sex and after sowing much scandal he abandoned the stage and moved back to Cereté, where he settled in a little hut on his uncle’s farm. He spent the hot days lazing in his hammock, smoking marijuana, growing the occasional eggplant, and writing poems. His first volumes of poetry, published in the 1980s, were well-received and this success encouraged him to write more poems, take more drugs, and generally scandalize the staid Colombian literary world with his unorthodox habits. Jattin was a man of excesses and his never-ending consumption of anything he could lay his hands on was his undoing. He died a vagabond, crazed, toothless, and alone, walking the streets of Cartagena, terrifying its tourists, and occasionally writing one or two verses down. The first collection of his poems in English translation is forthcoming.
James Rumsey-Merlan has very nearly completed a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Princeton.
Camila Vélez Valencia has recently started a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Yale.
