A Country of Poets

This photograph is clearly a metaphor.

I believe it was Isabel Allende who wrote in her memoir My Invented Country that if you turned over a rock in Chile, a poet would crawl out. Something about the extremity of the landscape, the breathtaking skies, the absurdity of the geography all calls out to the hearts of men and women and pulls (quite forcefully) verses straight out into the world. I have begun to experience this phenomenon in the desert. I will walk some evenings to the edge of my barrio, where the houses just stop and the emptiness begins and look out toward the western mountains that frame the city to watch the the sunset. As I watch, if I am not holding pen and paper at that moment, my fingers begin to reach to my chest to try and carve verses into my flesh.

I had begun to write poetry again, after many years, shortly before leaving for Chile. Something about the immense change taking place in my life and the weight of everything and everyone I was leaving behind seemed to only be relieved through prose (albeit, I'm sure, a mockery of anything one might have called poetry in the decades ago when such an art form was significant.) However, since I have been here in country, and even more so since coming to the Atacama, my pen has been constantly at paper. Not all of what I scribble is poetry (and some that is meant to be certainly isn't poetic) but verses are issuing forth from me unbeckoned nevertheless.

There have been two Nobel Prize winning poets to come out of Chile (Neruda and Mistral) and they are even pictured on some of the money here. Countless other, no less talented but less recognized names could fill the remainder of this post. Clearly there is something about his place. When I first arrived in Calama, I mused to Ryan that in the country of poets, we had been dumped in the least poetic place--and certainly that applies when considering only the city. Beyond though, and beyond that....there lies the poetry.

There is a great deal on my mind each day here, and without playing the part of a romantic, it is suffice to say that there are things stateside that still dwell in my thoughts...both in waking hours and en las manos de la noche. When I am not teaching (which is proving to be more often than I had anticipated) I have not much else to do but wait for sunsets and write loves songs and prayers in blank verse; often enough the two are one and the same.

To help my Spanish, I have committed to the task of memorizing at least one Neruda poem (nearly everyone here has at least a dozen memorized from childhood) and given the constant state of longing that persists in defining me, I chose the following piece. For those of you who cannot read Spanish, I apologize. However, the title in English is "Tonight I can write the saddest lines." It comes up immediately on any search engine.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: "La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos."

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oir la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche esta estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque este sea el ultimo dolor que ella me causa,
y estos sean los ultimos versos que yo le escribo.