Gioconda Belli

Reading Juan Gelman Poems over the Phone

I first met Juan Gelman at the craziest and most fantastic gathering of poets ever.  It was in Rome in 1982.  Every night dozens of us poets got together to read to each other FROM the stage in the gardens of the Villa Borghese.  The Italian poets always read first on the program.  There were so many of them that the rest of us seldom read before midnight.  Among the group of Latin American poets, I remember Carlos Monsivais, Jorge Enrique Adoum, and Juan Gelman.  Juan was living in Rome at that time.  It was the era of concrete poetry and other unhappy experiments.  The spectacle of a public throwing orange rinds, whole oranges or whatever else they held in their hands at the stage while booing, in response to what they considered bad poetry seemed surreal to us, coming as we did from countries where poetry is respected.  When our turn came to read, around one in the morning, we mounted the stage as a group to support one another, just in case.  No one threw any fruit at us, a victory which we attributed to reading in Spanish.  Between these ups and downs, we enjoyed the beauty of the place, laughed a lot and became good friends.

A little later, during the most beautiful but difficult years of the Sandinista Revolution, Juan moved to Nicaragua to work as a journalist for the Agencia de Noticias Nueva Nicaragua.  I was surprised to find him there, doing things in his own quiet way, one of many, lost among the agency personnel.

I wanted to pull him out of this anonymity, to alert everyone who loved poetry to his presence among us.  So I interviewed him at length for the cultural supplement of El Nuevo Diario, only to discover at the end of it, that the recorder I used had barely

recorded his voice.  It was a shame, and embarrassing for me, but Juan took it philosophically as one more of those fiascos that fill our lives.  Once again, we were brought together by what did not work as it was supposed to.

The intensity of those times in Nicaragua was difficult and left us clinging to friends.  Juan and I shared a very lovely poetic friendship.  We telephoned each other to read poems and talk about our mutual feelings of loneliness, sorrow and hope.  He was always haunted by the memory of his son, and his lost granddaughter.  The melancholy of the world was in his eyes, but what always impressed me most was his sweetness, the gentle way in which he moved through the chaotic universe like a huge angel; this gentleness is in the poetry to which he has given voice, imprinted the Spanish language with his unique personal qualities. The poem that accompanies this was born during this time; it pays homage to the commitment and empathy I felt for the great humanity of this man, and a poet to his marrow.  It is a memory of the mysterious coincidences of destiny that allowed me to read him poems over the phone and share his magic for a short time.

— tr. Paul Pines

Juan Daniel Perotta

24th March 2006

All the horror
today
all the pain suffered
Makes me become a child again
brings back the sun
A flag is being raised
in front of that child I am
in whom I take refuge
— the fright —
Aurora is played
a cup of brewed maté warms the soul
makes the overall shine
which I put on again for a moment
to recover my country
that tale that one never believes
to the narrator
— the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood —
I sing again with my teacher
“pumpkin
watermelon
no tank will stop Illia
not even Ongania’s”
Growing up like this
being punched
to uniform thoughts
Names rummage through my mind
Those who left
It is always easier to erase names
words
to silence the conscience
Urondo dies again
today
Oesterheld left a cold wind
in our souls
which even poets of perennial singing
leaf
like villa crespo
cry for Marcelo / cry for Mars cellar
we cry
The tears wash this pain that never ends
justice that arrives late
that does not arrive
Why they threw us to the river?
anticipating an endless sea
that from the eyes falls
the memory?
What can be done to change places
replace them
in the shadows
load the rifles of hope
shoot against death
hunger
with them
for them
tiny pieces of heaven
hidden among dark clouds
of cruelty
How can one disappear
even for a while
to have this cup of hot coffee
a white sheet of paper
to talk about death
that does not disappear
Do you want to take my seat
my breath
at least for a little while
to warm your cold soul?
Wickedness
blindness
that became god
satan
he gave you no-death
emptiness
in which his feverish eyes
wandering in the shadows
look for you and call your name
like in a tango
Thirty years is nothing
This memory wound
does not disintegrate
like sand
It lasts
it lasts
And despite the oblivion which destroys
everything
has killed my old dream
there is still a hidden humble
hope
which is all the treasure of my heart

— tr. Sabeli Ceballos Franco

Author’s Note: The verses in italics are from Alfredo Le Pera’s tango “Volver.”

Translator’s notes: (1) The verses in quotes were a political chant during Ongania’s dictatorship.  Arturo Umberto Illia was the 35th democratically elected president of Argentina.  He was overthrown by a military coup led by Juan Carlos Ongania.

(2) “Leaf ” is meant to represent Gelman himself as a leaf from the poet’s tree (poetree=poetry) whereas “Villa Crespo” was the neighborhood where Gelman was born and raised as a child.  In the following verse, “cry Mars cellar,” the author makes use of his poetic license to make his readers pronounce “Marcelo,” Gelman’s disappeared son during the dictatorship.  The same intention lies on the original version in Spanish (“lloran a mar cielo.”)

Juan Daniel Perotta

Life and Death

I write and take communion
— I break the bread
and drink wine —
I promise myself to forget
and not to plan
To live the eternal present
Sometimes I believe that this creation
is a wide bed
— god’s supreme coitus
supporting the world
and giving birth to his only-begotten child
etcetera —
For some people I would deserve the excommunion
but nothing is so important
I am not important
you are not important
If you disappeared today
the world would not mutate
Marcelo Gelman disappeared
and I am still alive
They killed Charles Horman
and I am still alive
People keep disappearing
and I am still alive
bush kills with impunity
and
I live
Perhaps death does not exist for God
Perhaps it does not exist for us either
perhaps we are god

Claribel Alegría

I’ve been a very close friend of Gelman for many years and I admire him greatly.  I am sending you a very short poem that I dedicated to him many years ago, when he was looking for the remnants of his dead son.

          Attachment
                   to Juan Gelman

Because I learned to love myself
I bleed
with your wounds

          — tr. Paul Pines