Simone Muench's Poem of the Week: "Imitations and Collage: from the Poems of Blas De Otero" by Robert Archambeau
Robert Archambeau was born in the USA but grew up in Canada. He studied literature at the University of Manitoba and the University of Notre Dame and has taught at Notre Dame and Lund University (Sweden). He currently teaches at Lake Forest. He has also edited two books, Word Play Place: Essays on the Poetry of John Matthias and Vectors: New Poetics. His book Home and Variations is available from Salt Modern Poets.
"Imitations and Collage: from the Poems of Blas De Otero"
1. FROM EACH ACCORDING TO WHAT HE KNOWS
a version of Otero's "Que Cada Uno Aporte Lo Que Sepa"
It's true, you know: you can love a person,
a little toad — don't step on it —
and also a continent like Europe,
always split or wounded or crying horribly.
Some words disturb us, you and me,
"treaty," "theater of operations,"
"end of major fighting," "nothing serious,"
and others too.
But people, they believe all that,
hang bunting, run flags from the windows,
as if it were true,
as if such a thing...
It happens, I've seen them myself,
all Easter hats and roses.
In '39 they called the poor men out to Mass,
pulled fuses from a few bombs,
and set off fireworks along the water:
at it again.
After, I heard voices in the next room,
a woman screaming, mad and awful.
We knew,
we knew more than enough.
2. WORDS GATHERED FOR ANTONIO MACHADO
a version of Otero's "Palabras Reunidas Para Antonio Machado"
a solitary heart
is no heart.
--A.M.
If I dared
to speak, to call for you. . .
but I am, alone,
no one.
So.
I clench my fists and look to you root-place,
I listen to slow yesterday,
her ballads, all the people's songs--
rough Manrique, exact Frey Luis,
the quick-whip words of old Quevado--
and quick, too,
I touch the earth that has lost you,
and the sea that holds a ship that must find home.
And now,
now the plow has turned in salted soil,
now I'll say a few true words,
those with which I first sought a voice:
Elm sonorous with wind,
tall poplar, sluggish oak and olive,
trees of a dry land, and of sorrow--
come to clear water, to freedom, to peace
Sevilla cries. Soria, for once,
grows quiet. Baeza
lifts her sickles to the air, her olive trees
slow-moving to the wind's soft sorrow, which she reaps.
The sea itself falls fast on France to claim you--
it wants,
we want,
to have you here,
to share you out
like bread.
3. THE CLOISTER OF SHADOWS
a version of Otero's "El Claustro de las Sombras"
. . . to the antique order of the dead
--Francis Thompson
Just now I have thirty-three years piled on my study table
and a few months left over in the silver ashtray.
I've put this question to my sisters: do you know this man
between my left and right shoulders? He goes where I go,
and turns his face if I turn mine. . .
I grow cold, and don't know what to wear
beneath this cloaking death, don't know what plot of earth is mine,
what night I should prepare,
what green and silent ocean waits. . .
Sometimes I'd be a brother of the ancient order of the dead
and serve in silence; meditate in a corner of the dead,
in the cloister of shadows, there,
where dreams rise guileless in the smoky light.
4. COLLAGE: THE PUBLIC LIFE
If you reap a soft, slow moving sorrow,
If you gather years in a silver ashtray,
If you wait, a green and silent ocean,
If you serve the antique order of yourself,
If, at your study table,
you know, you know too much--
can you love a person, or a continent?
Can you turn and share yourself like bread?
By Robert Archambeau.
Purchase at Salt Modern Poets.
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