Bello Barrio, from Mauricio Redoles (1987)

The first one has been here for a while (check here). It’s author is Mauricio Redoles, a chilean poet, songwriter, and musician. This poem comes with a series of smaller ones (and incredibly beautiful too) in a disc called “Bello Barrio” (something like Beautiful Neighborhood). This album is from 1987, during the last years of Pinochet’s dictatorhip, which ended in 1990 after no less than 23 years of darkness. Its lyrics for me are portraits of Redoles’ experiences as a torured (literally) and lost poet that tries to signify what happened in Chile. I can’t really fully translate it, but I can tell you that he wonders about a place, Bello Barrio, where violence has still not been able to get to. It seems that he’s talking to someone, a lover, and calls her repeatedly, asking her to come to this place, this beautiful place that is still worth living. It ends in such a strong way, saying:

Ven a vivir a esta bella barriada
a encender el ultimo fuego

amor

That I could translate as

Come to live in this beautiful neighborhood
to light the last fire

my love

It also repeats rythmically a phrase that is stuck on my mind since I read it “Ven a vivir esta fragidilidad peligrosa de corromperse”/”Come to live this fragility, dangerously corruptible“.

This is without a doubt one of my favorites.

“Toco tu boca” (Julio Cortázar, Capitulo 7 de su libro “Rayuela”)

Toco tu boca, con un dedo toco el borde de tu boca, voy dibujándola como si saliera de mi mano, como si por primera vez tu boca se entreabriera, y me basta cerrar los ojos para deshacerlo todo y recomenzar, hago nacer cada vez la boca que deseo, la boca que mi mano elige y te dibuja en la cara, una boca elegida entre todas, con soberana libertad, elegida por mí para dibujarla con mi mano en tu cara, y que por un azar que no busco comprender coincide exactamente con tu boca que sonríe por debajo de la que mi mano te dibuja.

Me miras, de cerca me miras, cada vez más cerca y entonces jugamos al cíclope, nos miramos cada vez más de cerca y los ojos se agrandan, se acercan entre sí, se superponen y los cíclopes se miran, respirando confundidos, las bocas se encuentran y luchan tibiamente, mordiéndose los labios, apoyando apenas la lengua en los dientes, jugando en sus recintos donde el aire pesado va y viene con un perfume viejo y un silencio. Entonces, mis manos buscan hundirse en tu pelo, acariciar lentamente la profundidad de tu pelo mientras nos besamos como si tuviéramos la boca llenas de flores o de peces, de movimientos vivos, de fragancia oscura. Y si nos mordemos el dolor es dulce, y si nos ahogamos en un breve y terrible absorber simultáneo del aliento, esa instantánea muerte es bella. Y hay una sola saliva y un solo sabor a fruta madura, y yo te siento temblar contra mí como una luna en el agua.

I touch your mouth, I touch the edge of your mouth with my finger, I am drawing it as if it were something my hand was sketching, as if for the first time your mouth opened a little, and all I have to do is close my eyes to erase it and start all over again, every time I can make the mouth I want appear, the mouth which my hand chooses and sketches on your face, and which by some chance that I do not seek to understand coincides exactly with your mouth which smiles beneath the one my hand is sketching on you.

You look at me, from close up you look at me, closer and closer and then we play cyclops, we look closer and closer at one another and our eyes get larger, they come closer, they merge into one and the two cyclopses look at each other, blending as they breathe, our mouths touch and struggle in gentle warmth, biting each other with their lips, barely holding their tongues on their teeth, playing in corners where a heavy air comes and goes with an old perfume and a silence. Then my hands go to sink into your hair, to cherish slowly the depth of your hair while we kiss as if our mouths were filled with flowers or with fish, with lively movements and dark fragance. And if we bite each other the pain is sweet, and if we smother each other in a brief and terrible sucking in together of our breaths, that momentary death is beautiful. And there is but one saliva and one flavor of ripe fruit, and I feel you tremble against me like a moon on the water.

Translation: Gregory Rabassa

“Oda a la bicicleta / Ode to bicycles”, de Pablo Neruda

This beautiful poem, one of 225 odes that Pablo Neruda wrote, is a piece that I treasure deep in my heart. I love bicycles, I love cycling, therefore I love life.

The poem: HERE