The Bad Thing About the Dead

DIATRIBE AGAINST THE DEAD
—Angel Gonzalez

The dead are selfish:
they make us cry and don't care,
they stay quiet in the most inconvenient places,
they refuse to walk, we have to carry them
on our backs to the tomb
as if they were children. What a burden!
Unusually rigid, their faces
accuse us of something, or warn us;
they are the bad conscience, the bad example,
they are the worst things in our lives always, always.
The bad thing about the dead
is that there is no way you can kill them.
Their constant destructive labor
is for that reason incalculable.
Insensitive, distant, obstinate, cold,
with their insolence and their silence
they don't realize what they undo.

—translated from the Spanish by Steven Ford Brown and Gutierrez Revuelta

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Angel Gonzalez is a Spanish poet, born in 1926, who is anthologized in The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, ed. by J.D. McClatchy, Vintage Books, 1996.

For local Hispanic poetry, this Friday Escritores del Nuevo Sol presents an All-Spanish reading (Fausto Avendano, Betty Sanchez, Amado Nervo, Antonio Machado) at La Raza Galeria Posada, 15th & R, Sac, 7:30. ($5/$3 students & members.) Info: Graciela, 916-456-5323. This event will take place this FRIDAY, not Thursday as I reported earlier in the week. My posting was taken from Poetry Now, in which the reading is listed for Thursday. Please note the correction!

Regretfully, Jody Ansell, who has edited the Poetry Now calendar for a year and a half, is stepping aside. So the Sacramento Poetry Center and Poetry Now Editor Robbie Grossklaus are looking for a Calender Editor to fill the gap. Write to Robbie at dphunkt@mac.com if you're willing to take over this crucial position.

More from Angel:


BEFORE I COULD CALL MYSELF ANGEL GONZALEZ
—Angel Gonzalez

Before I could call myuself Angel Gonzalez,
before the earth could support the weight of my body,
a long time
and a great space were necessary:
men from all the seas and all the lands,
fertile wombs of women, and bodies
and more bodies, incessantly fusing
into another new body.
Solstices and equinoxes illuminated
with their changing lights, and variegated skies,
the millenary trip of my flesh
as it climbed over centruies and bones.
Of its slow and painful journey,
of its escape to the end, surviving
shipwrecks, anchoring itself
to the last sign of the dead,
I am only the result, the fruit,
what's left, rotting, among the remains;
what you see here,
is just that:
tenacious trash resisting
its ruin, fighting against wind,
walking streets that go
nowhere. The success
of all failures. The insane
force of dismay...

______________________

WHATEVER YOU WANT
—Angel Gonzalez

When you have money, buy me a ring,
when you have nothing, give me a corner of your mouth,
when you don't know what to do, come with me
—but later don't say you didn't know what you were doing.

In the morning you gather bundles of firewood
and they turn into flowers in your arms.
I hold you up grasping the petals,
if you leave I'll take away your perfume.

But I've already told you:
if you decide to leave, here's the door:
its name is Angel and it leads to tears.

________________________

Thanks, Angel!

Snake update: Snake 7 is trickling off the printer; copies will be at The Book Collector tomorrow afternoon and will be going into the mail at the end of this week. FANGS I is flying through the fingers of Editor Robbie Grossklaus and is about to hit the printer; we're hoping for a 9/21 release. (This is a free anthology of snake poems from the first six issue of Rattlesnake Review.) ELSIE WHITLOW FELIZ will read to release her chapbook, Tea With Bunya, next Wednesday, Sept. 21. (Normally, rattlereads are on the 2nd Weds., but for this month ONLY this reading will be on the 3rd Weds.) Snakelets, the journal of poetry from kids 0-12, has an Oct. 1 deadline—see the Snakeblog's sidebar for addresses, e- and otherwise.

One more from Angel:


CITY
—Angel Gonzalez

Things glisten. Roof tiles rise
over the tree tops.
Almost to the breaking point, tense,
the resilient streets.
There you are: beneath the intersection
of metallic cables,
where the sun fits like a halo
complimenting your image.
Rapid swallows threaten
impassive facades. Glass
transmits luminous and secretive
messages.
Everything consists of brief, invisible
gestures for habitual eyes.
And suddenly you're not there. Good-bye, love, good-bye.
You're already gone.
Nothing remains of you. The city rotates:
grinder in which everything is undone.

—translated from the Spanish by Steven Ford Brown and Gutierrez Revuelta

_________________________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.