Noviembre / José Barroeta

November

                                                  To Mario Abreu

Let’s go look for my father,
November.
My body is full of apples
and I could go out into the hills
with your month's name,
to wait for the stars to come out
and take us to him,
to his black head lost in the mud.
We’re passing the houses,
where your clarity November
frightens the women
to look for my father at the bottom of the soup
that boils.
Let’s enter the cadaver through the gold holes
that the rabbits open
and let’s watch how you pose in them November
close in the eyes to animal convulsion.
Don’t leave home without tracing
neither river nor stone nor forest
go right in at the hollow
right at November’s skin
and take me to the warm place of the dead.
Leave your busy bee clearness as a symbol
that my dead father is found anywhere
nourished by that love I give the night when
I look for him.
Leave me fixed and uninjured,
clear
like the woman who lives in my body,
as I prepare the return to the sky of the cadaver
I seek
and it moves mysteriously in god like the first movement
that was made in the world,
quick and fertile like the dead father
I seek with you November.




El arte de anochecer (1975)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

En la mañana / José Barroeta

In the Morning

                                                  To Miyó Vestrini

There’s sun.
My father’s milk drops from the cadaver
into air.
An oneiric milk,
in a state of coma
knocks down summer’s shine at the beginning,
doubles white the roses where the bird poses.
There’s sun.
My siblings like chicks
start to open spaces in the
timid earth.
There’s sun.
I’m riding in the car of the dead
with November flowers
and milk from my father on my face.




El arte de anochecer (1975)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Samanes / José Barroeta

Samanes

                                                  To Ludovico Silva

These samanes where the day
falls with Christ
keep the sinister away.
Death doesn’t elevate itself in them
but actually lives again
like in childhood
walking around randomly.
Those samanes
living with your father’s colors
in their eyes
they carry no time and no space
they’re calmly subject to disappear.
These samanes that don’t make sense,
because we’ll never reach them,
they make your dead father appear
amid shadows
with the light of those psalms
the wind gives the dead.




El arte de anochecer (1975)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

A mi tos no hay lana que la cubra / José Barroeta

There’s No Wool To Cover My Cough

                                                  To Víctor Valera Mora

There’s no wool to cover my cough.
I’m so scared, father, that I wait
for a glass of water alone.
October’s desire to take me has passed,
but I’m scared.
The beast calls me,
my own,
the one I contained so much.
What I thought to leave in spirit
became body
and life indulges me so much
that night still falls.
When the fruit of my town drops
they’re my owners,
I’ve done nothing to keep them
in my heart.
Father, I have a great fright,
tell my mother about it as you touch
her pillow.
Tell her they stole my partridge
and the fig,
the September shade I treated
so poorly.
I can’t do it father.
My sister lives like a chicken
and I want her feathers;
I can’t stand
so much love in her belly.
My thirst for the old places
suffers a fable.
You and I, father,
made appointments in the forests.
Before showing up we imposed silence.




El arte de anochecer (1975)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Elegía / José Barroeta

Elegy

While death exists I will live in song,
wandering in a wave of desperate music. In the winter,
in any season, there are so many who have died for me.

I always want to leave life without bitterness,
to leave it as I’ve seen it. The hope night gives me,
maybe the obsession of being dead, have prevented me from burying myself,
from flying over the thread of my solar soul.

I would like to dress myself with the color of death,
carry the rigorous fantasy within. Love a pale woman with
wings like nothing else.

My desire is not to flee from life but to fix it within what
snatches it away. This light today covers nothing and only the cadaver’s dream
invites us to travel.




Todos han muerto (1971)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

As de sol / José Barroeta

Ace of Suns

                                                  To Rebeca Giamate

I

You’re my forbidden reading,
the true story I love and tell myself,
alone.
You’re the golden door that makes the afternoon,
the fire it lights to celebrate my best
days.


II

Your fragrance recovered
Oh your fragrance I loved so illusively,
may the sun and all the stars move for you.
And even when my heart’s fire perishes,
even when it sobs sacredly with solitude,
even when without looking at the earth your strong smell persists
all over the world,
you will see my cold silhouette, leafless in the wind.


III

Beautiful,
dreamed daughter of beauty,
who comes to me riding your sun horse.


IV

Fable where being or not being
is the red countryside.


V

Honey hidden in a cup of liquors.
How many times have I tasted your last presence there.


VI

Your web of gold makes a vassal
of my life. You fly like a beautiful and imaginary
bird.


VII

The distance between your two breasts
is a long red and white acacia.


VIII

I call you,
I speak with you in the depths of the rain.
A volcano and silk rose falls to me from your
lips.


IX

City where our retinue
is crossed by wild animals. Inexplicable castle
of a pure and real anxiety.


X

Even for you in the olive grove
I listen to blood from your words. For you that thought
of the cross becomes aroma.


XI

There’s no fable nor truth
where I might keep you.


XII

You speak a language of wild animals,
there’s no pride nor treachery to serve your taming.
You’re one thing in the world and another in the sky,
you always fill my lair with water copiously.


XIII

Flagellated,
I reach you through desolation.
For you I haven’t ceased stepping on sadness.
To persuade you I’ve gone to every temptation.
To have you I’ve filled your head with breeze.


XIV

Now I blaspheme.
Your pollen skin sleeps far from me.
Sacred like the moribund.


XV

June,
great master of the year and sky,
cover our entire white past.
Insult this holiday of sadness.




Todos han muerto (1971)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Rostro de Baudelaire / José Barroeta

Face of Baudelaire

                                                  To Rafael Brunicardi

Face of Baudelaire into which I always
look,
dose of dawn and the Bastille.
Oh, my poet,
let’s talk under the moon tonight
entrusted to the cats,
let’s talk alone as in elegies.
Face of Baudelaire where my adventures
are flowers of evil.
Face of Baudelaire that wanders in my room,
that accompanies my turbid and hurried sleep,
who will accompany me triumphant on dead nights.
Face of Baudelaire;
sick god of every day.




Todos han muerto (1971)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Con el poema / José Barroeta

With the Poem

It’s possible the title of the poem
has nothing to do with the poem.
It’s possible it’ll fail
and I will turn
into water
and the transformed water
will break the eye of the cadavers.
It’s possible
that everything exists
that we’re a stubborn
brief vigil




Elegías y olvidos (2006)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Homenaje a Vallejo / José Barroeta

Homage to Vallejo

I wanted to write but I wasn’t able to
my voice was closed VALLEJO. I had gone into
a cantina dirty as a mother
nothing not even the heart or bones could say.
They’d ask me and I’d answer with tears
with red, celestial heads.
I wanted to give and play and dream a hand to hand
with death
and I liked nothingness more than oblivion.
I don’t ask you what your poet death might be like
buried among us.
I can’t and I lock myself in the bones of that woman
so long
so extensive and so old in one’s skies.
The earth has not yet begun, POET,
you look like death and what I lived.




Culpas de juglar (1996)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Arte de anochecer / José Barroeta

Art of Dusk

There is an art of dusk.
Of the body’s entry to the soul,
of fog to roundness
and the circle to the sky;
there is an art of light,
a field where dusk
is watching life
with the closed body.
There is an art of dusk,
a descent at the day’s entrance
into complete darkness.
An intermedium where you have to
receive and know everything without shuddering.
There is an art,
a landscape sometimes amiable,
sometimes grim,
where ascent and descent are accessories
of clean matter.
There is an art of dusk.
Whoever has lived or dreamed with forests,
lights and demons,
knows it.




Arte de anochecer (1975)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Ofelia / José Barroeta

Ophelia

The queen is dead.
From a mystical hill
the water descends, surrounding the night.
The queen of water and of the heart
lies lost in the black foliage,
damp from the dead dew.
The leaves are skies spread out
on the water
and she, the queen,
floats dead with her dead throne.
The harmony of that green in her eyes
is dying fervently today,
returning to its origin, its first shade.




Arte de anochecer (1975)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Oculto / José Barroeta

Hidden

To what trade should I submit;
to what moon of the seven that fly
over the nape of my living father
should I celebrate.
What gold should I give death
if there is no abyss under me
none further above
but rather everything locked up in me as in
fruit.
Something hides me,
maybe the perverse inclination to stay
in the yellow forest where I grew up,
in the nervous blue of the hills.




Arte de anochecer (1975)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Todos han muerto / José Barroeta

Everyone Has Died

Everyone has died.
The last time I visited the town
Egle consoled me
and she was sure, like me,
that everyone had died.

I got used to idea of knowing them silent
beneath the ground.
At first it seemed hard for me to understand
that my grandmother doesn’t bring baskets of figs
and gets bored under the marble.

In the winter
it was my turn to visit with the other boys
the ruined forest,
pull small fish from the river
and, listening, have a good drink.

I don’t remember exactly
when they began to die.
I attended the ceremonies and I liked
placing flowers on the recently moved ground.

Everyone has died.
The last time I visited the town
Egle was waiting for me
she said I had bags under my eyes
as though I’d been abandoned
and I smiled at her with the beatitude of someone who arrives
at a town where death is taking everything.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to the village.
I don’t know if Egle continued the tradition of dying
or if she’s still waiting.




Todos han muerto (1971)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Presencias / José Barroeta

Presences

I have muttered.
In the afternoons I write
and listen to my brothers talk on the terrace.

My daughter grabs the papers, folds them, unfolds them
and runs out.

The old aunt smokes my cigarette,
looks at what I write, leaves and slams the door.

My daughter pulls my arm and takes off running;
she has a book by Kant in her hands.

My father reads in the living room and doesn’t bother me.

My brothers are sick of the afternoon wind,
they come into my room, take a seat on a cousin’s bed
who lights dawn sun and begins to laugh.

In the afternoons when I write, I mutter.




Todos han muerto (1971)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Despidamos a Pepe / Oswaldo Barreto

Let's Say Goodbye to Pepe

Yesterday, at eleven in the morning, Pepe Barroeta left earth. On this date, 06-06-06, so conventionally charged with prophecies, he, who had nothing conventional about him, probably left to fulfill his own prophecy, the final encounter with his father (whom he would call Néstor with the same affectionate confidence by which he himself was called Pepe): "The night of my death / we will barely converge / one minute in the sky / I will pass into the immensity / and the misfortune / shall then begin / I will escape to Orion"

An Andean from the heart of Trujillo and also a Mediterranean European (by blood, formation, escapes and misfortunes) , he spent his life making and unmaking injustices in politics, the arts and love. He leaves a mark and memory of his intermittent battles for liberty and happiness.

He leaves behind daughters, a Christian widow and who knows how many pagan widows. He leaves a deep mark in the classrooms of many universities and in the bars of the many cities he wandered through.

Besides what his life was and with all that, he leaves us an immense poetic oeuvre, published in titles such as Todos han muerto, Cartas a la extraña, Arte de anochecer, Fuerza del día and Culpas de juglar, along with the one that's still unedited, left in the workshop where he wrote until a few days before succumbing.

In that desire for transparency which signed everything he did, Pepe also leaves us an “Elegy” that speaks of the sense he gave life: “While death exists I will live / singing / drifting on a wave of / desperate music. / In the winters, / in any station / there are so many / who have died for me. / I always want to leave life / without bitterness / Leave her as I've already seen her.”

We say goodbye to you, Pepe, with the same calm pain you’ve used to elegize all your dead.

{ Oswaldo Barreto, TalCual, 7 June 2006}