EL SALVADOR
a long poem
begun 13th.february.2016
Prologue
What are these outlines of histories
I wanted to forget? written down long ago
on tropical hurricanes, spelt out within humid diagrams,
clippings of failed endless events I never read about,
doodles on small journals, estranged from this broken country of souls,
but all my day-dreams said ‘write’ there is reason in being
voices looking back, eyes made from essential sources
of life: water, fire, and earth,
this earth of mystery, earth of goodbye
earth of fathers who never came back
drinks among Mayan strata made of sorrow
the past is always sorrow, it is always hard
to take up the pen of youth and write its tears day by day
let us begin…
ONE
El Salvador land of mangos, war, and green abundance, I write from you,
your brown hands worked to the bone, picking coffee beans, bullets, and innocents
from all forgotten Mestizo songs about saints and martyrs, short sentences
that said more than you let on here with coconut trees and sweet Pacific breeze.
Holding high Sainted Romero, still walking his farmers and nuns
bringing down M-16s with a smile that was taken away, murder at communion table
all along stone roads, cardboard and aluminum homes,
crops of hope turned to years lost into flooding rebellion, Romero’s glasses shattered.
What can I call these ramblings? wasted history wrapped in banana leaves?
history streams to warm seas, hidden rocks and crabs
please dear Bishop Romero give us one last prayer from your sunny havens
looking down on exiled children denoted by each one of our Lenca names,
and so from my North American crypt I pick up a prophet’s binoculars
and write about folk tales under guava trees
when we were kids running into dark bushes, running with dogs
boats waiting offshore with their fish and oysters catch
that we ate at two dollars a dozen, bit of ketchup, lime
slurp of goodness in each one, carefully saying a line
that grandmother taught us, beer at hand, ‘remember to see
each oyster as our sea offering to her glory, to her divine care’,
But what am I looking for in these twigs of yesterday?
it’s not love, its not understanding or clarity
perhaps I want to record what was not recorded inside faded Spanish journals
under beautiful blue alcoves, grandma can you speak again?
Once more, I sit, rocks and sand, silence waves in awe
memory, a word I drop down to clear waters, she
looks up, a beautiful reflection, but I don’t understand the
ways of the sea, Poseidon does not rule here
his world is too rich for Central America.
TWO
I am named exile,Northern skyscrapers rising from my body
body of thoughts and poems, body made of tarnished flesh
that travelled with her own urban notebooks, can you feel how madly
I write lost in this my city by the Bay!
And so I must record, become every tainted angel lost there, you country
that has left my spirit with traces of pupusas de chicharron with curtido
eating up all these scents streaming from ghosts I never named
grandma still stares from her photos under crucifixes and candles,
write, please write she seems to whisper, am I drunk with stories?
building walls in my head, Spanish falls from my lips, dead like stone
I speak two languages now, speak in two ways, by two roads that never meet
songs play round my apartment, there is only music, one breeze felt.
THREE
Shouts, slamming doors, broken windows
blood down the face of my grandfather, rain coming
in through open walls, grandma kneels before saints
can you help? can you take the burden of six troubled kids
help never came just divorce, more yells, more drinks
their sons, their kids growing up watching debacles playing out
at birthdays, Christmas, unity of separations while close
pass all the alcohol round and round this worldly mantra.
Burnt memories are lying lovers, they want the drama
to pass hours of boredom, tropical daydreams wisk
me past what was comparisons of dreams and more dreams
but I’ve lost my path down these dusty entries on unreliable pages.
Shouts again, except it is my heart that says
‘slow down, write of what was real, tangibly grasped by flesh
by emotions not obscured nightmares’
here I catch my breath, here I turn away,
El Salvador you once were a place of laughter
for many of us, revolutionary posters not yet plastered
on walls, just our ocean with its own views
drives by water’s edge, looking down at living fish
that swim around my feet, maybe they have a wish
to share with me, a flash of otherness I want to touch
can I borrow the lexicon of fisheries? speak the rhymes of depths
with you, by you, surrounding you with your own words,
my friends swim away, other calls come to take them
they also have a heaven and a place of waiting,
let us go then, this soul and this marker of seeing
which I feel drop from my hand, splashing, sinking in emptiness.
FOUR
Sun alive with parties, ice-coolers with beers,
roasted chicken bought from a roadside beggar
watermelons as well carried with us, caravan of years
but none of them write, I am one lonely voice for what never was.
Great Grandfather’s desk sits silently watching
in his condemned property, hides the only true prose we should have had
wistful driven truths, observed by him
who watched our world through French eyes.
His name was Salvador which means ‘savior’
but what could he save as time moved his daughter on
past the docks of permanence, honesty, and serene hours
all he could do was watch and send his soul’s morse key, catch it, please catch it!
Salvador Gallegos whose feet took him from Paris
to San Francisco, dancing by the Panama Canal, aware of Europe
which he glued on his photo-album that sank in the North Atlantic
play-bills floating up to the surface, voiceless strangers to him.
He looked out from his balcony heard their sinking sigh
a sky of sighs, but he was hot and sighs are too hard to decipher
did he know the roads ahead for his daughter, my grandmother
who is all El Salvador is for me, here in the present beyond sigh and floating bills,
Can I ask you a question Salvador? can I tap it out from Iceland
in the service of diplomatic meanderings up the amazon of namelessness
too easy to write, too easy to believe you forgot her, protected her
but souls fail at the end, who should I write to instead? tell me!
But Salvador remained silent at his huge oak desk
he took out a diary from 1925, his sisters, ‘here look
at this’ she loved and failed, so she believed, son and husband
but she was free in that room looking down at San Francisco, free and bold.’
What could I say? I realized El Salvador was a dream
like these musings I had been writing down, a vision
but I was no prophet, I did not speak the language of eternity,
just English and Spanish which fell quiet among these ruins by the desk.
Time has past, faces and voices have gone beyond these pages
grandparents, father, uncles, cousins, great-aunts, all names sealed
in my journal hidden from everyone, essence of them remain
in the wind falling from a volcano down to San Salvador, the capital,
so enough of these conversations with ghosts and memories
they don’t have guides to the country I am trying to revive
with each stanza, with each set of photos, fading, falling, forgetting.
Here I’ll stand looking at maps with roads erased, with words missing
FIVE
What dreams come in these last hours before the pen goes down
ladders sprinkled with lights left by those gone down streams now hidden,
why is death unnamed, it is the angel without personality, no face no name
but he comes to all, loves all, El Salvador was his orphan never forgotten,
I have forgotten what it is like to walk on sand made of the past
eat typical food cooked by those of my blood, my ancestry, my path
now all is an entry fading in a book I’ve kept hidden within other books,
my mind says goodbye time and time again, to this country without prayers.
Sing your song el Salvador, sing despite my own estrangement
sing as I walk away from your stone, your spring, your families, my own mirror
image passing me on those highways with potholes, with erased months
I capture then let go, misunderstood, time to close this instant.
SIX
And so I held your hand, following orange paths ghost loved to take
when they were young, when my country was young in dust and mud,
each step you said one word then two then three until the end
of our day-dream, climbing out of darkness, out of sleep, misunderstood,
which this bed of ancient dialects could not free in some unified voice,
flashing whimpers spoken with resignation, waking up,
sight was clear, El Salvador remained on a map I once owned
now floating in another’s hand, with rules and regulations from gods.
EPILOGUE
And so there are no remnants, no trail of crumbs
to guide Salvadoran memorials to this future written on napkins
I stain with pens of remembering, but what is the stain?
napkins disintegrate under water, words don’t surface
but I write and spell out El Salvador, land of saviors, land of war
Simon Bolivar’s bones do not travel up to liberate you from dark skies
he sleeps under Amazon blue, he is no lover of diaries, he just is.
Pass these cups of palm trees, swimming turtles, distanced parrots
that come by your feet, tiled surface, tropical skies, no song is heard
just tapping water on tin roofs, running dogs along walls lined with bottles
cloud after cloud dressing morning with blackness wrapped in lush hours,
eyes turn to this lushness but it passes, you pass, there is no stone left for epilogues...
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