Cristina Peri Rossi.
I have to thank my Facebook friend poet Jerry Pendergast for sharing this poem the other day. It speaks to me in so many ways as a person trying with varying degrees of success to bridge transgenerational gaps and share dreams even without the sexual attractions it describes.
Cristina Peri Rossi is a novelist, poet, translator, and author of short stories born in Montevideo, Uruguay but was exiled in 1972 when a fascist “civic-military” regime was terrorizing dissidents and leftists. She moved to Spain, where she became a citizen in 1975. And lives in Barcelona where Catalan nationalists are often at odds with the government in Madrid and which has a lively arts scene. where she continues to write fiction and work as a journalist and political commentator.
Considered a leading light of the post-1960s period of the Latin-American novel, she has written more than 37 works. She broadcast on for the public station Catalunya Radio but was fired from this position in October 2007 and accused the station of “linguistic persecution”, claiming she was fired for speaking Spanish instead of Catalan. She was later re-instated to her post after an outcry.
She is well known for her defense of civil liberties and freedom of expression. She long supported gay marriage and welcomed Spain’s decision to recognize it.
Rossi mature in Spain.
In an El Mundo article in March 2006, she spoke out against the rise of religious extremism in Europe, and specifically the violence that followed the Danish Cartoons Affair which some Muslims believed mocked the Prophet . In the article she supported to the Together Facing the New Totalitarianism Manifesto, which was published in the left-leaning and secularist French weekly Charlie Hebdo in March 2006.
Rossi's controvercial collection of erotic poems published in 1971.
Rossi’s work of highly experimental fiction and an impressive body of poetry have embraced feminism and challenged gender roles and identification for both men and women. The lesbian eroticism of Evohé: Poemas Eroticos published in 1971 caused a scandal when first released. She has since become an icon of LGBTQ literature in both Latin America and Europe.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Light Pocket Poetry series helped introduce Rossi to American readers.
Astonishment
each me – you say, from your avid twenty-one years
believing still that one can teach something
and I, who passed sixty
look at you with love
that is, with farawayness,
(all love is love of differences
the empty space between two bodies
the empty space between two minds
the horrible presentiment of not dying in twos)
I teach you, gently, some quote from Goethe
(Stay instant! You are so beautiful!)
or from Kafka (once there was, there was once
a mermaid that did not sing)
while the night slowly slides into dawn
through this window
that you love so much
because its nocturnal lights
conceal the true city
and actually we could be in any place
these lights could be those of New York,
Broadway Avenue, those of Berlin, Konstanzerstrasse,
those of Buenos Aires, calle Corrientes
and I withhold from you the only thing that I truly know:
poet is one who feels that life is not natural
that it is astonishment
discovery revelation
that it is not normal to be alive
it is not natural to be twenty-one years of age
nor be more than sixty
it is not normal to have walked at three in the morning
along the old bridge of Córdoba, Spain, under the yellow
light of its streetlamps
-three in the morning-
not in Oliva nor in Seville
natural is the astonishment
natural is the surprise
natural is to live as if just arrived
to the world
the alleys of Córdoba and its arches
to the plazas of Paris
the humidity of Barcelona
the doll museum
in the old wagon standing
on the dead train tracks of Berlin
natural is to die
without having walked hand in hand
through the portals of an unknown city
nor to have felt the perfume of the white jasmines in bloom
at three in the morning
Greenwich meridian
natural is that s/he who has walked hand in hand
through the portals of an unknown city
won’t write about it
would bury it in the casket of forgetfulness
Life blooms everywhere
blood relative
inebriated
exaggerated Bacchante
on nights of turbid passions
but there was a fountain that clucked
languidly
and it was difficult not to feel that life can be beautiful
sometimes
like a pause
like a truce
that death grants to joy.
--Cristina Peri Rossi
Translated by Diana Decker
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