October 2011
VOL XIX, Issue 10, Number 222
Guest Editor This Issue: Heather Ferguson
Editor: Klaus J. Gerken
Production Editor: Heather Ferguson
European Editor: Mois Benarroch
Contributing Editors: Michael Collings; Jack R. Wesdorp; Oswald Le Winter
Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Evan Light; Pedro Sena
ISSN 1480-6401
Selected Works
by Jorge Etcheverry
Translated by Christine Shantz, and by Jorge Etcheverry and Sharon Khan
Introduction
From Vitral con pájaros and The International Festival of Poetry of Resistance, Volume 1
Kale Borroka ("Street fight" in the Basque language)
Contents
From The Escape Artist
Ahimsa
Fragment 7
A Caucus of Quail
From Waves, Volume 13, Number 4
Fragment IX
Rue de Grand-Pré
From Hablativo agente
Ode to Greta Garbo
From Logbook
XI
XXVII
From Tangiers
Untitled
(...)
From The Witch
Untitled
II
From Vitral con pájaros
This is the story...
Let the band play on
A talk with Martinez
From A vuelo de pájaro
For a child was born (A Christmas Carol)
Consumerism & Guilt (the beginning of 1991)
Post Scriptum
Jorge Etcheverry Bio/Bibliography
From Vitral con pájaros and The International Festival of Poetry of Resistance, Volume 1
(1998, translated by Jorge Etcheverry and edited by Sharon Khan)
Kale Borroka ("Street fight" in the Basque language)
Wherever there's youth
Whenever there's youth
corrupt governments
tyrants
occupation forces
will get no peace.
The streets will bristle with barricades
the city air will be difficult to breathe
filled with the smoke of burning tires
Policemen with dogs
like numerous, hungry vultures
will rush against the multitudes
shrouded in tear gas
while central or federal governments
pass new anti-terrorism
edicts, laws, decrees
in puppet parliaments
where party divisions are so many masks
hiding the usual suspects.
Today young people take to the streets
in San Sebastian
Toronto, Ottawa, Gaza,
Santiago
you name it
at the meetings
of the World Bank, NATO, the G8, the IMF
where corporations dressed up as countries
devour everything
while they plan how to price the air
the water
the genes of plants and animals
how to squeeze another drop of people's blood
sell them more illusions
impose new rules for buying and selling their flesh.
It used to be in Chile, El Salvador
Mexico City
that the young people took to the streets
to the Sierra in Cuba
to the mountains in Colombia and Venezuela
occupying Universities in Uruguay and Argentina
for example
boys and girls
like a flock of celestial, ephemeral birds
throwing stones, Molotov cocktails
so miguelitos in the streets
—— potatoes studded with nails
or sharp metallic cable
so they always land
with the points up——
Let it be them, the youth
some of them
spanning vast horizons in the task of growing up
maturing in the soil and manure of utopia
taking to the streets
again and again
while we
old, accommodating
watch them on TV
throwing stones
provoking the police
And we'd like to believe we were like them once
like these kids who are running
because it seems there's shooting
And we'd like to believe
they might have learned a thing or two from us
who are watching them now
setting aside our petty worries
for a while
to catch a glimpse of those clear, vast landscape
that together with he streets make up
Their Territory.
From The Escape Artist (1980, translated by Christine Shantz)
Ahimsa
It is the year of the doves. They describe interminable circles, stalking the black ravens of war. The wind carries
off the physicist's hat and makes it roll through somewhat lyrical meadows. In the month of the cats the days are
shorter — and never did we have less time to ourselves.
Let me speak awhile, halt my journey for a few moments. I come from the East. I have seen the walls of all the
cities quiver and quake. I have seen dizzy crows over ripe wheat fields. I have seen the blood of the flocks that
were scattered over those same wheat fields. And this I say unto you. This is the hour of the hurried and the
solitary preachers. It is the time of Solomon. It is now that the master descends from on high and becomes one
with the multitude dragging his prayer wheel. It will be tomorrow when the skirmishes become more furious. It will
be then that I end my litany, it will be too late to tell of the red cobblestones of the street.
Fragment 7
Awesome inert composition in many ways abandoned by the hand of God, ordaining a new Gospel of Desolation, like
a serpent that curls swiftly back upon herself, intoxicated by the Sun, intoxicated with the heat and the landscape
— A train goes by — Knower of vast meridians, she is now imprisoned — let us lament. Knower of vast wild meridians
and birds, and birds
This was told to me by the bees that buzzed inside my head. This was suggested to me by the tiny steel wheels of
any machine whatsoever
— A train goes by — The migrating birds further and further off, the city more and more polarized — a train goes
by — And the face, suffering a tumult of knives, in the sky. A ubiquitous eye, twinkling and white, white. An
imaginary hand blessing the streets with the most traffic, decorating lapels with stars, shaving the white legs
of virgins
An infinity of choruses, frog choruses — flutters like a handkerchief in the wind blowing in from the outskirts
— trains go by, trains
A Caucus of Quail
A proliferation or intensification of sun spots has been announced for the year 1982 — according to Sonia.
“Incidents are taking place on a diplomatic level on at least three continents” — says Emilio. The five-year-old
girl distinguishes between various languages. She distinguishes and assimilates racial differences. Something else,
let's say it straight out. We celebrate the Revolution on every page.
Faced by school compositions, posters with a central motif, well-defined themes with many epithets crossed out,
short sentences with long spaces in between. The proliferation of peoples and groups raises its head (once again).
The horse of the inconceivable Third World proletariat breaks into a gallop, causing the reins to slip from the
hands of the elite.
—At my place, we all sit at the table, we read these and other things in the newspaper. We smoke innumerable
cigarettes without filters. We wash the dishes and prepare various hot meals
The clock governing this order, from the bookshelf — We sit to leaf through the photocopied articles and eat toast,
we rummage beneath the mask of Being and Time
— Basically, our eating habits have not changed. A bird in the hand. Admit it, establishing the comparison with
the cars fitted with bars, the skyscrapers with jungles hanging from their highest balconies — down here, in the
evening, we, the ethnic groups pululate, made arrogant by the proximity of night
"Let us feel poor. Let us feed gray pigeons in the inner courtyard of the apartment complexes. Occasionally, let
us compare, in front of shop windows downtown, the build of the mannequins, the sweet texture of the suits
On Saturday morning, the immigrants fill McDonald’s
Expelled from their country, Chileans of the most diverse types disseminate a varied anecdote throughout the cities
of developed and developing countries. Let us not fear the introduction of technical terms from the social sciences.
Conflicts in various places explode like ripe pomegranates, the red seeds of the multitudes rolling, densely or
sparsely, always towards the centre of the city, in search of Cathedrals, Embassies, with varying success, Government
Palaces, "and so on, and so on"
These things concern us as we walk through the slushy snow, stimulated or preoccupied with more immediate problems:
heavy shoes, the rate of inflation, ill-fitting clothes
impersonal observers
do not touch the heart of things. They see us pass by before their
browless eyes. I attempt to lay the foundations of the fecundity of these phrases (how about that). The grass grows
beneath the snow. The self disappears behind the tumult of phrases, the swelling of the long line.
From Waves, Volume 13, Number 4 (Spring 1985, translated by Christine Shantz)
Fragment IX
Zeno said that space is divisible. Between each leg and bush, then, gapes an infinity. The seagulls will fly in wide,
concentric circles as the fishermen, with a foreboding of stormy weather, dock their heavy, dilapidated boats. The
heavy shelled crabs wave their pincers amid the waves which become ever higher and higher, with their strong legs
arranged two-by-two they stir up the shifting sand composed of an infinite number of grains, black, white, yellow.
The seagulls fly out to sea. But let us make no mistake. They will return, first as points of light, then showing
their obscure albatross-like wingspread, as they dive upon the crabs.
Now the rumour of the waves is drowned out by the sound of breaking and sucking and the waves are tinged with red
foam. These are natural events. Then the winds cease blowing, but only after they have drunk the blood of the waters.
Which tints the sands, bathes the curved beaks of the birds and wets their lean wings
Rue de Grand-Pré
The historic parades have passed. In these times of recession the light of a new lyricism appears against the horizon.
Rodrigo Lira was the only poetic voice in Chile. The ex-militants of parties, who put up with a bad life, say that
they have gone on to new heights, e.g. literature. For many of my generation, still bent under the prodigious weight
of the Catholic tradition, loving is like praying
My cat cannot stand being compared with those of your house, curled up at the foot of your bed, wrapped in drowsiness
as in an invisible plastic bag. Your angular and somewhat coppery face — you told me you have some Indian blood —
softens its lines in a slumber that stretches over days, and my nostrils take in your emanations like incense.
“I don't want anyone to fantasize on my account. Life has always been hard for me. I always got involved in sex as if
it were a bubble. The atrocious days of my adolescence run through memory, washing dishes in the kitchen as my sister
plays Bobby Vinton records on the floor above, again and again, interminably”
Soon, in a few years at most, your mind, overwhelmed by so many years of learning and reflection, will seek out
another little street in which to hide from the "LIGHT OF THE WORLD" The kosher food shops stand elbow-to-elbow with
the Italian cafes and the cafes of practising bisexuals, earrings hanging from their right ears, who wait on tables
as they hum Jacques Brel songs. In Brussels I saw a poster announcing Klaus Kinsky in Woyzeck. These images
are entwined in the fishing net. Christ said to Paul: "Kill and eat."
From Hablativo agente (Translated by Jorge Etcheverry, edited by Sharon Khan)
Ode to Greta Garbo
The season of the skylark stops humming among telephone lines, making person-to-person calls flourish and sing, stops
whispering in the background of female voices when they answer, in whatever language, or sing on the other end of the
line. The most satisfied men are the least productive. Now we find ourselves partially involved in a description of very
particular matters. What can we do? We didn't invent the world or history.
All the dishevelled and aging travelling we elaborate like spiders or snails. At this moment a thin young man of
indeterminate age passes by, smoking. While the afternoon stretches out like the back of a white cat, biting off the
orange of the world and chewing hard. Like an imaginary mouth I lift those full, silky skirts. I pull down your gaudy,
violet-pink pantyhose and I nibble your slender sex, covered in soft down, the other extreme, the reason for your mouth.
You succeed in annulling the dimension of your poor brain, always inclined to take flight, besieged by the fragile
intertwining of the body's skeleton. Caged in the old familiar tales about the White Knight, the taste for sex, the
boredom, the propensity to oversleep.
Like a butterfly with heavy velvet wings rise the wit of your laughter and the voracity of your eyes and fingers. Here,
in these latitudes, frustration turns us into consumers: how many packs of cigarettes and cups of coffee have crushed my
lungs and liver along with the juices of your inexpressible cunt, shaking the firm, methodical meshing of the
revolutionary world order, unequal and combined.
Like a flourishing of faces and arms that bursts into the apartment of the so-called inner life. A swarm of bloody
lithographic paper attacks us and makes us teeter at the corner, when we’re already walking, shaky from tobacco and
booze, and dreams over which you reign like Greta Garbo in the films of the ‘20s ? unquestioned and unquestionable,
lifting a white thigh trimmed with a black garter beneath the frills of a black can-can skirt.
Let your publicized silhouette and face publicizing bras and dresses, the high heel of your shoe, your top hat and
platinum-blonde hair be like a candle in the middle of a pasture that attracts and ignites all the insects of television
and hidden longings (not just ours), that suffocates and masks Revolutions & Humanism, which relativizes and shapes
Aesthetics & Politics. With a flustered expression in the eyes, a fluttering of the eyelashes, a brief observation in
bad French.
(Also published in Existere, Volume 9, No.4, 1989. Translated by Jorge Etcheverry and edited by Sharon Khan.)
From Logbook - (Translated by Jorge Etcheverry and edited by Sharon Khan)
XI
Where will I turn the serene birds of my pupils? In this inhospitable land, in these inhospitable times? Asks La Gabriela
as she arrives in Santiago, standing on the threshold like a pearl inlaid in a cavity. Far to the north, the crags are
crazed by the sun, the sex of the cacti inflamed, their irritated fuzz, in reality their spines, standing on end. Where
will I turn the resentful birds of my pupils? The children reduced forever to dark dwarfs roaming among the rocks of the
coast like the shrimp they feed upon. The old men of stony beards climb into the beds of their daughters, the seamstresses,
as soon as they feel the least bit drowsy. "Let's not rack our brains anymore trying to recall those ever-so- clear skies
and that oh-so-putrid stench of the sea that has debased our souls. Let's go back to the austerity of religion as to a
white sailboat."
XXVII
After years of burying myself in my own suffering and the vacuity of any sort of task or enterprise, I felt forced to go
and spread relief in the Third World. But it was a problem to decide with whom I should work there. The aides-de-camp of
different governments and the attachés of various embassies wanted to see me. The preachers of a hundred gospels of blood
and utopia handed me their sacred books. I waited, disguised among people of every nationality, mostly francophones, who
launched themselves into mournful evenings like an ambiguous wave, filling all the cafes. Let's start again. I was raised
in pain, then I was trained to go to the Third World to sow consolation. I couldn't cope with life that wasn't like a jump
out of an explosion at night, like the sudden shock felt when a patrol passes close by as you lie precariously hidden. I
couldn't stand any calm except for restorative sleep or food. No respite but the sweet flood of fatigue like warm, heavy
water through the body. Or the needed introspection that precedes action, resulting in success or failure. Other diversions
would make me the victim of the hundred, multiple spiders of pain. You took away the calm of my life along with the
might-have-been of a stable maturity. Your semblables will pay for it one day with their tranquillity, maybe their
blood. Many men like me are incubated in the countless tenement buildings of modern cities. Thus reasons one of them as
he walks along the downtown streets, day dreaming, after reading Isidore Ducasse, after a date with Isadora Duncan.
From Tangiers (1997, translated by Jorge Etcheverry and edited by Sharon Khan)
No one puts laws in my head. Everybody may think what he wants as long as he doesn't say it out loud. The pants are
pressed between the mattress and the springs to have them ready for the following morning. In the face of the succession
of days is born the urge to do definitive things
But let it not be given to us to prevent this agitation. It's not our problem. Those plants with voracious roots could
cling to something other than rocks and air. Something like the glimpse of a kind of choice that some make suddenly
appears like a half-naked kid on the gray shore of skepticism, to our surprise (and that of spectators)
May a cold hand in these hot latitudes support and absolve and caress this whole array of nearly unalterable things
(or not so)
(...)
Let's come back to the most obscure poetry. Events fly by. And those immense birds —Condors? Flapping their enormous
heavy wings (perhaps in dreams). I only feel the warm wind against the external walls of my head. Not the wind of the
true beat, of the oscillating flight, Good God! Foreseen, erratic, winged, of the passing and progression of time. In
a way other than inside my pupils. Or the interminable, hence subdivided spaces inside my head
A dangerous, red-headed woman, around my age, also flies by, like a broomless witch wrapped up in a maelstrom of
calendar sheets, of urban architectural niches, or meadows. She is regarding at moi, sideways, with a vague smile,
while cabled news breeds prolifically in a new medium (as Benjamin predicted and described) among the voices —in a way
parallel with my grey-haired head: the atrociously mutilated bodies, the carcasses, the annihilation of vast natural
sectors — while voices rise — pulsated up from below, from inside, by an identical rhythmic flowering
From The Witch (1997, translated by Jorge Etcheverry and edited by Sharon Khan)
Like a heretic theologian in a lost country in Central Europe unravelling the brilliant tapestries of a Gnostic
religion, slaving away at manuscripts in a little shack, without disciples, surrounded by ex-comrades since converted
to Arianism, who make the sign of the cross as they pass in front of my door
— What can you do about generalized opinions that are in reality the law. Besides. You don't feel like fighting anymore
when you see others walking the corridors with dignity, well-fed, well-heeled, lighting up the tranquil eyes o
successful men
Or walking downtown streets, with hair styled, wearing tailored suits, muttering as one leg chafes against the other.
Women with glowing complexions and voluptuous though proper gestures wait to be invited to candlelight dinners by young,
athletic executives. They hope to find Mr. Right, the one they still might marry one day
— All these advantages crammed together like young girls looking at us through the window of our study, enticing us to
go out while we are busy reading or writing a treatise on criticism. And suddenly all of this is hung up in the closet
like a suit with baggy knees and elbows, a bit tight at the waist
—The call of all those voices of the system like so many other sirens with loud or deep voices or like those girls who
find you weird and tell you, as they cross and uncross their (long) legs and ask you for a cigarette, that if you dressed
properly and cut your hair, they'd give it to you
A profusion of suns proud and red persisted in rotating over my head, one after another, irritating my blood as I walke
the streets of the microscopic center of the city, like a swarm of furious bees that run arrows over me
—from place to place, furious, with my hands clenched in my pockets, my high arches deforming my shoes, as can be seen in
various photos taken of me from passing cars that slowed down as they drove by me
—It was like a rim of steely looks going deep into my brain, menacing like a muttering chorus:
Now that we've all settled down and we don't plant ourselves in the cafes anymore, or ride bicycles with our manes
flowing, flaunting the freedom of the hippie, the measured self-destructiveness of the poet, the dead-calm of the
skid-row bum, the furious, dispossessed rebellion of the Third-World revolutionary. Now you have to join us, we who
have decided to make a small place for ourselves in this bazaar, since we cannot tear it down and replace it with our
own, whatever that may be. And we're telling you, simply and directly, and in this way you will be able to pass it on
to the youth who will come after us when they dangerously attempt to prolong adolescence beyond permissible limits.
You will tell them and they will listen to you because of the influence you have always had over youth, using your
facility with language
II
Dreams have always been a source of the greatest interest for us. Days would strain between my fingers in adolescence
like a liquefied sun, lightly tanning my skin as night came, hospitable like a soft fragrant pubis distilling the juice
of dreams slowly into avid lips in the process of formation
Later when I have felt the world narrowing around me like medieval stocks around my ankles, wrists and neck, the
muttering buzzing of those variable insects — Dreams —
have given me compensatory visions
Like pieces of incomprehensible dominos before the eyes and hands of an idiot child lie the fragments of dreams, ready
for interpretation
— Like a man of indefinite age, or like a human being of vague outline and indefinite sex (let's be politically correct)
the dream strolls along the labyrinthine streets of the psyche, dressed in exceedingly picturesque rags
The ultimate meaning of all those dreams walks around ready for the unbiased mind, imbued with a vast intelligence and
erudition, though endowed with an innocent naïveté that will condescend to do the inventory and classify those numerous
volumes
— Earlier at the beginning of the century, the theosophist and somewhat socialist generals in certain South-Cone countries,
taking up an immemorial tradition, proclaimed that man (microcosm) is a replica of the Universe (macrocosm)
Those stale discussions don't interest me anymore. Spiritualism, like so many other things, is a springboard, or
self-propeller
All life events, even the most important ones, lack meaning
While we stop for a moment at night on a steeply climbing street like those in Coquimbo or Booth Street and we look
down at the myriad of lights, some small, some large, that are spread out below
Through dreams (it's said) you tap into things more at the level of nature: instincts, impulses, whatever
—Like really juicy pumpkins, full of many seeds (girls eat them behind doors to get shapely legs or induce abortions)
In this way Particular things regarding the Universal are dealt with (permit us the use of upper case)
—Like a flower of many unequal but strongly centered petals, concentric in its drawing, whose lines of force in spite of
their apparent dispersion seem to converge and/or diverge from a common centre
Likewise lead to, or separate from, Dreams, like that, with a capital, the different, moist facets defined but limited
by the geometric framework of the same crystal
—Like processions seen from a distance moving along the streets of small towns in southern Europe
—Like different women known and/or tasted: the series of well-shaped, dark ones, somewhat acidic; the angular, almost
masculine blondes, their sex too close to the anus, narrow and very juicy, but with a mild odour reminiscent of sweat
and infantile urine
In cyclic progression, like a spiral, like all the situations in life repeating themselves, as (some) people have kept
telling me over the years. But dividing time in a parallel series, dreams interlock, alluding to, and shaping, different
series like entering data in different programs, cards in different files
—Like packed kernels of corn prey to the greed of the crow, the laziness of the scarecrow who watches, but simultaneously
sleeps
Somebody says, parodizing Jung, "The viscous tissue of dreams connects a dark point in the minds of all men, without
distinction as to colour and race"
— All life's events, even the most banal (the only kind I know) dwell in our minds
The most decisive (we wish to believe) manifest themselves through dreams
Some of my acquaintances have the habit of jotting down their dreams in the moments between awakening and actually
beginning their day
—With stiff limbs and half-closed eyelids, still young women sit half-naked on the bed to write down certain nocturnal
images. Someday I think I'll ask for a grant to study dreams, reveries, and hallucinatory states in Third-World countries
that suffer from chronic conditions of political convulsions. Maybe the Ford Foundation would help me out
No way. My heart (and in other days my strength) is and always was on the side of the oppressed. Subjugated nations and
social classes always dream about muttering magicians, birds ascending in flight, arrows rising up from different bows,
crumbling towers, demolitions and fires
From Vitral con pájaros (2002, translated by Jorge Etcheverry and edited by Sharon Khan)
This is the story…
This is the story of the cork man
who always ends up floating
after the floods
The story of the cat man
who always lands on his feet
from trees
from planes
from ministries and governments
The story of the elastic man, the rubber man
who bends over to kiss hands
“You’re looking better everyday”
clapping his enemies on the back in social situations
“How’s it going, old man?”
as he stabs them in the back
pulling the rug out from under their feet
This is the story of the smiling man
your average guy
that everybody likes
“Back off, Satan”
as my grandma would say,
“back off.”
Let the band play on
It doesn’t matter
Let the band play on
even if the musicians are tired
even if everyone’s distracted
even if no one gives a damn
let it play on
Let the musicians wipe the sweat from their brows
even if no one gives them any wine
even if no one gives them any water
in this heat
Let them go on
even if they’re dying of hunger
even if their stomachs are growling
— “We’re musicians, after all” —
one of them says
even if no one laughs at their jokes
a little stale anyway
We have to go on
Come on boys, get up
We have to go on playing
even for the few losers still left
let’s go
let’s go
let the band play on
let it play on
A talk with Martinez
Tell me, Eric, old dog
90 Willow Street, Apartment 502
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
worn out, but still the same
working for the Federal Government
My God, head over heels in love
again
like a teen
Where are the others
our pals from the avant-garde
who were daring in ‘68
but are no longer
maybe ‘cause of the wife
the job, the kids
(and since we’re all going to die some day)
they want to be remembered
as pillars of the community
fine, upstanding citizens
who’ve done their bit
But tell me, reptile or frog
Was that all?
Weren’t we going be the Chilean Rimbauds?
(as Jonás once said)
Weren’t we going to destroy language and the world?
while the guys over in France were taking Nanterre
and Turcios Lima was holding up a train in Guatemala
What happened, Eric
old dog?
What happened to the others?
Not just in the political arena
After all, just look at Yeltsin
If he’d known English, he’d have said
“We didn’t mean it”
(the last 50 years)
And what happened to the other avant-garde
the poetic one
the ones who went around reading Rimbaud
and Mayakovsky
and Nelligan
(if you need to name a poet from here
to get a grant from the Canada Council)
‘Cause let me tell you
the others were busy with other things
with their books of essays
with their jobs at university
with the niche they made for themselves
here or in Chile
And when the body gets old
you should at least have some status
— We’re no longer the wild birds of ‘68
who were taking on the whole world
(Then again, maybe we are
sometimes
That’s why we’re not doing so well
shall we say)
From A vuelo de pájaro (1998, translated by Jorge Etcheverry and edited by Sharon Khan)
For a child was born
(A Christmas Carol)
And let me tell you, Señora
that the animals came
and warmed the child with their breath
and the virgin washed his little clothes
in the trough
And let me tell you, Señora
that everyone came with gifts
from the canals and the caves
from the lost islands
The Imbunche
Ivún = a little being
and ché = a person
its orifices sewn up
and jumping
the Pincoya
sad, wearing black
the Caleuche
boat of witchcraft
navigating the clouds
its crew
with their heads on backwards
And the Colo Colo
harmful animal no one’s ever seen
mouse without tail
who eats alone, without sharing
Marmosa thylamis elegans
freshened the child’s forehead
with drops of saliva
And let me tell you, Señora
They came
each with his own gift
the Machucho
the Gallipán
the Piguchén
the Lampalagua
And the child laughed
at the Trauco
who prances along
the Huenauca
who prances along
but on only one leg
And let me tell you, Señora
that the condors came
from the top of the world
with fabrics woven of snow crystals
And the llamas
with fleece spun from their pelts
by the people of the high plateau
And the choroy
— parrot of the waterways —
brought a fan of multi-coloured feathers
(The days are hot in Judea)
And cry-baby, Llorona, stopped crying
along the seashore
And the sun woke up a bit earlier
illuminating the waterways
For a child was born
And let me tell you, Señora
that the fires lit themselves
in Tierra del Fuego
and the guanacos
all neck and eyes
came to see
And let me tell you, little girl
that a girl like you
a little chilota
could see from her island
a new star
For a child was born
And let me tell you, it was so
Just as I’m telling it to you
Consumerism & Guilt (the beginning of 1991)
The winter's milder this year
as the Tiger of the West bares his fangs at the Jackal of the Desert
The Dim Sum in Chinatown has gone downhill,
but we still remember a dish of steamed vegetables and entrails we sampled last year
Meanwhile, it seems, the Russians won't get into the conflict
Yes? no? Comme si, comme ca
And then we find a Polish spot in the Market
less pretentious than the Hungarian one downtown
where the suckling pig, we think,
is out of this world
In the end, the Europeans have to get into the fray
though they have to show some concern for the Palestinian problem
And we drink Casillero del Diablo at $8.25 a bottle while we read Borges
And imagine if we were Christians, we would see the Face of the Beast
in the Apocalypse,
unifying the Lords of the Earth in a false peace
But there's no point in talking about these things over lunch
in Montreal, at La Tasca
as we enjoy our bitoque
that comes from the American beefsteak
but sounds like the Chilean bistoco
while we savour our wine, a litre of house red,
at a table by the window
As Gorbachev takes advantage of the confusion to give it to the Baltic States
And behind the face of Saddam appears the skull of Bush
the number 666 on his forehead
Then maybe we'll go to Montreal for the day to taste the kidneys at Le Paris,
beside the Faubourg
and order a bottle of C6tes-du Rhone to go with them
or the mixed grill at Janos on Saint-Laurent
which includes rabbit, Portuguese sausage, pork and poultry
the meat garnished with red peppers
and served with the best olives in town
The war is shown on primetime TV
after we've eaten
and the Scuds crash down in Saudi Arabia
as we sip our after-dinner drinks
You can't buy wine after 6:00 p.m. in Ontario
So we bring home a Gato Negro from the LCBO
We only smoke about 10 cigarettes that night
since we're trying to quit
And we don't take sides as we follow the conflict
After all,
the Americans backed the coup in Chile
But if we feel like a sweet after dinner
or a snack with our wine
So be it
We’re still conscientious consumers
“Support your Arab store”
So we go there to get baklava and hummus
and if sometimes late at night
we still have beer left
and don't feel like going out
we phone out for pizza from a well-known place
where the Arabs
talk about the war
and serve the public servants
at lunch hour
Jorge Etcheverry, born in 1945, is a former member of the School of Santiago and Grupo América from the 1960s.
He lives in Canada and has published poetry, prose, criticism and various articles in several countries. His books
of poetry are: The Escape Artist (1981); La Calle (1986); The Witch (1986); Tángier(1991);
A Vuelo de Pájaro (1998); Vitral con Pájaros (2004); Reflexión Hacia el Sur (2004)
and Cronipoemas (2010). Lately, his work has appeared in anthologies such as Cien microcuentos chilenos
(2002); Los poetas y el general (2002); Anaconda, Antología di Poeti Americani (2003); El lugar
de la memoria. Poetas y narradores de Chile (2007); Latinocanadá (2007); Poéticas de Chile. Chilean
Poets (2007); 100 cuentos breves de todo el mundo (2007); and The Changing Faces of Chilean Poetry:
A Translation of Avant Garde, Women's, and Protest Poetry (2008). His anthology of Chilean contemporary poetry
Chilean Poets A New Anthology was published by Marick Press this year.
*
Copyright (c) 2011 Jorge Etcheverry
All selections are copyrighted by their respective authors. Any reproduction of
these poems, without the express written permission of the authors, is
prohibited.
YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts - Copyright (c) 1993 - 2011 by
Klaus J. Gerken.
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