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This
is just a note
for another bottle,
another ocean and shore
let go upon this water between love and death.
My hands are bloody
from turning the fragment life that is mine to love
or despise.
We are still spinning, shards
shot out form the void
out of the emptiness that marks creation—
black center of a blasted star
that we know is God:
to remember a fiery unity is love.
Few can know how you loved
(love lights the dark,
consumes the
sacrificial wick.)
Now you are gone and not gone
now you are here and not here—
this is the terribleness
of living.
Poet—you drew water
for the angels to drink
you gathered fallen feathers to nest a house
for burning
and in your hardest breathing
you did your dangerous thing.
from Aperturas . . .
Con esa mañana
rodando por todos los milenios,
toda para siempre fría,
hasa allí,
hubiéramos podido
haber hecho tantos juegos
ancestrales.
Juan Dal Vera
(17)
Poemas en Blanco
With that morning
turning through the millenia
always and forever cold,
until then
we could have had the games
of
the ancestors.
Trans. Katia Chiari
Do Not Drink the Water at Portobelo
(for
the tribe of tiger woods)
You say you are not
African-american—
you spar with words: how can you
return to a where you've never been?
But we know now that every where
is impermanence
a pause
a turning—
we survive merely for the chance
to return to places we've never been
to grandeurs never owned
to beauties destroyed in the civilizing wars
to a heaven
to grace.
Do not drink the waters
of memory and middle passages,
waters deep as the eyes of Majonga,
waters dangerous as a fold in the skirt of Yemanya.
This cup, saltier than tears,
is driven by the moon,
this water is
in you, surges away
only to rush back to this
red black clay.
Libertad!
pensábamos a pensamiento junto
Pero los ojos eran tan estrechos
que no cupo tan enorme palabra
Juan Dal Vera
Poemas en Blanco,
Ediciones Inac Panama, 1977
Freedom!
we had the same idea
but our imaginations were narrow
we could not admit such an enormous word.
Trans. Oronike Odeleye and Opal Moore, 2003
The Dream of a Common Liberty
a song
for Amina Lawal on a stay of execution by stoning
do not enter me
with a flag and coca cola
do not core this apple of mine
with your spoon
do not take this burden
of my seed
from me
without love
this word freedom is incomprehensible
do not bury my feet in the soil
of my mothers
and make my head a pebble
kicked in anger
do not core the apple of me
do not take the burden
of my seed
without love
this seed cannot save you
without love
the heart is incomprehensible
that night
we thought a thought together
we birthed a word
in our mouths we dare not
speak aloud
who could witness such desire?
without love
your freedom is coca cola
my freedom, another cruelty
another strike
against me
without love
love is incomprehensible.
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