Spanish fortress of San Lorenzo, Cartagena, Colombia. 1870. Courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.
De todos modos, las bombas caerán un día en la ciudad
no tendremos nada que envidiar a los campesinos macheteados unos añitos antes
bajaremos al subsuelo
propiedad del Estado
a buscar refugio
ya estaremos entrenados por las grandes obras maestras del mal llamado séptimo arte
vistas en el bus o esperando a que el médico pronuncie nuestro nombre
quiero abrir un paréntesis y darme una licencia poética[1]La crítica no se ha puesto de acuerdo acerca de la idea de licencia poética que se plantea en el presente texto. Para efectos de ritmo de lectura, este pie de página se puso aquí y no después … Continue reading. Claro, con la certeza de que las únicas licencias poéticas son hablar en primera persona autobiográfica, usar un símil o una correspondencia. La más vieja. Por eso acá la escritura no avanza. Ese afán anhidrótico de apolillar cada palabra del oficio. Cuando caigan las bombas, Rosita, nos esconderemos con el narcisismo de los últimos sobrevivientes. Seremos unos diez, o veinte. Y entonces nos preguntaremos otra vez por los contadores de historias. Buscaremos uno en todos los huecos y alcantarillas, en todas las grietas, ilusos, considerando que una bomba no cae dos veces en el mismo sitio. Mis amigos ya no tendrán cómo hacer versos digitales ni collages, entonces sus palabras se olvidarán para siempre. Todos los callaremos y, nuevamente, buscaremos al contador de historias para que nos diga cómo era vivir antes de las bombas. Para que le dé vida a mis compañeros: escritores de lo que llaman nuevo verso. El contador de historias será misericordioso. Nos veremos siendo lo que tanto odiamos un día: sentados alrededor de un ser que dice llevarnos a otras partes con su voz. Te moriste muy rápido, Rosita, tenías que haber vivido en este futuro incierto en que recorro los túneles buscando, desesperado, a una muchacha que quise antes de las bombas y que, quizá, en medio del desenlace trágico de la vida contemporánea, vuelva a pedirme un piquito. Ya no tendrá boca para hacerlo. Solo oídos. Pero tenías que morirte, Rosita. Tu hombre también era un contador de historias, pero no lo encontraremos, aunque quiero pensar que sí. Tenías que morirte, Rosita, antes de sufrir con nosotros la búsqueda de ese sujeto en medio de la inutilidad de todos los avances estéticos dignos de mi generación.
De todos modos
no tendremos que trabajar
la vida será fácil nuevamente
considerando todo el conocimiento acumulado
y la fantasía que siempre nos agobia:
volver a la escuela con todo lo que sabemos de grandes
intacto
tener siete años
trece años
y a la profesora intentando intimidarnos
y ahí estaremos, regocijados, diciéndole cualquier cosa
con una imagen suya insistente en nuestra cabeza:
le falta el brazo con el que escribía oraciones partidas en sujeto-verbo-predicado
y pregunta insistentemente por la alcantarilla exacta en donde un sujeto, a escondidas, habla de la maravilla que no logramos recordar.
Juvenilia on the Post-Conflict[2]Everyone always knew that the post-conflict would be profitable. Bolder versions of our history have proposed that the peace agreement was really a conspiracy by mediocre Colombian artists with the … Continue reading: Rosita
Reading by translator Camilo Roldán.
Either way, the bombs will fall here in the city someday
we’ll have nothing to envy about those campesinos cut up with machetes just a few years earlier
we’ll get down into the subsoil
property of the state[3]Translator’s note: Subsoil use rights principally belong to the state in Colombia.
to seek refuge
we’ll already have been prepped by those great works of the so-called seventh art
seen on the bus or while waiting for a doctor to call our name
I would like to make a parentheses here and give myself some poetic license[4]Critics are undecided regarding the idea of poetic license proposed by the text at hand. To achieve a fluid reading, this footnote was put here rather than after the development of the idea, that is, … Continue reading. Of course, rest assured that the only poetic licenses are speaking in an autobiographical first person, using a simile or deploying a correspondence. The oldest trick in the book. That’s why writing hasn’t advanced here. That anhidrotic rush to make every word of our trade motheaten. When the bombs fall, Rosita, we’ll hide amongst the narcissism of the last survivors. There will be ten or twenty of us. And so once again, we’ll begin to look for storytellers. We’ll look for one in all the craters and gutters, in every crevice, starry-eyed, thinking that a bomb doesn’t fall twice in the same place. My friends won’t be able to write digital poems or make collages anymore, so their words will be lost forever. We’ll shut them up and, once again, we’ll look for a storyteller so that he can tell us what life was like before the bombs. So that he can bring my companions to life—writers of what they call new verse. The story teller will be merciful. One day, we’ll see ourselves having become what we hated so much: seated around some guy who claims to transport us to other places with his voice. You died too soon, Rosita, you would have had to have lived in this uncertain future where I travel the tunnels desperately searching for a girl I used to love before the bombs and who, perhaps, in the midst of the tragic denouement of contemporary life, will ask me for a little kiss again. I won’t have a mouth left to do it. Only ears. But you had to die, Rosita. Your man was also a storyteller, but we won’t be able to find him, though I’d like to hope that we will. You had to die, Rosita, before suffering with us the search for that subject in the midst of all the uselessness of all the aesthetic advances worthy of my generation.
Either way
we won’t have to work
life will be easy again
considering all that accumulated knowledge
and the always stifling fantasy:
going back to school with everything we know now that we’re older
all of it intact
being seven years old
thirteen years old
and the teacher trying to intimidate us
and there we’ll be, excited, talking back
with a persistent image of them in our heads:
missing the arm that was for writing sentences broken into subject-verb-predicate
and insistently calling for the exact gutter where someone, in hiding, talks about the wonder we can no longer recall.
References
| ↑1 | La crítica no se ha puesto de acuerdo acerca de la idea de licencia poética que se plantea en el presente texto. Para efectos de ritmo de lectura, este pie de página se puso aquí y no después del “desarrollo” de la idea, es decir: cuando quien habla dice cuáles son las únicas licencias poéticas. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Everyone always knew that the post-conflict would be profitable. Bolder versions of our history have proposed that the peace agreement was really a conspiracy by mediocre Colombian artists with the sole objective of having a meaty subject for production and sales. The author, in his youth, got a head start on the issue. These poems have their little quirks, of course, as every young author does: romantic, daring, intrepid, apparently unphased by the tradition. Every young author makes mistakes, but later they don’t, as we all know. In any case, these texts were recovered primarily from high school notebooks, dated from approximately 2001 to 2007. Two events to keep in mind are the Naya* massacre, a terrifying event with a fair amount of documentation and ongoing processes of reckoning and reconciliation that should continue unimpeded, and the high school graduation of this subject, a superfluous event, though it happened in the midst of a dense historical moment. *Translator’s note: On April 10, 2001, paramilitary troops entered the area around the Naya River in southwestern Colombia, torturing and killing at least 27 people (locals claim there were 100 victims) with knives, machetes and chainsaws, resulting in the forced displacement of around 3,000 people. |
| ↑3 | Translator’s note: Subsoil use rights principally belong to the state in Colombia. |
| ↑4 | Critics are undecided regarding the idea of poetic license proposed by the text at hand. To achieve a fluid reading, this footnote was put here rather than after the development of the idea, that is, when the speaker tells us what the only poetic licenses are. |