The White Body in the Heart of the Desert

Posted by Dave Bonta on January 24, 2009 (last modified at 2:56 pm, 1/25/09)

(El Cuerpo Blanco al Fondo del Desierto)
by Homero Aridjis

for J.M.G. Le Clézio

All we saw at first was a white dot
way out in the heart of the desert:
doubtless some dead body
sprawled there in the distance,
a heat shimmer above the sand,
or a trick of the vision, so ready
to believe in anything
but its own shadow.

Then we saw that this body
had an open door:
doubtless some object
fallen from an imaginary space,
a metal bird
with broken wings,
an unserviceable treasure
in the sweltering day.

When we got close, we discovered
that white dot
in the heart of the desert
was a refrigerator
with an open door.

*

I wanted to submit something to the first edition of the desert-focused blog carnival that Chris Clarke just started, the Carnival of the Arid, but I don’t know much about deserts, so I found this poem to translate instead. Homero Aridjis — whose last name contains the word “arid” — is one of Latin America’s foremost conservationists, in addition to being a widely published poet. He was born and grew up in Michoacán, Mexico, right near the famous over-wintering site for the eastern monarch butterfly population.

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5 Responses to The White Body in the Heart of the Desert

  1. dale says:
    January 25, 2009 at 2:36 am

    Oh, a great poem!

    Reply
  2. Rana says:
    January 26, 2009 at 5:50 pm

    Wonderful! Thank you for sharing it.

    Reply
  3. one more believer says:
    January 29, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    hi dave passin thru…great post… always enjoy latin literature… the desert has so much to offer…and the abandoned frigerator with a door open somehow lit the imagination of my mind… thank you

    Reply
  4. Tee says:
    February 1, 2009 at 11:26 am

    This is nice, and does a good job of illustrating what most of us arid rats understand: you can never second-guess the desert.

    Reply
  5. arvind says:
    February 2, 2009 at 5:08 pm

    He’s got both Homer and arid in his name? Sounds like a great poet and a great person.

    Came here via carnival of the arid.

    Reply

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