*
To support the bum who publishes this blog, don’t forget you can purchase Words on the Street t-shirts and other swag as well as a fabulous book of 109 of the best cartoons. Blogger Lucy Kempton recently called it “wonderful,” adding that it “works very well” in the Kindle format.
Cur.ren.cy is a new online magazine featuring “poetry and prose for hard times,” and I’m pleased and honored that the editors/mortgage-backed securities managers — Messrs. Good, Wisely, and Sharp — have added one of my poems to the mix.
I hardly ever submit anything anymore, since I have this venue with its already established readership, and since most editors won’t consider previously blogged poems. But I’m a sucker for themed anthologies, and I liked the poems at cur.ren.cy so much — I couldn’t resist.
The name and theme of the magazine do make me reflect on how, for English-language poets, living in a society where poetry isn’t highly valued and doesn’t make anyone rich, prizes and publications function as a sort of scrip, redeemable for other opportunities from the PoBiz company store (readings, residencies, teaching positions, etc.). Self-publication on the web, e.g. on a blog like this, might be akin to issuing one’s own currency. But one can’t become too preoccuppied with status or social currency if one is to focus on posting new work that is not mere criticism or commentary, since “what is completely new or unique has no, or unknown, social currency.” One can, however, contribute to a gift economy in which original content, links, reviews and supportive comments are freely given with an eye to sharing poetic insights and increasing the net supply of aesthetic pleasure. I guess that’s what I aspire to here.
translation of “Alta traición” by José Emilio Pacheco
I don’t love my country. Her abstract glory
eludes me.
But (this may sound bad) I would give my life
for ten of her places, for certain people,
ports, pine forests, fortresses,
for a ruined city, gray and monstrous,
for several of her historical figures,
for mountains
—and three or four rivers.
* * *
José Emilio Pacheco is one of Mexico’s leading contemporary poets. I had posted the Spanish original of this poem, along with somebody else’s translation, to Facebook back in 2009. I forgot all about it until I switched to Facebook’s new Timeline view a couple days ago, which for the first time gave me access to older posts and updates there. After re-acquainting myself with the poem and the substantive comments it elicited from Alison Kent, Miguel Arboleda and Ray Templeton, I decided to post this new translation — in part because I’m fascinated by what the process of translation does to a poem like this.
Already on Facebook there was disagreement over how best to translate “una ciudad deshecha, gris, monstruosa.” The English translation I’d posted put it as “a run-down city, gray, grotesque,” but Alison objected that, in the poet’s native Mexico, this most likely referred to a pre-Columbian ruin. Ray, by contrast, felt it might equally apply to a run-down industrial city in his native U.K. To me, as a country dweller, most cities seem gray, monstrous and dilapidated, though I’m not sure I’d give my life for any of them. At any rate, the point is that our reception of the poem depends very much on whether we read it as a specifically Mexican poem or a more general statement about love of country.
And even the general proposition will strike people differently depending on where they’re from. Here in the U.S., where it’s quite common for ordinary citizens to display the national flag year-round, saying that you don’t love your country is guaranteed to shock and dismay people from across the political spectrum, with the exception of segments of the far left. Even strongly libertarian types will say things like, “I love my country, but I hate my government.” (It’s nearly always O.K. to express contempt for the government here, despite the reverence paid to the Constitution, which famously equates the government with the people.) In many other countries, I gather, displays of the national flag by private citizens are extremely rare.
To me, love of an abstraction is a dangerous thing, and I react to it with I think much the same loathing which the ancient Hebrews reserved for idol-worship. A worshipped fatherland demands blood sacrifice and gives little in return but the sort of “protection” one purchases from gangsters at gunpoint. I find it telling that the kind of super-patriots who treat any questioning of the war machine or the surveillance state as tantamount to treason all too often do not hesitate to condone the despoiling of their country’s land, air and water. “Drill, baby, drill!” they chant at political rallies, and without irony advocate the construction of a massive pipeline across the country’s midsection, to bring Canadian tar sands to Texan refineries, as necessary to reduce our dependence on “foreign oil.” Here in Pennsylvania, we’re in the early stages of a hydrofracturing shale-gas boom that threatens to poison groundwater across the state and destroy some of our last remaining wild places, but those who object on environmental grounds are derided as effeminate tree-huggers at best and anti-American troublemakers at worst. I could go on. But the point is that in this case, as in so many others, destruction of the actual, literal country is licensed by lip-service to the abstract Country.
Translating Pacheco’s poem into English, I recall that there are in fact people who put their lives on the line for mountains and pine forests: the brave souls who chain themselves to cranes at mountaintop removal sites or sit in old-growth trees threatened by clearcutting. This makes me think of the Occupy movement, and then the far longer struggle of those whose country — or countries — my ancestors came to occupy. And having lived in one place for most of the past 40 years myself, I can tell you that becoming attached to any one mountain, river or forest is nearly always a recipe for heartbreak, as you witness the cumulative effects of ecological degradation. No doubt the residents of cities like Detroit or New Orleans feel much the same kind of helpless sorrow these days. The life of a drifter — that quintessential American individualist — becomes more attractive with each passing year.
So the last units of American troops have finally pulled out of Iraq (leaving thousands of trigger-happy mercenaries to protect U.S. citizens still in the country). Hard to believe this absurd nightmare of a miliary adventure has lasted for more than eight years. The cost in Iraqi lives (over 100,000, according to almost all estimates) has been appalling, to say nothing of American and allied troop casualties. I thought I’d dust off and re-publish an essay I originally posted to my Geocities site shortly after the invasion, reflecting the frustration I think many of us felt about the unreliability of the information we were getting. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain at the time that the official justifications for the invasion were completely made up, which made the disinclination of mainstream journalists to question anything coming out of the Pentagon all the more maddening.
Most of the links in the original essay were of course dead now, so I’ve removed them, but hopefully you can still get the drift.
As a professional geographer with over ten years of field research in Honduras, my brother Mark was understandably ticked off by an AP reporter’s description of Honduras’s Mosquito coast — recognized as a World Heritage Site for its unique biodiversity and indigenous cultures — as “a deserted, bug-infested swamp.” “Nothing like well-researched journalism,” Mark adds sarcastically.
But the sloppy reporting starts right with the headline, “Honduran Riot Displays Gangs’ Brutality.” If 61 out of the 69 people killed were gang members — most of them herded & locked into a cell, then killed by hand grenades or burnt alive, according to another report I saw — doesn’t this actually suggest the brutality of the NON-gang-affiliated prisoners? True, one does have to wonder at the depth of hatred demonstrated by such brutality. And if these articles are correct in saying that the Mara 18 gang members initiated the battle by trying to seize control, it’s possible to interpret the horrific outcome as a rather extreme form of self-defense, partially excused by the perpetrators’ own desperate condition.
But then, that’s just what the sleep-deprived, under-nourished, sun-struck British and American soldiers in Iraq are claiming as justification for their targeting of apparent non-combatants. Gotta get them before they get us, and the sooner the job’s done, the sooner we can all go home!
In any case, I can’t help thinking that, in Iraq especially, it’s not so much that “truth is the first casualty of war.” Rather, truth seems never to have been considered as an option. What’s important is to select events and interpretations that happen to conform to a pre-selected story line (in the Honduran story, internecine gang violence in a hellhole of a prison located in a hellhole of a country). The fact that these pieces are sometimes a poor fit with the overall story line probably reflects a combination of rudimentary writing skills and the sort of casual contempt for their audience so common among working reporters, especially those of the embedded variety.
Meanwhile, those journalists stalwart enough to remain in Baghdad and rash enough to refuse the suffocating embrace of the Pentagon were targeted by our increasingly impatient troops yesterday in three separate “accidents.” In the most serious incident, the Palestine Hotel, where over 100 foreign journalists are based, was hit by a mortar at close range, supposedly in response to sniping from the roof. None of the reporters gathered on the roof were able to see this sniper in their midst; they must’ve all been looking in the wrong direction. Casualties included a Reuters correspondent and a Spanish cameraman; several more were injured. U.S. bombs also took out two different command centers for Arab TV stations yesterday, one a station from Abu Dhabi (no casualty reports so far) and the other the infamous Al-Jezeera (one cameraman killed).
It’s not like the unembedded reporters hadn’t been warned. And besides, three such “accidents” in one day may reflect nothing more than the overall intensity of bombing and strafing in day two (or was it day three?) of the Battle of Baghdad. Besides, what’s a couple dead bodies more or less, in the grand scheme of things? Don’t get so hung up on accuracy, the generals told Daily Mirror reporter Bob Roberts.
Let’s not even mention the pillorying of Peter Arnett for telling the truth to the wrong audience, or the repeated, deliberate bombing of the “propagandistic” Iraqi TV — a direct violation of the Geneva Convention. And let’s especially not mention those journalists like Robert Fisk, who so irresponsibly insist on covering the shockingly unaesthetic and potentially demoralizing consequences of war. Let’s stay focused, if you please, on the clinical precision of “smart bombs,” on our leaders’ repeated insistence that they seek to minimize “collateral damage” and “friendly fire incidents,” and especially on whether the Great Satan — uh, Saddam — is alive or dead. Only such a tight and resolute focus, the neo-con pundits proclaim, can provide us with the requisite “moral clarity” of vision necessary to triumph over Evil.
One other thought: it seems dishonest to speak, as so many do these days, of “the fog of war.” As if all the confusion were just a fact of nature, an unavoidable occurrence. The Pentagon has in fact been rather forthright about its use of disinformation and innuendo as a part of psychological operations. Therefore, it seems to me, it’s not just fog that obscures the vision, but smoke and mirrors. Like the clouds of smoke from Baghdad’s ring of fire, a kind of massive smudge pot designed to keep all manner of biting insects at bay.
And if all else fails, crack out the poison gas… whoops, I mean the insecticide. Hit ‘em with clouds of “calmatives“! How else to subdue “a deserted, bug-infested swamp”?
Last night I was, um, treated to a special broadcast from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the 2011 First Presidency Christmas Devotional, which included a reenactment of the story of baby Jesus in the deserts of Utah and some sermons from top leaders, including President Thomas S. Monson, in between a few carols from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They ended with “Silent Night.” It sounded a little like this…
…or not. (Who needs an actual electric guitar when you have fancy audio software?)
The photo, incidentally, is a scene from the modern-day Bethlehem, some of the colorful Christmas decorations put up by the natives to make their prison walls a bit more festive and homey. It was uploaded to Flickr by someone named Tracy Hunter, part of her 2009 Palestine set.
It occurred to me to wonder last night how many, out of the millions of people world-wide who must sing “Silent Night” every year, have ever experienced a truly silent night. Or a dark one, for that matter. As is suggested rather forcefully by the graffiti art above, I think we have become adept at walling out all the violence and squalor that might otherwise threaten our cherished domestic tranquility, especially this time of year when we so fetishize hearth and home. It would perhaps be in poor taste to mention the 3000+ inhabitants of the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, which is adjacent to a new 4-star hotel. For homeless Palestinians, it seems, there’s still no room at the inn.
Nailing up forever
where I can see it
stark as a severed tongue
whose expectations are now
shared only with the blue-
bottle flies
mounting tensions
on attractive plaques
horns reaching
like sun-hungry tendrils
from the polished wood
so I can take them with me
even after my library
has been unwritten
my small encampment
sanitized out of existence
& I need an advocate
because the light I went toward
turned out to be an interrogation room
& I remember too late
that in Xerxes’ Persia
satan meant a member
of the secret police
*
“Perhaps most tragically, Occupy Wall Street’s roughly 5,000-volume library, compiled through myriad donations and painstakingly cataloged by volunteers, was reportedly thrown out.” —TIME
(The first line is a phrase from a poem by Dave Smith, “Tongue and Groove,” in today’s Poetry Daily.)
The shadow of a doubt returns from exile to find another in its place, a shadow of suspicion swollen almost into a shadow of unrest. Where once an Air Force pilot passed out leaflets claiming the Holocaust was an accounting error, now there’s a new shrine to old money. Security cameras bristle around the base of a drilling rig crowned with lights. A bicycle chained to a rack begs mutely for release. The doubt is reasonable now, a respected member of the community, & no one seems to mind that he hasn’t cast a shadow in years. He’s careful around mirrors. On the cover of his authorized biography, he stretches one powerful arm, a cross stripped of the usual ambiguity. The shadow of a smile hangs over him like a broken moon.
*
Prompted by this.
On a windy day in March,
we stop at a Chevy dealership
near Orbisonia, PA, for a closer look
at an enormous American flag
on a too-short pole. It seems
intent on demonstrating some
elemental principle of travel.
As we watch, completely straight & sober
but feeling more stoned by the minute,
it becomes a country
unto itself, complete
with its own square of sky.
Slow waves of wind beginning
out among the stars find endless,
inventive ways to pass through
the striped field, the alternating
strips of crop and fallow
following the contours of a land
continually in flux, like
a plowman’s dream of dancing
deep in the soil. The medium
becomes the only message.
And anti-patriot that I am, I find
I would almost pledge allegiance
to this well-made thing
& the wind that gives it another,
freer kind of life. Where
were we going, again?
We both agree we could sit here
all day, if it weren’t for the likelihood
that sooner or later someone
would report us to the police
for suspicious activity.
We pull gingerly back
onto the old blue road.
*
I’m mining the Via Negativa archive for poetic material. This derives from a 2005 post, Stars and stripes.
As in: pre-.
The windy street-corner sermon,
the row of poplars waving
all their gold cards at once.
As in: otherwise-.
The gray-suited men
vanish like deer into November
the moment they stand still.
As in: certain territories
where the new occupants
must build a wall
to keep out the old.
And the space beside the wall
becomes a place to try one’s luck,
a place to wail.
Walking through a dark forest without a flashlight is an exercise in trust: trusting your feet to find the trail, trusting chance not to place a new fallen tree at shin level, trusting that a storm won’t blow in — for there’s no hurrying this slow shuffle. Over the chanting crowd of katydids in the trees, I hear the thin, whispery alarm calls of flying squirrels. I stop and peer at an almost vertical row of glowing spots a few feet off the trail: foxfire.
The damp air is an olfactory smorgasbord of molds and fermentation. As my eyes adjust, I begin to discern different flavors of darkness, too: here the rich black shadows of trees, there the cafe-au-lait openings of trail or blow-down. I feel less helpless now, more in control. But no sooner do my feet and eyes grow accustomed to their new normal state than the restless mind is off again, and I have to keep calling it back: Heel! Stay!
Is it loneliness that prompts it to wander like that? If I were sharing this darkness with others right now — say, outside a federal penitentiary in Georgia, cupping a candle flame — would I be better able to maintain focus? If instead of myself I were, in fact, concentrating all my thoughts on some victim of the criminal injustice system on his last, too-short walk into permanent darkness, wouldn’t my own hopes and dreams fade into the background, as faint as foxfire?
The sound of a very small shower approaches. I take my hat off to relish the tap of its millipede feet on my close-cropped scalp, but it’s already past. An odd reaction, perhaps — a sign that, deep down, I might still crave another’s touch.
Somehow I find the brushy intersection where the Short Way Trail leads down off the ridge, and soon I am seeing a light among the trees. Look, nobody’s home! Blinking dots of light in the window where an ethernet unit sends and receives from a world-wide web.
And how is it, I wonder as I enter the house, that I managed to walk all that way without blundering into a single spider web? The equinox may not be until Friday, but autumn is already here. Or as the book of Jeremiah puts it: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.
Rest in peace, Troy Davis.
