The song is...: Viva Mexico! Happy Mexican Independence Day!

As Mexico's Independence Day winds down, I'd like to post some photographs by Juan Tituana. Most are from Mexico City, the capital, although some are from Xalapa, a beautiful city that my husband and I visited on our pre-honeymoon. Juan also sent me some poems by Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and essayist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990, (translations by Eliot Weinberger) to include with his pictures.

Copyright 2016 by Juan Tituana

In the poem “Vuelta (Return),” Octavio Paz thunders against his once-beautiful city’s collapse into “progress”:

They are burning
millions and millions of old notes
in the Bank of Mexico
On corners and in plazas
On the wide pedestals of the public squares
The Fathers of the Civic Church
A silent conclave of puppet buffoons
Neither eagles nor jaguars
…
There is no center
           plaza of congregation and consecration
there is no axis
           the years dispersed
horizons disbanded
           They have branded the city
on every door
           on every forehead
                           The $ sign

From “I Speak of the City”:

The city I talk to when I talk to nobody, the city that dictates these insomniac words,
I speak of towers, bridges, tunnels, hangars, wonders and disasters,
The abstract State and its concrete police, the schoolteachers, jailers, preachers…
I speak of the half-light of certain churches and the flickering candles at the altars,
The timid voices with which the desolate talk to saints and virgins in a passionate, failing language…
of the rats in the sewers and the brave sparrows that nest in the wires, in the cornices and the martyred trees,
of the contemplative cats and their libertine novels in the light of the moon, cruel goddess of the rooftops,
of the stray dogs that are our Franciscans and bhikkus, the dogs that scratch up the bones of the sun…
I speak of the paralytic slum, the cracked wall, the dry fountain, the graffitied statue,
I speak of garbage heaps the size of mountains, and of melancholy sunlight filtered by the smog,
of broken glass and the desert of scrap iron, of last night’s crime, and of the banquet of the immortal Trimalchio,

of the moon in the television antennas, and a butterfly on a filthy jar…

The Street

It’s a long and silent street.

I walk in the dark and trip and fall

and get up and step blindly

on the mute stones and dry leaves

and someone behind me is also walking:

if I stop, he stops;

if I run, he runs. I turn around: no one.

Everything is black, there is no exit,

and I turn and turn corners

that always lead to the street

where no one waits for me, no one follows,

where I follow a man who trips

and gets up and says when he sees me: no one.

With the next set of pictures, we are moving onto Xalapa, the capital of the state of Veracruz. I immediately recognize the picture below from our trip to that city back in 2001.

Between going and staying the day wavers, by Octavio Paz

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

Below is a picture of the photographer!

Juan also sent me a video of Juan Gabriel's "Mexico es Divino" just published August 2016. The images in this video are the best he has seen for promoting Mexico, its people, history, blend of cultures, art and literature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BMwihlkjig

I will include another song by Juan Gabriel, "Siempre en mi Mente": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzYmF059VkU

This is his "Hasta que te Conoci": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga5Bo4YdgH4

I'll finish with his "Amor Eterno" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgKqxLAhRKE

In sending me "Mexico es Divino" Juan also observed: "Like the USA has Elvis Presley as the King - Mexico has Juan Gabriel - singer, artist, song writer and composer. As you may have heard Juan Gabriel passed away just recently - all of Mexico mourns”.

1 comment:

UnknownSeptember 18, 2016 at 3:30 PM
Way too intimidating. I'm trying to finish four poems about the pull between Alaska and Texas, and they are so far short of this. Wish I hadn't read these poems. I want to quit with editing these four poems I'm working on. I remind myself, "Everyone starts off in kindergardarden," and also, "Start where you are, not where you aren't." Odd, I just gave this advice to another writer. Practicing what I preach.

The song is...

Friday, September 16, 2016

Viva Mexico! Happy Mexican Independence Day!

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Friday, September 16, 2016

Viva Mexico! Happy Mexican Independence Day!

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