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| Carlos Giménez ©Miguel Gracia |
(A poem
also dedicated to Viviana Marcela Iriart because she made it possible)
Childhood
trees to make a boat
where a
seagull would live
and the
sailor Bertolt Brecht would sing:
“Here,
early in the morning, I sometimes feel
that I too
would like
in weather
good or bad
to always
be able to offer something pleasant”
So often it
would have shaken
as a stage
this
sublime brigantine of the ancient seas
captained
by someone who knew by heart
The Tempest
and The Bald Soprano,
in whose
spirit found their place
Shakespeare,
Chekhov, Ionesco and García Lorca
saying jubilantly:
The helm is yours
The stage
blossomed in catacombs
where the miner
suffered
it was a
voice stirring the musings of workers
and lazy
youngsters, aimless students,
young
people ready for the promising shipwreck
that Carlos
Giménez dreamed and composed
He,
intimately, understood mysteries,
an Argonaut
searching for the upper stage
he had
absolute pitch for the origins
of any
fossilized despair
fantasy
shaped all his chores,
nothing
should be normal
So many times
the stage creaked
ladies and
gentlemen dispelling his mists
unraveling
prejudices and ignorance
in the face
of those titanic endeavors
that moved
entire landscapes
from one
corner to another
across Latin
America.
That's what
I was getting at: I also saw you moving written landscapes.
In your
mind you insisted on contemplating that rooster
as if you
were living in the novel
and you
walked alongside this phrase:
—Stop looking
at that animal—said the colonel—
Roosters wear
out if you look at them so much.
Then you
remembered what you had known:
Gabriel
García Márquez had looked amazed
-being the
embodiment of all that is amazing-
and your
spirit had felt great joy
when,
looking at your montage, he said:
—Damn… How
beautiful!
The seagull
continued watching from the vessel constructed
with his own
hands as a boy on the moon
no circumstance
was vulgar: he did not escape
from the
Eiffel Tower, perhaps he had a “bad temper,
but he had
found new ways”
thanks to
his heart
intrepid
and magnificent
He achieved
a fantastic vertigo in the ordinary
and turned
magic
into a
succession of true moments
His blood
of poetry and sorcery
never
ceased to flow
in the
theatrical body
(“When
shall we meet again?
In thunder,
lightning, or in rain?”)
bewitched
blood in a pulsating river,
and its
passage is felt like everything
that is
born and reborn in wood
violin,
bonfire, tempest
and it leaps:
it leaps over the infinite boards
from heart
to heart
yours, his,
hers, mine, everyone’s
So many furious
stages!
Blessedly
vehement!
(When shall
we meet again?
In thunder,
lightning, or in rain?)
How
beautiful!
Translation by ©Luciana Valente
JOSÉ PULIDO: Venezuelan poet, writer and journalist, born in Villa de Cura on November 1, 1945. He currently lives in Genoa, Italy.
In 2024 he won in Italy the International Award of Excellence “City of Galateo-Antonio De Ferraris 2024″.
In 2023 he was elected as member of the Venezuelan Academy of Language.
In 2000 he received the Caracas Municipal Literature Award, Poetry Mention, for his poem collection Los Poseídos. He won the second Miguel Otero Silva Award for novels, sponsored by the publishing house Planeta, for his novel Una mazurkita en La mayor.
He was in charge of the magazine BCV Cultural of the Central Bank of Venezuela until 2012, and of the magazine Circunvalación del Sur, edited by the Metropolitan Poetry Circle, in 2008. He directed the art pages of El Nacional (1981-1988), El Diario de Caracas (1991-1995) and El Universal (1996-1998). Founding member of the supplements Bajo Palabra (Diario de Caracas, 1995) and El otro cuerpo (Supplement of the Ateneo de Caracas, in El Nacional, 1997-1998). Editor-in-chief, under the direction of Salvador Garmendia, of the magazine Imagen (1994-1996). Correspondent for the Venezuelan News Agency, Venpres, in Peru, 1990. Correspondent for the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture, 1992; and advisor for the Sofía Ímber Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996.
