Almost A Country (16)
Juan has arrived punctually. I like his suit, it’s the color of medlar. He doesn’t say a word to me; but it doesn’t matter.
We stroll through Plaza Altamira. A green grass, with yellow tones, surrounds the plaza. There are bushes, round pines, benches. The obelisk is a mast, an immense needle. Beyond the avenues, many buildings lift themselves up, with balconies, doors and ferns the breeze moves.
We sit down on a bench. The pond, placed in the center of the plaza, is wide, long; the sun penetrates there and transforms itself, beneath the water, into a white shell. A small boat, with a yellow chimney, sails slowly, its dark anchors and the metallic rigging. It stumbles into the shore and stays still; around it: water, space, sky too high above, with the stars hidden amid the clouds.
Juan stands up. He runs to the corner. He chooses a fallen branch and begins to touch it.
Then he puts something warm into my hands, somewhat scratchy, it’s a nest full of newborn pigeons! I imagine the sun must have been like this when it was born and they placed it above the earth.
*
Casi un país (16)
Juan ha llegado puntualmente. Me agrada su traje, tiene el color del níspero. No me dirige la palabra, pero no importa.
Paseamos por la Plaza de Altamira. Una grama verde, con tonos amarillos, rodea la plaza. Hay arbustos, pinos redondos, bancos. El obelisco es un mástil, una aguja inmensa. Más allá de las avenidas, se encumbran muchos edificios, con balcones, puertas y helechos que la brisa mueve.
Nos sentamos en un banco. El estanque, colocado en el centro de la plaza, es ancho, largo; el sol penetra allí y se transforma, debajo del agua, en una cáscara blanca. Un barco pequeño, con una chimenea amarilla, navega lentamente, sus anclas oscuras y las jarcias metálicas. Tropieza con la orilla y queda fijo; a su alrededor: agua, espacio, cielo demasiado arriba, con las estrellas ocultas entre las nubes.
Juan se pone de pie. Corre hacia la esquina. Escoge una rama caída y comienza a tocarla.
Después coloca en mis manos algo tibio, un tanto carrasposo, ¡es un nido lleno de pichones recién nacidos! Me imagino que así debió ser el sol cuando nació y lo pusieron sobre la tierra.
1972
Translator’s note: The English version this poem was originally published in Typo, issue 18 (2013).
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
Showing posts with label Elizabeth Schön. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elizabeth Schön. Show all posts
5.27.2019
Casi un país (15) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (15)
In a doorway a boy is playing with a perinola, its cord is bending with such agility, growing, curving, while the boy is immobile, doesn’t laugh, doesn’t speak, remains alert to the thread that stretches, shrinks, forms a circumference transfused by clarity and untouched by the wind.
*
Casi un país (15)
En un portón un niño juega con una perinola, su hilo ágilmente se dobla, se alarga, se curva, mientras el niño inmóvil, no ríe, no habla, permanece alerta al hilo que se estira, se encoge, forma una circunferencia que la claridad traspasa y que el viento no destroza.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
In a doorway a boy is playing with a perinola, its cord is bending with such agility, growing, curving, while the boy is immobile, doesn’t laugh, doesn’t speak, remains alert to the thread that stretches, shrinks, forms a circumference transfused by clarity and untouched by the wind.
*
Casi un país (15)
En un portón un niño juega con una perinola, su hilo ágilmente se dobla, se alarga, se curva, mientras el niño inmóvil, no ríe, no habla, permanece alerta al hilo que se estira, se encoge, forma una circunferencia que la claridad traspasa y que el viento no destroza.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
5.18.2019
Casi un país (14) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (14)
Maybe pushed by the wind, by the crowds, I have arrived at 23 de enero.
23 de enero is one of the most populated places in Caracas, as populated as the bottom of the sea, like the universe with all its stars, asteroids and galaxies.
Its buildings are immense transatlantic ships that, having anchored at high sea, now wait for their passengers to exit and climb aboard.
*
Casi un país (14)
Tal vez empujada por el viento, la multitud, he llegado al 23 de enero.
El 23 de enero es uno de los lugares más poblados de Caracas, tan poblado como el fondo del mar, como el universo con todos sus astros, asteroides y galaxias.
Sus edificios son trasatlánticos inmensos que, anclados en alta mar, aguardan la salida y el abordaje de sus pasajeros.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
Maybe pushed by the wind, by the crowds, I have arrived at 23 de enero.
23 de enero is one of the most populated places in Caracas, as populated as the bottom of the sea, like the universe with all its stars, asteroids and galaxies.
Its buildings are immense transatlantic ships that, having anchored at high sea, now wait for their passengers to exit and climb aboard.
*
Casi un país (14)
Tal vez empujada por el viento, la multitud, he llegado al 23 de enero.
El 23 de enero es uno de los lugares más poblados de Caracas, tan poblado como el fondo del mar, como el universo con todos sus astros, asteroides y galaxias.
Sus edificios son trasatlánticos inmensos que, anclados en alta mar, aguardan la salida y el abordaje de sus pasajeros.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
5.05.2019
Casi un país (13) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (13)
Could I be a descendant of Humboldt, the man who discovered rivers, jungles, mountains, caves?
*
Casi un país (13)
¿Seré descendiente de Humboldt, ese hombre que descubrió ríos, selvas, montañas, cuevas?
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
Could I be a descendant of Humboldt, the man who discovered rivers, jungles, mountains, caves?
*
Casi un país (13)
¿Seré descendiente de Humboldt, ese hombre que descubrió ríos, selvas, montañas, cuevas?
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
4.27.2019
Casi un país (12) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (12)
A bicycle is a huge seahorse, descending the tunnel. The air has the solidity of a feather. I want to touch that post over there, I run, I feel it. I go on, I’m so happy to feel myself move towards that corner and then the other one and the one I can’t even see! I have no impediments. Impediments disturb, they block any enjoyment of the fresh clean day, so full of sun and breeze.
I bump into an empanada & snack cart. Several workers are busy on the construction site for a building. Others are delineating the edges of the sidewalk and another group paints the lines marking the curve or the avenue lanes.
I’m standing in front of the Museo de Bellas Artes, white: a cloud, a seed of the whitest fruit.
I enter. Its corridors smell like a prairie full of wild grass, the water in its pond has the flavor of refuge. The wind unspools, someone in search of a shelter that will always protect them.
*
Casi un país (12)
Una bicicleta es un hipocampo inmenso, que baja por el túnel. El aire tiene la solidez de la pluma. Quiero tocar aquel poste, corro, lo palpo. Sigo, ¡cómo me alegra sentir que voy hacia la esquina y hacia la otra esquina y aun hacia la que no atisbo! No tengo impedimentos. Los impedimentos estorban, impiden que se disfrute del día fresco, limpio, pleno de sol y brisa.
Tropiezo con un latón de dulces y empanadas. Varios obreros trabajan en la construcción de un edificio. Otros delinean los bordes de las aceras y otros marcan las rayas que indican la curva o el margen libre de las avenidas.
Estoy frente al Museo de Bellas Artes, blanco: nube, semilla del fruto más blanco.
Entro. Sus corredores huelen a prado cubierto de hierba, el agua de su estanque tiene el sabor del remanso. El viento se desliza, es alguien en busca del albergue que para siempre lo protegerá.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
A bicycle is a huge seahorse, descending the tunnel. The air has the solidity of a feather. I want to touch that post over there, I run, I feel it. I go on, I’m so happy to feel myself move towards that corner and then the other one and the one I can’t even see! I have no impediments. Impediments disturb, they block any enjoyment of the fresh clean day, so full of sun and breeze.
I bump into an empanada & snack cart. Several workers are busy on the construction site for a building. Others are delineating the edges of the sidewalk and another group paints the lines marking the curve or the avenue lanes.
I’m standing in front of the Museo de Bellas Artes, white: a cloud, a seed of the whitest fruit.
I enter. Its corridors smell like a prairie full of wild grass, the water in its pond has the flavor of refuge. The wind unspools, someone in search of a shelter that will always protect them.
*
Casi un país (12)
Una bicicleta es un hipocampo inmenso, que baja por el túnel. El aire tiene la solidez de la pluma. Quiero tocar aquel poste, corro, lo palpo. Sigo, ¡cómo me alegra sentir que voy hacia la esquina y hacia la otra esquina y aun hacia la que no atisbo! No tengo impedimentos. Los impedimentos estorban, impiden que se disfrute del día fresco, limpio, pleno de sol y brisa.
Tropiezo con un latón de dulces y empanadas. Varios obreros trabajan en la construcción de un edificio. Otros delinean los bordes de las aceras y otros marcan las rayas que indican la curva o el margen libre de las avenidas.
Estoy frente al Museo de Bellas Artes, blanco: nube, semilla del fruto más blanco.
Entro. Sus corredores huelen a prado cubierto de hierba, el agua de su estanque tiene el sabor del remanso. El viento se desliza, es alguien en busca del albergue que para siempre lo protegerá.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
4.14.2019
Casi un país (11) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (11)
I step onto Urdaneta Avenue. The crowd crosses it avidly, promptly, as if wanting to find out where it ends. The blocks are wide. Such tall buildings jut out from both sides, others are short, squares that look like the boxes where they display apples. Some of them possess the slenderness of an ear of corn, all of them have as many holes as fishing nets do.
I discern spacious plots, with no construction yet. The tower of the Santa Capilla church is sharp, fine, an immense splinter that doesn’t scratch, that doesn’t injure; a guard that never abandons his post. There’s the Central Post Office building, not very tall, robust… a well-fed lamb sleeping peacefully. Everywhere I look I discover different dimensions, but where does my notion of immensity, of largeness, of narrowness, of lowness come from?
*
Casi un país (11)
Entro en la avenida Urdaneta. La muchedumbre la recorre con avidez, con prontitud, como queriendo conocer dónde concluye. Las cuadras son anchas. En ambos lados sobresalen edificios muy altos, otros son bajos, cuadrados parecidos a los cajones donde exhiben las manzanas. Algunos poseen la esbeltez de la espiga del maíz, todos tienen tantísimas ventanas como agujeros hay en las redes de pescar.
Diviso terrenos espaciosos, aún sin edificar. La torre de la iglesia de la Santa Capilla es aguda, fina, una astilla inmensa que no roza, que no hiere; un vigilante que nunca abandona su puesto. Está el edificio del Correo Principal, no muy alto, fornido... un cordero que duerme apaciblemente, bien nutrido. Hacia donde miro descubro dimensiones distintas, pero ¿de dónde me nace la noción de los inmenso, de lo grande, de lo angosto, de lo bajo?
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
I step onto Urdaneta Avenue. The crowd crosses it avidly, promptly, as if wanting to find out where it ends. The blocks are wide. Such tall buildings jut out from both sides, others are short, squares that look like the boxes where they display apples. Some of them possess the slenderness of an ear of corn, all of them have as many holes as fishing nets do.
I discern spacious plots, with no construction yet. The tower of the Santa Capilla church is sharp, fine, an immense splinter that doesn’t scratch, that doesn’t injure; a guard that never abandons his post. There’s the Central Post Office building, not very tall, robust… a well-fed lamb sleeping peacefully. Everywhere I look I discover different dimensions, but where does my notion of immensity, of largeness, of narrowness, of lowness come from?
*
Casi un país (11)
Entro en la avenida Urdaneta. La muchedumbre la recorre con avidez, con prontitud, como queriendo conocer dónde concluye. Las cuadras son anchas. En ambos lados sobresalen edificios muy altos, otros son bajos, cuadrados parecidos a los cajones donde exhiben las manzanas. Algunos poseen la esbeltez de la espiga del maíz, todos tienen tantísimas ventanas como agujeros hay en las redes de pescar.
Diviso terrenos espaciosos, aún sin edificar. La torre de la iglesia de la Santa Capilla es aguda, fina, una astilla inmensa que no roza, que no hiere; un vigilante que nunca abandona su puesto. Está el edificio del Correo Principal, no muy alto, fornido... un cordero que duerme apaciblemente, bien nutrido. Hacia donde miro descubro dimensiones distintas, pero ¿de dónde me nace la noción de los inmenso, de lo grande, de lo angosto, de lo bajo?
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
4.07.2019
Casi un país (10) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (10)
I have arrived at Plaza Capuchinos.
The church has something of a sleeping ox, its tower reminds me of the peace of lonesome roads.
People walk through the plaza’s shaded paths. I wonder if they carry a lily, a utensil they hope to deposit in some spot on earth.
The dovecotes stand out within the branches, clusters confuse themselves with the straw of the nests; the leaves mix with the excrement of the pigeons that fly toward empty spaces, they’re cups the wind lifts up to give away, in the mountains, in towns.
No one stops to look at the belfry. The majority walk by, as though pushed forward by an endless blizzard.
Boys, girls, adults, all follow their paths across San Martín Avenue; I know each one carries feelings, desires, secrets within, and all of them recede, are diluted in the tumult, like the sound of a voice dissolves when a scream shouts in the jungle.
Is it possible for so many beings to live, to walk, speak, greet and then continue on their paths without even returning, without even recalling?
*
Casi un país (10)
He llegado a la Plaza de Capuchinos.
La iglesia tiene algo de buey dormido, su torre me recuerda la paz de los caminos solitarios.
Los hombres andan por los senderos sombreados de la plaza, pienso si llevan consigo una azucena, un utensilio que, en algún lugar de la tierra, quieren depositar.
Los palomares descuellan dentro de los ramajes; los gajos se confunden con la paja de los nidos; las hojas se mezclan con el excremento de las palomas que vuelan hacia los espacios, son tazas que el viento levanta para regarlas, en las montañas, en los pueblos.
Nadie se detiene a mirar el campanario. La mayoría camina, como empujada por una ventisca que jamás se detuviera.
Muchachos, muchachas, adultos, siguen sus rumbos a través de la avenida San Martín; sé que cada cual lleva consigo sentimientos, fe, anhelos, secretos, mas todos se alejan, se diluyen en el tumulto, como se disuelve el sonido de la voz si se lanza un grito en la selva.
¿Es posible que vivan tantos seres que andan, hablan, saludan y después prosiguen sus rutas sin, tal vez, regresar, sin tal vez, recordar?
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
I have arrived at Plaza Capuchinos.
The church has something of a sleeping ox, its tower reminds me of the peace of lonesome roads.
People walk through the plaza’s shaded paths. I wonder if they carry a lily, a utensil they hope to deposit in some spot on earth.
The dovecotes stand out within the branches, clusters confuse themselves with the straw of the nests; the leaves mix with the excrement of the pigeons that fly toward empty spaces, they’re cups the wind lifts up to give away, in the mountains, in towns.
No one stops to look at the belfry. The majority walk by, as though pushed forward by an endless blizzard.
Boys, girls, adults, all follow their paths across San Martín Avenue; I know each one carries feelings, desires, secrets within, and all of them recede, are diluted in the tumult, like the sound of a voice dissolves when a scream shouts in the jungle.
Is it possible for so many beings to live, to walk, speak, greet and then continue on their paths without even returning, without even recalling?
*
Casi un país (10)
He llegado a la Plaza de Capuchinos.
La iglesia tiene algo de buey dormido, su torre me recuerda la paz de los caminos solitarios.
Los hombres andan por los senderos sombreados de la plaza, pienso si llevan consigo una azucena, un utensilio que, en algún lugar de la tierra, quieren depositar.
Los palomares descuellan dentro de los ramajes; los gajos se confunden con la paja de los nidos; las hojas se mezclan con el excremento de las palomas que vuelan hacia los espacios, son tazas que el viento levanta para regarlas, en las montañas, en los pueblos.
Nadie se detiene a mirar el campanario. La mayoría camina, como empujada por una ventisca que jamás se detuviera.
Muchachos, muchachas, adultos, siguen sus rumbos a través de la avenida San Martín; sé que cada cual lleva consigo sentimientos, fe, anhelos, secretos, mas todos se alejan, se diluyen en el tumulto, como se disuelve el sonido de la voz si se lanza un grito en la selva.
¿Es posible que vivan tantos seres que andan, hablan, saludan y después prosiguen sus rutas sin, tal vez, regresar, sin tal vez, recordar?
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
1.01.2019
Casi un país (9) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (9)
“Lucía, tomorrow will be another day and it’s as if we told each other: tomorrow we’ll stare at the leaf we weren’t able to contemplate today, the grain hidden beneath the corn seedbed.”
“Once the night has passed, the sun will shine again, and we’ll go out and admire the city where the beings march, sometimes silently, sometimes greeting each other, chatting, always without stopping.”
“Do you remember that man with a flour sack hanging from his shoulder, who picked through a pile of empty cans with his mangy cane? The man who didn’t speak. In rags, he had a long, dark beard; his hair covered parts of his ears. His skin had the resistance of an excessively archaic wall. We spoke to him and he just stared at us. I’ll never forget the gleam of his pupils, it was a gleam that reflected a very deep pain yet supported itself calmly, in stillness, while he stirred the cans and the smell of tar spread throughout space.”
Night begins. Look at the cloud enveloping Mount Ávila’s peak! There, between the cloud and the peak, the first star has appeared. It’s a small star, a luminous boat shaped like a drop of water.
*
Casi un país (9)
—Lucía, mañana será otro día y es como si ambos nos dijéramos: mañana miraremos la hoja que hoy no pudimos contemplar, aquel grano que permaneció escondido debajo del almácigo de maíz.
—Pasada la noche, el sol alumbrará de nuevo, y volveremos a salir y admiraremos la ciudad donde marchan los seres, a veces callados, a veces saludando, charlando, mas siempre sin detenerse.
—¿Recuerdas aquel hombre con un saco de harina colgado sobre su hombro, escarbaba con un bastón roñoso, un montón de latas vacías? Ese hombre no hablaba. Harapiento, tenía una barba larga, oscura; los cabellos le cubrían parte de las orejas. La piel tenía la resistencia de un muro demasiado arcaico. Le hablamos y sólo nos miró. Nunca olvidaré el brillo de sus pupilas, era un brillo que reflejaba un dolor muy profundo pero que soportaba quieto, calmo, mientras removía las latas y un olor a brea se esparcía en el espacio.
La noche comienza. ¡Mira la nube que envuelve la cima del Ávila! allí, entre ella y la cumbre, ha asomado el primer lucero, es un lucero pequeño, un barco luminoso con forma de gota.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
“Lucía, tomorrow will be another day and it’s as if we told each other: tomorrow we’ll stare at the leaf we weren’t able to contemplate today, the grain hidden beneath the corn seedbed.”
“Once the night has passed, the sun will shine again, and we’ll go out and admire the city where the beings march, sometimes silently, sometimes greeting each other, chatting, always without stopping.”
“Do you remember that man with a flour sack hanging from his shoulder, who picked through a pile of empty cans with his mangy cane? The man who didn’t speak. In rags, he had a long, dark beard; his hair covered parts of his ears. His skin had the resistance of an excessively archaic wall. We spoke to him and he just stared at us. I’ll never forget the gleam of his pupils, it was a gleam that reflected a very deep pain yet supported itself calmly, in stillness, while he stirred the cans and the smell of tar spread throughout space.”
Night begins. Look at the cloud enveloping Mount Ávila’s peak! There, between the cloud and the peak, the first star has appeared. It’s a small star, a luminous boat shaped like a drop of water.
*
Casi un país (9)
—Lucía, mañana será otro día y es como si ambos nos dijéramos: mañana miraremos la hoja que hoy no pudimos contemplar, aquel grano que permaneció escondido debajo del almácigo de maíz.
—Pasada la noche, el sol alumbrará de nuevo, y volveremos a salir y admiraremos la ciudad donde marchan los seres, a veces callados, a veces saludando, charlando, mas siempre sin detenerse.
—¿Recuerdas aquel hombre con un saco de harina colgado sobre su hombro, escarbaba con un bastón roñoso, un montón de latas vacías? Ese hombre no hablaba. Harapiento, tenía una barba larga, oscura; los cabellos le cubrían parte de las orejas. La piel tenía la resistencia de un muro demasiado arcaico. Le hablamos y sólo nos miró. Nunca olvidaré el brillo de sus pupilas, era un brillo que reflejaba un dolor muy profundo pero que soportaba quieto, calmo, mientras removía las latas y un olor a brea se esparcía en el espacio.
La noche comienza. ¡Mira la nube que envuelve la cima del Ávila! allí, entre ella y la cumbre, ha asomado el primer lucero, es un lucero pequeño, un barco luminoso con forma de gota.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
12.16.2018
Casi un país (8) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (8)
The marching band has begun. The musicians agglomerate. Juan sits down to hear the melodies. I daydream while I count the musicians and stare at their uniforms of such a dark blue; in their jackets I can distinguish shiny buttons, as if they’re full of seeds.
I contemplate the band, the music stands, the notebooks where the scores are written and I say to myself quietly: those are such large instruments they blow with their lips! Some are made of gold, the gold the sun leaves on the horizon of the sea, the gold of the trees when the wind shakes their leaves and a ray falls into them, what’s more, they have the gold of rivers when a star rests on their surfaces, the gold of the chasubles the priests use to say mass, the gold of kings’ carriages, and the gold I alone discover when someone yells suddenly; Juan...!
*
Casi un país (8)
La retreta ha comenzado. Los músicos se aglomeran. Juan se sienta a oír las melodías. Yo me distraigo contando los músicos y viendo sus uniformes de un azul muy oscuro; en sus chaquetas distingo botones brillantes, como llenos de semillas.
Contemplo la banda, los atriles, los cuadernos donde están escritas las partituras y me digo calladamente: ¡qué instrumentos tan enormes son esos que soplan con los labios! Algunos son de oro, del oro que deja el sol sobre el horizonte del mar, del oro que tienen los árboles si el viento agita las hojas y el rayo cae dentro de ellas, es más, tienen el oro de los ríos cuando una estrella reposa en sus superficies, el oro de las casullas con las que los sacerdotes dicen la misa, el oro de las carrozas de los reyes, y ese oro que yo sola descubro si alguien grita de pronto; ¡Juan...!
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
The marching band has begun. The musicians agglomerate. Juan sits down to hear the melodies. I daydream while I count the musicians and stare at their uniforms of such a dark blue; in their jackets I can distinguish shiny buttons, as if they’re full of seeds.
I contemplate the band, the music stands, the notebooks where the scores are written and I say to myself quietly: those are such large instruments they blow with their lips! Some are made of gold, the gold the sun leaves on the horizon of the sea, the gold of the trees when the wind shakes their leaves and a ray falls into them, what’s more, they have the gold of rivers when a star rests on their surfaces, the gold of the chasubles the priests use to say mass, the gold of kings’ carriages, and the gold I alone discover when someone yells suddenly; Juan...!
*
Casi un país (8)
La retreta ha comenzado. Los músicos se aglomeran. Juan se sienta a oír las melodías. Yo me distraigo contando los músicos y viendo sus uniformes de un azul muy oscuro; en sus chaquetas distingo botones brillantes, como llenos de semillas.
Contemplo la banda, los atriles, los cuadernos donde están escritas las partituras y me digo calladamente: ¡qué instrumentos tan enormes son esos que soplan con los labios! Algunos son de oro, del oro que deja el sol sobre el horizonte del mar, del oro que tienen los árboles si el viento agita las hojas y el rayo cae dentro de ellas, es más, tienen el oro de los ríos cuando una estrella reposa en sus superficies, el oro de las casullas con las que los sacerdotes dicen la misa, el oro de las carrozas de los reyes, y ese oro que yo sola descubro si alguien grita de pronto; ¡Juan...!
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
11.20.2018
Casi un país (7) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (7)
Look towards the cathedral and tell me if its tower doesn’t remind you of a shepherd who, daily, counts his sheep and contemplates the sky hoping to, one day, step inside it.
Watch the clock; how it constantly sounds and it sounds like an anvil that would never stop; it’s round, like they say the world is round, and look: its needles are similar to thorns that wound, but these instead of injuring touch each one of the numbers, maybe nudging the window so it opens and the inner sounds burst out from a patio where the children of the earth are playing.
*
Casi un país (7)
Mira hacia la catedral y dime si su torre no recuerda la figura de un pastor que, diariamente, cuenta sus ovejas y contempla el cielo esperando, algún día, entrar en él.
Observa el reloj; suena constantemente y suena igual a un yunque que jamás se detuviera; es redondo, como redondo dicen que es el mundo, y fíjate: sus agujas se asemejan a las espinas que hieren, mas éstas en lugar de hacer daño palpan cada uno de los números, quizá tocando la ventana para que se abra y brote la algarabía interior de un patio donde juegan los niños de la tierra.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
Look towards the cathedral and tell me if its tower doesn’t remind you of a shepherd who, daily, counts his sheep and contemplates the sky hoping to, one day, step inside it.
Watch the clock; how it constantly sounds and it sounds like an anvil that would never stop; it’s round, like they say the world is round, and look: its needles are similar to thorns that wound, but these instead of injuring touch each one of the numbers, maybe nudging the window so it opens and the inner sounds burst out from a patio where the children of the earth are playing.
*
Casi un país (7)
Mira hacia la catedral y dime si su torre no recuerda la figura de un pastor que, diariamente, cuenta sus ovejas y contempla el cielo esperando, algún día, entrar en él.
Observa el reloj; suena constantemente y suena igual a un yunque que jamás se detuviera; es redondo, como redondo dicen que es el mundo, y fíjate: sus agujas se asemejan a las espinas que hieren, mas éstas en lugar de hacer daño palpan cada uno de los números, quizá tocando la ventana para que se abra y brote la algarabía interior de un patio donde juegan los niños de la tierra.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
11.03.2018
Casi un país (6) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (6)
We’re finally facing the San Francisco ceiba tree! And it really looks like a friar who’s always listening to the rain, the breeze, the wind, the birds, and it never stops being cradled by the roof of the sky.
*
Casi un país (6)
¡Por fin estamos frente a la ceiba de San Francisco! Y se parece mucho a un fraile que continuamente escucha la lluvia, la brisa, el viento, los pájaros, y nunca cesa de estar guarecido por la techumbre del cielo.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
We’re finally facing the San Francisco ceiba tree! And it really looks like a friar who’s always listening to the rain, the breeze, the wind, the birds, and it never stops being cradled by the roof of the sky.
*
Casi un país (6)
¡Por fin estamos frente a la ceiba de San Francisco! Y se parece mucho a un fraile que continuamente escucha la lluvia, la brisa, el viento, los pájaros, y nunca cesa de estar guarecido por la techumbre del cielo.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
10.06.2018
Casi un país (5) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (5)
The clock in El Calvario is silent, like the shores of a lake are silent.
High above, with a vizier’s figure, with the color of a cloud forecasting a storm, they placed him next to the flight of steps so that someone continuously ascended or descended and in this way he would never be alone.
We’ve never heard his bell, we’ve never heard his tolling that clamors: one hour concludes and another one begins and to me this seems like a book you read until the last letter so as to immediately begin another one. And it also reminds me of the wave that folds, bursts, and another one immediately follows and does the same thing and thus successively, forever.
*
Casi un país (5)
El reloj de El Calvario es silencioso, como silenciosas son las orillas de los lagos.
Alto, con figura de visir, con color de nube que presagia tormenta, lo colocaron junto a la escalinata para que constantemente alguien subiera o bajara y de esta manera nunca permaneciera solo.
Jamás hemos oído su campana, jamás hemos escuchado su tañido que clama: una hora concluye y otra se inicia y esto se me parece un libro que se lee hasta la letra última para en seguida comenzar otro. Y también me recuerda a la ola que se dobla, estalla, e inmediatamente otra la sigue y hace lo mismo y así sucesivamente para siempre.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
The clock in El Calvario is silent, like the shores of a lake are silent.
High above, with a vizier’s figure, with the color of a cloud forecasting a storm, they placed him next to the flight of steps so that someone continuously ascended or descended and in this way he would never be alone.
We’ve never heard his bell, we’ve never heard his tolling that clamors: one hour concludes and another one begins and to me this seems like a book you read until the last letter so as to immediately begin another one. And it also reminds me of the wave that folds, bursts, and another one immediately follows and does the same thing and thus successively, forever.
*
Casi un país (5)
El reloj de El Calvario es silencioso, como silenciosas son las orillas de los lagos.
Alto, con figura de visir, con color de nube que presagia tormenta, lo colocaron junto a la escalinata para que constantemente alguien subiera o bajara y de esta manera nunca permaneciera solo.
Jamás hemos oído su campana, jamás hemos escuchado su tañido que clama: una hora concluye y otra se inicia y esto se me parece un libro que se lee hasta la letra última para en seguida comenzar otro. Y también me recuerda a la ola que se dobla, estalla, e inmediatamente otra la sigue y hace lo mismo y así sucesivamente para siempre.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
9.30.2018
Casi un país (4) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (4)
Next to the stairs of El Calvario, I say to Juan:
“Let’s not descend the steps too quickly.”
“Lucía, if you want to know this city you have to hurry. Caracas is too big, so much that I almost mistake it for a country.”
We descend quickly. Since I’m happy, I remain quiet. Juan has told me not to speak when I’m content; it’s better to be quiet, and this way the happiness doesn’t end. It actually remains intact, like certain gifts that are stored so as to not be damaged or broken.
*
Casi un país (4)
Junto a las escalinatas de El Calvario le digo a Juan:
—No bajemos rápidamente los escalones.
—Lucía, si quieres conocer esta ciudad debes darte prisa. Caracas es demasiado grande y tanto que casi la confundo con un país.
Descendemos apresuradamente. Como me siento alegre guardo silencio. Juan me ha dicho que cuando esté contenta no hable; es preferible callar, de esa manera la felicidad no concluye, al contrario, permanece intacta, semejante a ciertos regalos que se guardan para que no se maltraten o se rompan.
1972
Translator’s note: English version originally published in Typo, issue 18 (2013).
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
Next to the stairs of El Calvario, I say to Juan:
“Let’s not descend the steps too quickly.”
“Lucía, if you want to know this city you have to hurry. Caracas is too big, so much that I almost mistake it for a country.”
We descend quickly. Since I’m happy, I remain quiet. Juan has told me not to speak when I’m content; it’s better to be quiet, and this way the happiness doesn’t end. It actually remains intact, like certain gifts that are stored so as to not be damaged or broken.
*
Casi un país (4)
Junto a las escalinatas de El Calvario le digo a Juan:
—No bajemos rápidamente los escalones.
—Lucía, si quieres conocer esta ciudad debes darte prisa. Caracas es demasiado grande y tanto que casi la confundo con un país.
Descendemos apresuradamente. Como me siento alegre guardo silencio. Juan me ha dicho que cuando esté contenta no hable; es preferible callar, de esa manera la felicidad no concluye, al contrario, permanece intacta, semejante a ciertos regalos que se guardan para que no se maltraten o se rompan.
1972
Translator’s note: English version originally published in Typo, issue 18 (2013).
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
9.23.2018
Casi un país (3) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (3)
He said we’d go see different places in Caracas today. He didn’t explain which ones. Whatever place we might visit, we’ll find something beautiful. I don’t think ugliness exists; if it does, it is surely the result of there not being enough clarity to appreciate the streets, the sharpness of the colors, the patience of the breeze that knocks on the large wooden doors until they open making a sound very close to the one that arises if you write on an old, worn chalkboard, with many cracks.
I approach the window. A yellow leaf falls on my shoulder. I like it, it has the same color as my dress. I’ll save it in one of my books, I feel as though everything that looks like me or my things belongs to me.
The sun announces that Juan is coming to pick me up. We will soon walk together. We will see streets, buildings, plazas, churches and in every corner, every bend, I will discover a detail, a blade of grass I have never seen before, and I will immediately recall the first day they gave me a hobby horse and I told myself I would ride him through all the cities in the world. The horse broke but now I have a friend and together we will get to know each one of this city’s houses, with names like the sound the waterfall makes when it pours from the highest point of the mountain.
*
Casi un país (3)
Me dijo que hoy iríamos a conocer distintos lugares de Caracas. No me explicó cuáles podrían ser. Cualquiera que sea el sitio que visitemos, encontraremos algo hermoso. No creo que exista la fealdad; si la hay, seguramente se debe a que no hubo suficiente claridad para apreciar en las calles, la vivacidad de los colores, la paciencia de la brisa que toca los portones hasta que se abren haciendo un ruido muy parecido al que surge si se escribe sobre un pizarrón viejo, gastado, con muchas roturas.
Me acerco a la ventana. Una hoja amarilla cae sobre mi hombro. Me gusta, tiene el mismo color de mi vestido. La guardaré en uno de mis libros, todo lo que se parece a mí o a mis cosas siento que me pertenece.
El sol anuncia que Juan viene a visitarme. Pronto caminaremos juntos. Veremos calles, plazas, iglesias y en cada esquina, recodo descubriré un detalle, una brizna, que nunca había visto, y en seguida recordaré el primer día que me regalaron un caballo de madera y me dije que en él cabalgaría a través de todas las ciudades del mundo. El caballo se rompió pero ahora tengo un amigo y junto conoceremos cada una de las casas de esta ciudad con sus nombres semejantes al sonido de la cascada cuando se vierte desde lo más alto de la montaña.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
He said we’d go see different places in Caracas today. He didn’t explain which ones. Whatever place we might visit, we’ll find something beautiful. I don’t think ugliness exists; if it does, it is surely the result of there not being enough clarity to appreciate the streets, the sharpness of the colors, the patience of the breeze that knocks on the large wooden doors until they open making a sound very close to the one that arises if you write on an old, worn chalkboard, with many cracks.
I approach the window. A yellow leaf falls on my shoulder. I like it, it has the same color as my dress. I’ll save it in one of my books, I feel as though everything that looks like me or my things belongs to me.
The sun announces that Juan is coming to pick me up. We will soon walk together. We will see streets, buildings, plazas, churches and in every corner, every bend, I will discover a detail, a blade of grass I have never seen before, and I will immediately recall the first day they gave me a hobby horse and I told myself I would ride him through all the cities in the world. The horse broke but now I have a friend and together we will get to know each one of this city’s houses, with names like the sound the waterfall makes when it pours from the highest point of the mountain.
*
Casi un país (3)
Me dijo que hoy iríamos a conocer distintos lugares de Caracas. No me explicó cuáles podrían ser. Cualquiera que sea el sitio que visitemos, encontraremos algo hermoso. No creo que exista la fealdad; si la hay, seguramente se debe a que no hubo suficiente claridad para apreciar en las calles, la vivacidad de los colores, la paciencia de la brisa que toca los portones hasta que se abren haciendo un ruido muy parecido al que surge si se escribe sobre un pizarrón viejo, gastado, con muchas roturas.
Me acerco a la ventana. Una hoja amarilla cae sobre mi hombro. Me gusta, tiene el mismo color de mi vestido. La guardaré en uno de mis libros, todo lo que se parece a mí o a mis cosas siento que me pertenece.
El sol anuncia que Juan viene a visitarme. Pronto caminaremos juntos. Veremos calles, plazas, iglesias y en cada esquina, recodo descubriré un detalle, una brizna, que nunca había visto, y en seguida recordaré el primer día que me regalaron un caballo de madera y me dije que en él cabalgaría a través de todas las ciudades del mundo. El caballo se rompió pero ahora tengo un amigo y junto conoceremos cada una de las casas de esta ciudad con sus nombres semejantes al sonido de la cascada cuando se vierte desde lo más alto de la montaña.
1972
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
9.16.2018
Casi un país (2) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (2)
Juan is my friend and he has such black and such large eyes that it’s impossible for the sun to ever make them fade one day.
I met him one afternoon, he didn’t ask my name, he stood there observing me, quietly, calmly; he contemplated the mountains through the windowpanes, with the multitude of houses spread around them: hats the wind would have tossed. I told him my name was Lucía and with a soft, tender voice he began to repeat it, as though I’d told him the name of a continent, a lake, a forest he was anxious to observe.
*
Casi un país (2)
Juan es mi amigo y tiene unos ojos tan negros y tan grandes que es imposible que el sol, algún día, se los pueda desteñir.
Lo conocí una tarde, no preguntó por mi nombre, se quedó mirándome, quieto, tranquilo; contemplaba a través de los vidrios de la ventana, las montañas con la multitud de casas esparcidas: sombreros que el viento hubiese lanzado. Le dije que me llamaba Lucía y él con voz suave, tierna, empezó a repetirlo, igual a si dijera el nombre de algún continente, de algún lago, de un bosque que estaba ansioso de mirar.
1972
Translator’s note: English version originally published in Typo, issue 18 (2013).
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
Juan is my friend and he has such black and such large eyes that it’s impossible for the sun to ever make them fade one day.
I met him one afternoon, he didn’t ask my name, he stood there observing me, quietly, calmly; he contemplated the mountains through the windowpanes, with the multitude of houses spread around them: hats the wind would have tossed. I told him my name was Lucía and with a soft, tender voice he began to repeat it, as though I’d told him the name of a continent, a lake, a forest he was anxious to observe.
*
Casi un país (2)
Juan es mi amigo y tiene unos ojos tan negros y tan grandes que es imposible que el sol, algún día, se los pueda desteñir.
Lo conocí una tarde, no preguntó por mi nombre, se quedó mirándome, quieto, tranquilo; contemplaba a través de los vidrios de la ventana, las montañas con la multitud de casas esparcidas: sombreros que el viento hubiese lanzado. Le dije que me llamaba Lucía y él con voz suave, tierna, empezó a repetirlo, igual a si dijera el nombre de algún continente, de algún lago, de un bosque que estaba ansioso de mirar.
1972
Translator’s note: English version originally published in Typo, issue 18 (2013).
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
9.09.2018
Casi un país (1) / Elizabeth Schön
Almost A Country (1)
I was born in Borburata. There was a green plant holder in the hallway; the water would hurl itself down and would echo inside the clay jug with a sound like small coins falling. A fountain stood out in the patio; the ferns bunched up around it and formed a greenish, humid awning that smelled pleasant. The pillars were round, made of wood, and nails that sometimes injured, jutted out of the cracked sections.
The house had few rooms. The rooftops were made out of cañabrava wood and mangrove beams; that’s where the spiders wove their hives, which packed the edges of the wooden framework. On the headpieces of the beds and in the water jugs, the moths and a fine, golden sand brought in by the wind from the distant sea would always accumulate. Two little stoves were always turned on; occasionally, a fly or a bee, who had been hunting the soup that was being cooked, would scorch itself within the embers.
Behind the yard, where an apamate tree grew, ran a gorge. The cows would go there to drink, while the thrushes picked at their feathers and I thought of the day I would live in Caracas, Caracas which I imagined as if it were the most beautiful, immense palace inhabited by glorious men.
*
Casi un país (1)
Nací en Borburata. En el corredor había un tinajero verde; el agua se precipitaba y sonaba dentro del bernegal con un ruido semejante al de las monedas pequeñas al caer. En el patio se destacaba una fuente; los helechos se amontonaban alrededor y formaban una carpa verdosa, húmeda, que olía gratamente. Los pilares eran redondos, de madera, y en los sitios resquebrajados, apuntaban clavos que, a veces, herían.
La casa no tenía muchas habitaciones. Los techos estaban construidos de cañabrava y viguetas de mangle; allí las harañas tejían sus enjambres que tupían los bordes del maderaje. En los copetes de las camas, en los aguamaniles, siempre se hacinaban la polilla y una arena fina, dorada, que el viento traía del mar lejano. Dos hornillas permanecían prendidas; dentro de las brasas, de vez en cuando, se asaban una mosca, una abeja, que habían estado cazando el caldo que se cocía.
Detrás del corral, donde crecía un árbol de apamate, una quebrada corría, ahí las vacas iban a beber, mientras los torditos picoteaban sus lomos y yo pensaba en el día que viviese en Caracas, Caracas que la imaginaba igual al palacio más bello, inmenso, habitado por hombres gloriosos.
1972
Translator’s note: English version originally published in Typo, issue 18 (2013).
Image: Elizabeth Schön, by Alfredo Cortina.
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
I was born in Borburata. There was a green plant holder in the hallway; the water would hurl itself down and would echo inside the clay jug with a sound like small coins falling. A fountain stood out in the patio; the ferns bunched up around it and formed a greenish, humid awning that smelled pleasant. The pillars were round, made of wood, and nails that sometimes injured, jutted out of the cracked sections.
The house had few rooms. The rooftops were made out of cañabrava wood and mangrove beams; that’s where the spiders wove their hives, which packed the edges of the wooden framework. On the headpieces of the beds and in the water jugs, the moths and a fine, golden sand brought in by the wind from the distant sea would always accumulate. Two little stoves were always turned on; occasionally, a fly or a bee, who had been hunting the soup that was being cooked, would scorch itself within the embers.
Behind the yard, where an apamate tree grew, ran a gorge. The cows would go there to drink, while the thrushes picked at their feathers and I thought of the day I would live in Caracas, Caracas which I imagined as if it were the most beautiful, immense palace inhabited by glorious men.
*
Casi un país (1)
Nací en Borburata. En el corredor había un tinajero verde; el agua se precipitaba y sonaba dentro del bernegal con un ruido semejante al de las monedas pequeñas al caer. En el patio se destacaba una fuente; los helechos se amontonaban alrededor y formaban una carpa verdosa, húmeda, que olía gratamente. Los pilares eran redondos, de madera, y en los sitios resquebrajados, apuntaban clavos que, a veces, herían.
La casa no tenía muchas habitaciones. Los techos estaban construidos de cañabrava y viguetas de mangle; allí las harañas tejían sus enjambres que tupían los bordes del maderaje. En los copetes de las camas, en los aguamaniles, siempre se hacinaban la polilla y una arena fina, dorada, que el viento traía del mar lejano. Dos hornillas permanecían prendidas; dentro de las brasas, de vez en cuando, se asaban una mosca, una abeja, que habían estado cazando el caldo que se cocía.
Detrás del corral, donde crecía un árbol de apamate, una quebrada corría, ahí las vacas iban a beber, mientras los torditos picoteaban sus lomos y yo pensaba en el día que viviese en Caracas, Caracas que la imaginaba igual al palacio más bello, inmenso, habitado por hombres gloriosos.
1972
Translator’s note: English version originally published in Typo, issue 18 (2013).
Image: Elizabeth Schön, by Alfredo Cortina.
{ Elizabeth Schön, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1998 }
5.08.2009
No eliges / Elizabeth Schön
You don’t choose
You don’t choose
the abyss, chaos, nothingness
They come to you
in slow-running water
so that you won’t be surprised
by the lack of matter surrounding you
alongside the soul’s light calling
the temporary fluttering of the earth you live
{ Elizabeth Schön, Luz oval, Caracas: Editorial Equinoccio, 2006 }
You don’t choose
the abyss, chaos, nothingness
They come to you
in slow-running water
so that you won’t be surprised
by the lack of matter surrounding you
alongside the soul’s light calling
the temporary fluttering of the earth you live
{ Elizabeth Schön, Luz oval, Caracas: Editorial Equinoccio, 2006 }
2.08.2009
Elizabeth Schön: El amor permite que el poeta encuentre el lugar que le falta / María Antonieta Flores
Elizabeth Schön: Love Allows the Poet to Find the Place She Is Lacking
The poetry of Elizabeth Schön (1921) is linked to the essentialist tendency of language and there are those who have found in her work a philosophical vision, but her poetic proposal is not limited to these aspects. The nonexistence of contraries has been a principle that marks her lyric conception, along with circularity as a cosmic and verbal movement. I met Elizabeth in the nineties and we maintained a fertile dialogue marked by friendship and poetry. We spoke at her house, a typical Caracas house of which few remain, with an inner courtyard marked by orchids. In this dialogue she offers her particular vision of an experience and coexistence with Poetry for more than fifty years.
– Elizabeth, how do you think the poet can contribute to freedom?
– The poet can contribute by loving, because in order to handle the real, the real that life provides, you have to love it and then work on that. You can’t separate love from your process of expression, from your language. Of course, you have to deal with the positive and negative parts of reality itself that man gives us.
– And how has this negative part of reality manifested itself to you, an aspect where violence and power express themselves in such a destructive manner?
– Since I was a young girl, since the day when I saw a boy completely tied to a telephone post and his hands were bleeding, a twelve or fourteen year old boy. I don’t know who he was, if he had stolen something, if he had done something. At that moment I felt an approach towards that. It was my first contact with the negative part of life. The complexity of life is found in that both good and evil are constantly walking together, they don’t walk separately. If someone fights for a freedom, he must see what exactly is blocking that freedom. So, both freedom and oppression go together, even if in reality you can say this side is one part that side another. I find it very beautiful how existential facts unfold in life, beautiful in the sense that freedoms have triumphed. Freedom is born when you emerge from the womb.
– And that freedom, how is it concretized in the poetic word?
– By loving. Because freedom can never be for you alone, freedom has to be for everyone. And the poet when he only speaks for himself is like someone who drinks an orange juice and completely forgets the plant from where that orange, that fruit was born. Freedom itself gives you the fact of loving more. If you’re restricted, subjugated, you can’t love freely.
– How does that relationship between love and the poem come to be?
– A word doesn’t fit in the poem, love finds it. Love is a generative force. The poem is a generative force combined with sensibility, emotiveness, memory, presences. All those intimate factors belonging to the poet join to provide equilibrium. The poet situates the word where it has to be by means of love’s consistency. Love allows the poet to find the missing place. When the poet is lacking love, the poem emerges without flesh as though it were lacking breath.
– In a certain manner, you’re proposing an aesthetics that revolves around love, around eros as a vital force, an aesthetics of agape. It’s obvious that your poetic writing has been an exercise of love, but it’s also been an exercise of rigor. How do those two forces coexist?
– By means of love itself. Love itself teaches you how to maintain an equilibrium. When the equilibrium breaks, everything is left like a fallen tree. What’s beautiful is for that tree to grow and look towards the sky. In that sense I think love is indispensable, because you find a rigor by means of love. Rigor doesn’t exist alone out there. Rigor is the product of a knowledge, of a knowledge that implicitly includes freedom, reason and intuition. A poet’s rigor is found through man and through the word, through the act of making sure that what he says of reality holds up a mirror where men might look at themselves, or find themselves or not find themselves.
– How do you conceive the poem as a mirror?
– It’s what illuminates. It’s a mirror where men can look at themselves. The mirror illuminates your face, poetry illuminates man so that he might find himself or not find himself, because when you reject a book for X reason, you haven’t found yourself in that book. You set it aside, it didn’t convince you. Why? Because your rigor and your demand have been elaborated in a sense that’s very much your own and crucial for agreeing or disagreeing. That agreement doesn’t preclude that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow you might accept it a bit more. I don’t believe in rigidity. Sometimes the poet makes himself a bit rigid and maybe it’s out of fear.
– After hearing that, it’s inevitable that I ask you which have been the mirrors that have illuminated you in poetry: those books, those poems, those voices that have illuminated your face and have illuminated your word.
– When I grab a book of poems, I open it. I read a phrase or, perhaps I’m being too rigorous there, two or three or four or five or six, but if I can suddenly manage to see its root I stay with it. At that point, I’m illuminated. It fills me with light because I’m seeing a root that extends toward nature, toward everyday life, toward the smallest, the most minor object. There it is and it illuminates everything, because the word illuminates. The word, for me, is a clarity, but it’s not a solar clarity because the sun’s clarity comes and goes, while poetry’s clarity is always there. And it’s beautiful when you grab, for example, Ida Gramcko who says to you “el mismo yo mas caracol” [the same I plus snail], the I, the same I, everything. It’s not a dividing light, it’s a unifying light, by means of the root. I don’t conceive of any poet unless he’s not raised up by a root, whether it’s love toward the smallest thing, whether it’s love of sex, whether it’s love of erosion, because in order to write about erosion you have to love it in some way. Otherwise you can’t feel it, you can’t feel it as something outside of you but part of life instead. So, yourself, in order to give it you must love it even if it hurts because of how you’re going to give it. Otherwise, something completely dry comes out of you.
– What role does fear play in all of this?
– Fear is a dread of not touching… and of not allowing oneself to be illuminated by what’s there.
– Has fear been present in what you’ve been writing lately?
– Fear is there because first of all there’s the sensation of not being able. At that point it stops you, because you think you won’t be able to. This is a battle. But, fear is much stringer and you don’t eliminate it. Let’s suppose, which is much simpler. This room. I close the doors and leave it in darkness… What you immediately think is: “Oh, a ghost is gonna emerge.” And you get scared, because you don’t know what the ghost is like nor do you know what darkness is. Darkness is the root of the luminous, but it’s darkness because of fear. It becomes dark because of fear, because fear stops you from seeing the clarity the poem brings. For example, Huidobro has moments, he has words, he has images that propose darkness, propose wasting away, propose sinking. But you find that along with all that there is a proposition of clarity.
Silence Is the Most Fruitful Thing In the World
– You’ve commented to me about a sensation of having your memory taken over, erased, that you feel this because of the moment we’re living through today, a moment where sometimes we’re asked to take on extreme positions. What would your role be during moments such as this one?
– For me, the extremes have never been fruitful. The extreme is cutting down another tree and you have no right to cut down. But sometimes an extreme is necessary. When a totalitarian and extreme government exists, it falls of its own accord. They’ve never been able to sustain themselves. The poet must always seek out the roots. I never forget that the person who taught me this the most was Lao Tse when he said that the state was unnamable, because then you feel as though you have complete freedom to create. The root is unnamable. Once it constitutes itself into a form it immediately implies the One, you’re the person who’s going to form that One. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself. When Thales of Miletus tells you that water is the world’s essence, he gives you something that is One.
– But, don’t you also receive it?
– You receive it but that reception is blocking you from reaching the unnamable. That One forms your own conception. The root of your perception is not yours but another’s. I point to Lao Tse as something that frees me so that I can feel casually that the unnamable can be anything. When one finds something fundamental, which is your root, which is what shines on you and you lose it, one can go mad because, unfortunately, we don’t know how to be content with nothingness. Because nothingness is like a silence, although I think silence is the most fruitful thing in the world.
– What has your experience been with silence in writing?
– A process. Silence is like a seed. It internally prepares you for being able to receive everything that comes to you, because things come to us, they arrive. In that arrival, it gives. It’s not a silencing in the correct sense of language. From silence surge a love of the world, [Armando] Reverón’s women, Reverón’s beaches.
– Facing the world’s events, the poet contemplates. Could silence be a stage, a right, or is it a sin?
– I don’t think it’s a sin, absolutely not, nor is it a stage. It exists and you hear it once in a while. It’s like the soul, the soul can be heard because it moves within you. Whoever doesn’t hear it, misses it because he has tied himself to something else, almost always the negative. You close the door to this room and there’s a total silence and that silence has always been there, but what happens is that the furniture, the dog, the word, conversation, they are like the wave.
– But our society today doesn’t seem to understand or accept silence.
– Of course, that’s natural. From that silence is born noise and in order for it to happen it needs the source that is silence. For example, you throw a rock and at that moment the distance it covers was made by a silence that existed before you threw it. Silence and solitude are incubating sources.
– What has your been experience with solitude?
– Ever since I was a girl I distinguished that the sky was blue and since I was born into a very religious family, I thought the blue was because of the virgin, because that was the virgin’s blue skirt. So I felt taken care of. I saw it from a distance but I wasn’t lost because there was the blue mantle of silence as though I could touch it with a finger.
– And that religiosity, how does it become a poem?
– By loving. Because love is what provokes the transformation of the fact into words. Love participates in imagination, it participates when you intuit, when you pronounce… It’s love that provokes, as though it gathered all those things and elements and joined them into one. That’s why you can pronounce, you can say: “el mismo yo, mas caracol.” That doesn’t come out so easily. Of course, you don’t perceive that. But it’s there because love exists within you; there is silence within you; there is solitude within you. And solitude is not abandonment, it is a wealth.
– All those coordinates that form the map of your writing, they also include abandonment.
– Of course… but I’ve gone on living. There is abandonment because I lost the most essential thing, which was my mother. Sometimes, in my case, that’s never filled by anyone. I feel that death can fill that for me.
– You’re speaking to us about a cycle that closes, this has to do with the circular and encompassing movement that can be seen in your writing, a movement that leaves nothing outside.
– All that inner movement surges up within me and I give it. What’s important is that the other discover that light I’m talking about and which I carry as though it were part of my intuition, but when I read it I’m capable of seeing the roundness and all those things, but I say to myself: “Is that me?” Then I feel afraid.
– Does poetry lead us to constantly live with fear?
– Yes, constantly. Because you get scared. For example, when I wrote La espada [The Sword], I never in my life had thought of writing something about the sword. Never. Because for me a sword was a terrible sign, but it turns out that in the book it transforms into a sign of equilibrium. The sword is the way of intelligently cutting away what is not positive for everyone else.
– Does poetry have a meaning beyond aesthetics for you?
¬– Poetry can’t be a decoration, a beautiful thing. Poetry must have a frightening human content. Its problem is man.
– What has poetry given you, after giving it so many years of your life, so much passion?
– To have discovered certain aspects of life and knowing that certain books of mine reach the public and knowing they’re useful.
The full version of this conversation was published in Versos comunicantes II (poetas entrevistan a poetas iberoamericanos), México: Alforja, 2005.
{María Antonieta Flores, El Cautivo, No. 40, November 2008}
The poetry of Elizabeth Schön (1921) is linked to the essentialist tendency of language and there are those who have found in her work a philosophical vision, but her poetic proposal is not limited to these aspects. The nonexistence of contraries has been a principle that marks her lyric conception, along with circularity as a cosmic and verbal movement. I met Elizabeth in the nineties and we maintained a fertile dialogue marked by friendship and poetry. We spoke at her house, a typical Caracas house of which few remain, with an inner courtyard marked by orchids. In this dialogue she offers her particular vision of an experience and coexistence with Poetry for more than fifty years.
– Elizabeth, how do you think the poet can contribute to freedom?
– The poet can contribute by loving, because in order to handle the real, the real that life provides, you have to love it and then work on that. You can’t separate love from your process of expression, from your language. Of course, you have to deal with the positive and negative parts of reality itself that man gives us.
– And how has this negative part of reality manifested itself to you, an aspect where violence and power express themselves in such a destructive manner?
– Since I was a young girl, since the day when I saw a boy completely tied to a telephone post and his hands were bleeding, a twelve or fourteen year old boy. I don’t know who he was, if he had stolen something, if he had done something. At that moment I felt an approach towards that. It was my first contact with the negative part of life. The complexity of life is found in that both good and evil are constantly walking together, they don’t walk separately. If someone fights for a freedom, he must see what exactly is blocking that freedom. So, both freedom and oppression go together, even if in reality you can say this side is one part that side another. I find it very beautiful how existential facts unfold in life, beautiful in the sense that freedoms have triumphed. Freedom is born when you emerge from the womb.
– And that freedom, how is it concretized in the poetic word?
– By loving. Because freedom can never be for you alone, freedom has to be for everyone. And the poet when he only speaks for himself is like someone who drinks an orange juice and completely forgets the plant from where that orange, that fruit was born. Freedom itself gives you the fact of loving more. If you’re restricted, subjugated, you can’t love freely.
– How does that relationship between love and the poem come to be?
– A word doesn’t fit in the poem, love finds it. Love is a generative force. The poem is a generative force combined with sensibility, emotiveness, memory, presences. All those intimate factors belonging to the poet join to provide equilibrium. The poet situates the word where it has to be by means of love’s consistency. Love allows the poet to find the missing place. When the poet is lacking love, the poem emerges without flesh as though it were lacking breath.
– In a certain manner, you’re proposing an aesthetics that revolves around love, around eros as a vital force, an aesthetics of agape. It’s obvious that your poetic writing has been an exercise of love, but it’s also been an exercise of rigor. How do those two forces coexist?
– By means of love itself. Love itself teaches you how to maintain an equilibrium. When the equilibrium breaks, everything is left like a fallen tree. What’s beautiful is for that tree to grow and look towards the sky. In that sense I think love is indispensable, because you find a rigor by means of love. Rigor doesn’t exist alone out there. Rigor is the product of a knowledge, of a knowledge that implicitly includes freedom, reason and intuition. A poet’s rigor is found through man and through the word, through the act of making sure that what he says of reality holds up a mirror where men might look at themselves, or find themselves or not find themselves.
– How do you conceive the poem as a mirror?
– It’s what illuminates. It’s a mirror where men can look at themselves. The mirror illuminates your face, poetry illuminates man so that he might find himself or not find himself, because when you reject a book for X reason, you haven’t found yourself in that book. You set it aside, it didn’t convince you. Why? Because your rigor and your demand have been elaborated in a sense that’s very much your own and crucial for agreeing or disagreeing. That agreement doesn’t preclude that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow you might accept it a bit more. I don’t believe in rigidity. Sometimes the poet makes himself a bit rigid and maybe it’s out of fear.
– After hearing that, it’s inevitable that I ask you which have been the mirrors that have illuminated you in poetry: those books, those poems, those voices that have illuminated your face and have illuminated your word.
– When I grab a book of poems, I open it. I read a phrase or, perhaps I’m being too rigorous there, two or three or four or five or six, but if I can suddenly manage to see its root I stay with it. At that point, I’m illuminated. It fills me with light because I’m seeing a root that extends toward nature, toward everyday life, toward the smallest, the most minor object. There it is and it illuminates everything, because the word illuminates. The word, for me, is a clarity, but it’s not a solar clarity because the sun’s clarity comes and goes, while poetry’s clarity is always there. And it’s beautiful when you grab, for example, Ida Gramcko who says to you “el mismo yo mas caracol” [the same I plus snail], the I, the same I, everything. It’s not a dividing light, it’s a unifying light, by means of the root. I don’t conceive of any poet unless he’s not raised up by a root, whether it’s love toward the smallest thing, whether it’s love of sex, whether it’s love of erosion, because in order to write about erosion you have to love it in some way. Otherwise you can’t feel it, you can’t feel it as something outside of you but part of life instead. So, yourself, in order to give it you must love it even if it hurts because of how you’re going to give it. Otherwise, something completely dry comes out of you.
– What role does fear play in all of this?
– Fear is a dread of not touching… and of not allowing oneself to be illuminated by what’s there.
– Has fear been present in what you’ve been writing lately?
– Fear is there because first of all there’s the sensation of not being able. At that point it stops you, because you think you won’t be able to. This is a battle. But, fear is much stringer and you don’t eliminate it. Let’s suppose, which is much simpler. This room. I close the doors and leave it in darkness… What you immediately think is: “Oh, a ghost is gonna emerge.” And you get scared, because you don’t know what the ghost is like nor do you know what darkness is. Darkness is the root of the luminous, but it’s darkness because of fear. It becomes dark because of fear, because fear stops you from seeing the clarity the poem brings. For example, Huidobro has moments, he has words, he has images that propose darkness, propose wasting away, propose sinking. But you find that along with all that there is a proposition of clarity.
Silence Is the Most Fruitful Thing In the World
– You’ve commented to me about a sensation of having your memory taken over, erased, that you feel this because of the moment we’re living through today, a moment where sometimes we’re asked to take on extreme positions. What would your role be during moments such as this one?
– For me, the extremes have never been fruitful. The extreme is cutting down another tree and you have no right to cut down. But sometimes an extreme is necessary. When a totalitarian and extreme government exists, it falls of its own accord. They’ve never been able to sustain themselves. The poet must always seek out the roots. I never forget that the person who taught me this the most was Lao Tse when he said that the state was unnamable, because then you feel as though you have complete freedom to create. The root is unnamable. Once it constitutes itself into a form it immediately implies the One, you’re the person who’s going to form that One. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself. When Thales of Miletus tells you that water is the world’s essence, he gives you something that is One.
– But, don’t you also receive it?
– You receive it but that reception is blocking you from reaching the unnamable. That One forms your own conception. The root of your perception is not yours but another’s. I point to Lao Tse as something that frees me so that I can feel casually that the unnamable can be anything. When one finds something fundamental, which is your root, which is what shines on you and you lose it, one can go mad because, unfortunately, we don’t know how to be content with nothingness. Because nothingness is like a silence, although I think silence is the most fruitful thing in the world.
– What has your experience been with silence in writing?
– A process. Silence is like a seed. It internally prepares you for being able to receive everything that comes to you, because things come to us, they arrive. In that arrival, it gives. It’s not a silencing in the correct sense of language. From silence surge a love of the world, [Armando] Reverón’s women, Reverón’s beaches.
– Facing the world’s events, the poet contemplates. Could silence be a stage, a right, or is it a sin?
– I don’t think it’s a sin, absolutely not, nor is it a stage. It exists and you hear it once in a while. It’s like the soul, the soul can be heard because it moves within you. Whoever doesn’t hear it, misses it because he has tied himself to something else, almost always the negative. You close the door to this room and there’s a total silence and that silence has always been there, but what happens is that the furniture, the dog, the word, conversation, they are like the wave.
– But our society today doesn’t seem to understand or accept silence.
– Of course, that’s natural. From that silence is born noise and in order for it to happen it needs the source that is silence. For example, you throw a rock and at that moment the distance it covers was made by a silence that existed before you threw it. Silence and solitude are incubating sources.
– What has your been experience with solitude?
– Ever since I was a girl I distinguished that the sky was blue and since I was born into a very religious family, I thought the blue was because of the virgin, because that was the virgin’s blue skirt. So I felt taken care of. I saw it from a distance but I wasn’t lost because there was the blue mantle of silence as though I could touch it with a finger.
– And that religiosity, how does it become a poem?
– By loving. Because love is what provokes the transformation of the fact into words. Love participates in imagination, it participates when you intuit, when you pronounce… It’s love that provokes, as though it gathered all those things and elements and joined them into one. That’s why you can pronounce, you can say: “el mismo yo, mas caracol.” That doesn’t come out so easily. Of course, you don’t perceive that. But it’s there because love exists within you; there is silence within you; there is solitude within you. And solitude is not abandonment, it is a wealth.
– All those coordinates that form the map of your writing, they also include abandonment.
– Of course… but I’ve gone on living. There is abandonment because I lost the most essential thing, which was my mother. Sometimes, in my case, that’s never filled by anyone. I feel that death can fill that for me.
– You’re speaking to us about a cycle that closes, this has to do with the circular and encompassing movement that can be seen in your writing, a movement that leaves nothing outside.
– All that inner movement surges up within me and I give it. What’s important is that the other discover that light I’m talking about and which I carry as though it were part of my intuition, but when I read it I’m capable of seeing the roundness and all those things, but I say to myself: “Is that me?” Then I feel afraid.
– Does poetry lead us to constantly live with fear?
– Yes, constantly. Because you get scared. For example, when I wrote La espada [The Sword], I never in my life had thought of writing something about the sword. Never. Because for me a sword was a terrible sign, but it turns out that in the book it transforms into a sign of equilibrium. The sword is the way of intelligently cutting away what is not positive for everyone else.
– Does poetry have a meaning beyond aesthetics for you?
¬– Poetry can’t be a decoration, a beautiful thing. Poetry must have a frightening human content. Its problem is man.
– What has poetry given you, after giving it so many years of your life, so much passion?
– To have discovered certain aspects of life and knowing that certain books of mine reach the public and knowing they’re useful.
The full version of this conversation was published in Versos comunicantes II (poetas entrevistan a poetas iberoamericanos), México: Alforja, 2005.
{María Antonieta Flores, El Cautivo, No. 40, November 2008}
6.07.2007
Las otras voces / Antonio López Ortega
The Other Voices
With the recent disappearance of the writer Elizabeth Schön (1921-2007) we’ve possibly lost the last great Venezuelan poetic voice of the twenties. Along with her, just a few years ago, we also lost Juan Sánchez Peláez (1922-2003), whose legacy and influence continue to grow continentally due to the avant-garde accent of his voice, its sonorous device, its perennially fresh and renewed vision. Schön belonged to an airy, metaphysical current of Venezuelan poetry. It has been a marginal current, but a powerful one nonetheless. Poets like Ida Gramcko (1924-1994), Alfredo Silva Estrada or Alfredo Chacón emanate from that current and evolve toward other horizons.
These deaths raise the question of their work’s dissemination, and the situation is uneven in this field. To speak of the projection of Venezuelan poetry is to speak of an uneven process, which when achieved is due more to the efforts of the poets themselves than to the publishing houses or public policies. In 1988, under the Siruela imprint in Spain, an anthology of Ramos Sucre appeared called Las formas del fuego. Beginning with that pioneering gesture, there have been a succession of editions or translations in various countries, with greater or lesser resonance. The complete poems of Sánchez Peláez, for example, was taken up by the prestigious Lumen imprint in 2004 and today it remains the great Venezuelan poet’s definitive text. The thirties generation seems to be living through a stellar moment – especially if we pause to consider the work of Rafael Cadenas and Eugenio Montejo –, since their editions and recognition abroad are obligatory references. But the forties poets – such José Barroeta (1942-2006) or Hanni Ossott (1946-2002) – already have editions of their complete work in important Spanish editorial houses. The list would be longer because of the additional efforts needed in regards to the arrangement and promotion of poetic oeuvres, and not only in the case of Elizabeth Schön, as necessary as they are deserved. Closer poets whose deaths interrupted mature works – such as Miyó Vestrini (1938-1991) or Elí Galindo (1947-2006) – would also deserve this distinction.
The voice of the poets – we’ve known this since Homer – always moves beneath historical currents and vicissitudes. It is the other voice of societies: the one that could be the equivalent of the voice of the unconscious on the psychic plane, always reverberating beneath thought and ideas.
It is the voice that remains, that belongs to deep humanity, and the one that gathers the misfortunes, accidents or phantasmagoria of human desires. The voice of the poets survives while historical pomp disappears or ends up trapped in marble. One could say that History varies, for good or ill, due to intrinsic reasons. But facing variety, which is inconstant by nature, it’s good to hold up the invariability of poetry, the voice that remains.
All cultures, in their most extreme or compromised moments, have known to quench their thirst in those fountains so as to recognize, in their misplacement, what has nourished the past and will nourish the future. This is why we must return to the poets: to recognize the trunk from which the branches flourish, to reconcile ourselves with the word that doesn’t stain or diminish itself each day, to seek refuge in the soul and to understand that suffering, no matter how prolonged it might be, is always fleeting.
{ Antonio López Ortega, El Nacional, 5 June 2007 }
With the recent disappearance of the writer Elizabeth Schön (1921-2007) we’ve possibly lost the last great Venezuelan poetic voice of the twenties. Along with her, just a few years ago, we also lost Juan Sánchez Peláez (1922-2003), whose legacy and influence continue to grow continentally due to the avant-garde accent of his voice, its sonorous device, its perennially fresh and renewed vision. Schön belonged to an airy, metaphysical current of Venezuelan poetry. It has been a marginal current, but a powerful one nonetheless. Poets like Ida Gramcko (1924-1994), Alfredo Silva Estrada or Alfredo Chacón emanate from that current and evolve toward other horizons.
These deaths raise the question of their work’s dissemination, and the situation is uneven in this field. To speak of the projection of Venezuelan poetry is to speak of an uneven process, which when achieved is due more to the efforts of the poets themselves than to the publishing houses or public policies. In 1988, under the Siruela imprint in Spain, an anthology of Ramos Sucre appeared called Las formas del fuego. Beginning with that pioneering gesture, there have been a succession of editions or translations in various countries, with greater or lesser resonance. The complete poems of Sánchez Peláez, for example, was taken up by the prestigious Lumen imprint in 2004 and today it remains the great Venezuelan poet’s definitive text. The thirties generation seems to be living through a stellar moment – especially if we pause to consider the work of Rafael Cadenas and Eugenio Montejo –, since their editions and recognition abroad are obligatory references. But the forties poets – such José Barroeta (1942-2006) or Hanni Ossott (1946-2002) – already have editions of their complete work in important Spanish editorial houses. The list would be longer because of the additional efforts needed in regards to the arrangement and promotion of poetic oeuvres, and not only in the case of Elizabeth Schön, as necessary as they are deserved. Closer poets whose deaths interrupted mature works – such as Miyó Vestrini (1938-1991) or Elí Galindo (1947-2006) – would also deserve this distinction.
The voice of the poets – we’ve known this since Homer – always moves beneath historical currents and vicissitudes. It is the other voice of societies: the one that could be the equivalent of the voice of the unconscious on the psychic plane, always reverberating beneath thought and ideas.
It is the voice that remains, that belongs to deep humanity, and the one that gathers the misfortunes, accidents or phantasmagoria of human desires. The voice of the poets survives while historical pomp disappears or ends up trapped in marble. One could say that History varies, for good or ill, due to intrinsic reasons. But facing variety, which is inconstant by nature, it’s good to hold up the invariability of poetry, the voice that remains.
All cultures, in their most extreme or compromised moments, have known to quench their thirst in those fountains so as to recognize, in their misplacement, what has nourished the past and will nourish the future. This is why we must return to the poets: to recognize the trunk from which the branches flourish, to reconcile ourselves with the word that doesn’t stain or diminish itself each day, to seek refuge in the soul and to understand that suffering, no matter how prolonged it might be, is always fleeting.
{ Antonio López Ortega, El Nacional, 5 June 2007 }
5.18.2007
Palabras para Elizabeth Schön / Elizabeth Araujo
Words for Elizabeth Schön
Last night, the kingdom of poetry lost one of its most welcoming voices: Elizabeth Schön, who maintained an intimate connection with nature and lucidly molded that fascination in literature. She died at her home, where she has lived with her verses for many years, in such a way that her friends, when we visited her, felt the bustle of words wandering throughout the house.
Awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura (1994) and the author of over twenty works of theater and poetry, Elizabeth Schön sang to human virtues and suffering. The confrontation between existence and essence was the permanent sign of her poetics.
“Few know
that it’s precisely me
the word
the one who unites outlines
premonitions
and leads to the center
of the unnamable…”
It’s true all men die and unfortunately that includes poets, but the atmosphere that Elizabeth Schön’s verses leave behind in this imperfect Caracas compensates for the pain of her departure, because more than anyone else, as Yolanda Pantin wrote, she “has certainly provided us a lesson by offering her life to the talent that was given to her.”
{ Elizabeth Araujo, TalCual, 17 May 2007 }
Last night, the kingdom of poetry lost one of its most welcoming voices: Elizabeth Schön, who maintained an intimate connection with nature and lucidly molded that fascination in literature. She died at her home, where she has lived with her verses for many years, in such a way that her friends, when we visited her, felt the bustle of words wandering throughout the house.
Awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura (1994) and the author of over twenty works of theater and poetry, Elizabeth Schön sang to human virtues and suffering. The confrontation between existence and essence was the permanent sign of her poetics.
“Few know
that it’s precisely me
the word
the one who unites outlines
premonitions
and leads to the center
of the unnamable…”
It’s true all men die and unfortunately that includes poets, but the atmosphere that Elizabeth Schön’s verses leave behind in this imperfect Caracas compensates for the pain of her departure, because more than anyone else, as Yolanda Pantin wrote, she “has certainly provided us a lesson by offering her life to the talent that was given to her.”
{ Elizabeth Araujo, TalCual, 17 May 2007 }
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)