Toward a Poetry & Poetics of the Americas (23): Eunice Odio, from The Fire’s Journey

Translation from Spanish by Keith Ekiss and Sonia P. Ticas

[In the process of gathering with Javier Taboada our assemblage-in-progress of North & South American poetry “from origins to present,” scheduled for publication by University of California Press in 2021, I would like to call special attention to this masterwork by Eunice Odio (1919-1974), which is now available in a full  four-volume edition from Tavern Books in Portland, Oregon.  Octavio Paz’s description of Odio as “of that line of poets who invent their own mythology, like Blake, like St.-John Perse, like Ezra Pound” is a succinct assessment of that work, as brought beautifully into English by Keith Ekiss and Sonia P. Ticas. (J.R.)]

INFANCY OF THE PARENTS II

Aira (Female Air/She Air):

Today is daylight everywhere!

My foot dawned with a surrounding light.

Also my hair dawned,

hallelujah!

from such depth,
fragrant to the veins that listen to it

Airo (Male Air/He Air)

Airaaa!

Today is made of wheat . . . linen . . .
it is . . . diurnal

Chorus

It confuses everything.
Today is daylight everywhere.
Salt and prophets know this already

Aira and Airo

Something I touched without seeing.
Something passed through my ear without touching.

Aira

Perhaps the wind of the Guardian.
He passes suddenly to found the dawn
more swiftly than Himself

Airo

That suits him as shadow

Aira

Think no more of the closed night

Airo

The day within the air hallelujah!

Aira

The Guardian will pass another day long before
his own speed

and he will not remain hidden

Airo

Let us sing: thus it is and thus shall it be
and we shall learn of his back in freedom,
where warm tensions gather,
and temperatures congeal,
to found the identity of the air;
his back on which the expanse begins.

Today is daylight and you possess, Aira,
a dress the color of your heart

Aira

Now that it is day play at being born,
pretend we were born small,
extend your arms to such clear presence,
and let us think about the first poplar;
then we will find it

opened and already foreseen
waiting for us

Chorus

For a long time they were waking up without the knowledge
that day was upon the world;
they thought the day was as dreamed,
they thought that to awaken was to return;
that to go, was something without light, to be absent.

They thought morning meant return, that it was existence,
or a return without rest
to viscera of love that are not felt

But one time, being thus, laying about
recalling clearness without being, neither lost nor found,
that which was never contained in the secret space,
nor commemorated in the senses,

suddenly, quieted and ignited,
all facing each other, both bones against bone,
throat against throat;

by organic steps,
by swells of wet and living entrails,

they entered the primeval roundness.

They gathered up their body, their external joy,

and walking on the foot of the dawn,
they ascended to all their lineages

and spoke the word without shadow;

the word that was in their immediacy
only to grasp it,

the word that was for all
and no one had found it:

morning

And everything fit in her, everything from the body and air,
from color and wheat;

and everything that was neither of the body nor of the air,
but of a third species without sound.

And suddenly they spoke the word knowing themselves to be the purest:

morning.

All was set in the world.

All was visible and deep on this morning

Airo

Let us depart for the threshold,
give me the hand with which you clamor to the wind
and play .

One, two,
Three!

The threshold fell from my eyes-blind child-
I remained with the gaze and memory of an island

that was where I am
and it watched itself in the mirror

Aira

It sailed in the mirror

Airo

Girl, let's play!

Let's draw the crystal that deceived me this morning,
it was a crystal that fell from branch to branch growing,
without knowledge it was watched, to be made of uncertain crystal
falling from branch to branch

Aira

Let's play: my drawing begins in a snail.
The line beats the numbers of the sand in secret,

don't watch it!

A 2 [which] arrived to the pearls, replacing them
with 2 different sizes from the sea;

2 from a seven we subtract in the shell:

they are five different candles
losing their leaves in the water

Airo

My captain!

Aira

Sir!

Airo

All aboard!

Chorus

Waves of mint attend the air,
they gather one after another,
they float by the cool noise of velamin;
they fight for each piece of sea foam.
Step by step they trace the detailed
darkness of the wave,
and the sailor loses his torso in the lightning

Aira

My captaaaiiinnn!
The snail's been broken

Airo

It was a small snail for such great waves.
The angels made mocked . . .

Aira

It is necessary to make a snail of nacre
that doesn't fall demolished;
lighter than the wind, as great as the water

Airo

I'm tired, it's late, let's draw ourselves tomorrow

Aira

I to you, apple dressed

Airo

How much is an angel multiplied by 4?

Aira

Let us review the multiples of the angel

Airo

Angel multiplied by 4 . . . is
governor of 3,

multiplied by its own
high and indivisible multiples,

raised to inexhaustible power . . .

Equal to a butterfly square.

Aira

Everything is singing upwards:

The spotted she-bird on her lemon-green ,
and the spotted he-bird on his little green branch

Airo

High, in the tall branch, the orange grows

Aira

The he-bird sees it

Airo

The day unravels filaments of dampened violins

Aira

The he-bird pecks them

Airo

Wild swallows on the ground begin to bear fruit

Aira

And the spotted she-bird swings on her branch

Airo

I went to the sea for oranges
a thing the sea doesn't have

Aira

To the sea that goes, coming

Airo

Give me your hand
Your little finger isn't my little finger

Aira

Your little finger escorts me.
I want it for sleeping,
and to go to the country of the grape
with a commanding baton;

a baton of a saffron
field marshall;

because your pinkie isn't my pinkie,
nor your eyes my eyes

Chorus

Sleep!

Aira

Nor is my suit the small suit that dresses you

Airo

You are a girl

Aira

The tree that's in the spring,
is it a she-tree, or is it a he-tree?

Chorus

Sleep!

Airo

Did you hear that?

Aira

The star in the tree's
highest branch is speaking.
It jumps from the spring to the branch
and says she came between several sirens,
that came to the world on vacation

But no one knows it . . .

Airo

Let's draw ourselves tomorrow

Aira

I will draw you apple.

COMMENTARY

The word that will make the cupolas soar/ and bloom on the tongue of the dead,/ a new word unborn and blind,/ renewing the origin of silence in the verb.” And then: “I will show touch what darkness is/ and darkness will seize it” (E.O., from "The Fire's Journey I: Creation of Myself")

(1) Eunice Odio's work is one of the most outstanding of the previous century, although she spent most of her life -- as happened to others -- unrecognized and largely marginalized. Born in Costa Rica, from which she fled at 28 (never to return), she settled first in Guatemala, then in New York and finally in Mexico, where she died in 1974. One of her U.S. translators, Keith Ekiss, wrote: "Odio herself was aware of her marginalized, self-exiled position. Octavio Paz once told her that she was ‘of that line of poets who invent their own mythology, like Blake, like St.-John Perse, like Ezra Pound; and they are rubbed out, because no one understands them until years or even centuries after their death'".  Although published in 1957, her masterwork The Fire's Journey, a monumental poem with more than 10,000 lines, has now slowly been recognized and acclaimed both by critics and audience.

(2) In an excellent piece about Odio's mythopoetics, Sharon Mesmer explains the nature and the scope of The Fire's Journey: " [It] is a process: the process of creation by and through the Word. Odio must’ve been as preoccupied as Blake had been with the questions of ‘how?’ and ‘who?’ ‘Why?’ lies beyond language because it may forever be unknowable, inexpressible (...)”.  The main characters of The Fire's Journey are Ion -- the poet addressed by Socrates in one of Plato's most famous dialogues --, and the mythical crafter of the Ancient Greek world, Daedalus. Mesmer continues: "Odio’s Ion is a poet-god, purveying (as well as creating) sacred language to bring the world into being. Like a shaman, he will embark upon a descent/journey to restore order and bring healing". Thus, the creation process "was indeed a projection of an artist-god" (...), but with the introduction/identification with Daedalus, this process passes "from creation-by-speech to creation-by-craft."  This double feature is nothing more than poiesis at its best.

(3) Eunice Odio wrote that her condition as a poet resembled: “Elijah, the prophet, who was considered ‘nothing’ and people made him suffer. And, so many times, like Christ, they kill us. It doesn't happens nowadays? I've seen die more than one, not to mention César Vallejo. They all died of abandonment and spiritual pain: Vallejo is an extreme case.

               “It seems to me that it's like that and nothing can be changed. […] So many are drawn to this activity, believing that it's the best and the most pleasant profession. Indeed, it's the best profession, but far from being the most pleasant. According to the Bible, the wise ones -- i.e., the poets-- are ‘the salt of the earth.’ But the Bible also prophesies and teaches a lot about their fate.”