[Known as a poet-translator of contemporary Mapuche-language
poets such as Elicura
Chihuailaf, Leonel Lienlaf, & others, the Chilean Spanish-language
poet Rodrigo Rojas has now made a further translingual shift into a series of
poems written entirely in English. Of
these he tells us: “These are not translations; the poems were written directly in
English. The book is called ‘Exercises on Infidelity’ because English is not my
first language, but also because the idea of an original poem as the source of
the poetic experience is questioned. The poetic experience here belongs to a
space that is in-between, a place in which all expressive and perceptive
limitations are enhanced and multiplied.”
And of the Mapuche link: “I hold the Mapuche nation very close to my
heart. I consider them to be my teachers and guides. I’ve studied their poetry
and tried to understand the poetics they developed in order to speak to
different worlds. One is their own culture in constant tension and the other is
this hungry world (the first layer of it is the Nation State of Chile) that
threatens their very survival.” Rojas’s English texts and well-wrought ink
& brush drawings form the total content of this book.]
FINE, SOLUBLE & LIGHTFAST
It’s Indian
in English,
West Indian in
Dutch,
but in German,
French
and
Spanish
it’s Chinese ink.
Solid black
thick water dark
no gloss, but still
a
journey.
I opened a 16 oz
bottle, poured
some of the ink
into a glass bowl,
dipped in a no8
flat brush
until it became
heavy.
The
night
is approaching. A
brush
soaked in black
is necessary.
The hairs
must bend and
slightly
spread over the
white
of the paper. The
outline
of the garden is
first,
not the
sky.
The
proximity of night
means that darkness
will rise
in between the
plants.
It’s your everyday
shadow
but swelling.
The brush
loaded will leave
a wide stroke
with some
bubbles,
expanding the same
way
shadows flood into
each other:
a mass deep enough
to rise
from the ground.
Thirteen minutes
ago
the sun set, red
afterglows are
dissolved.
This nectary blue
sky, uneven,
concave,
unlit,
is the source of
all contrast.
Nothing falls
through
that edge, the line
of
night
closing
in.
The flat brush
allows
in one movement
to do the spines,
little teeth
aligned
at the side of
fleshy leaves.
Against the horizon
they could be a
calf
of a sperm whale,
its
lower jaw
out of
the water
with
its first
open vowel.
One brush stroke,
one
Indian stroke
one Chinese solid
black ink.
The paper
and its tide
is oblivious to the
weight
of the exotic
in its
name.
But the brush dips
into all of that
as it paints on,
from wet soil
to the spiky tips.
Nightfall in roiled
blue.
Darkness swelling
from the ground,
the unconfessed
imagination,
uncivilized
mirror
subdued
in a 16
oz bottle
“made in the Netherlands.”
DROP EVERYTHING
Unpolished crescent
moon. The light
is absorbed by the
hammered silver
of her ceremonial
jewels.
For the Mapuche the
inward
radiance of mist is
darkness drowning
as it gasps for
light.
She comes in that
luminescent
haze. I can hear
her walking towards me
through the forest.
The wind has long
slender
fingers stretching
through
the trees. Flat
leaves flap
like sheets on a
clothesline,
the needles of
conifers strive
to whistle but can
only whisper.
In beauty, under
this dark canopy
she walks. Patches
of starry skies
in between the
branches.
I hear the silver
dangling
from her earlobes
before I can make
out her face.
She asks for the
glass, the first
urine at dawn. She
searches
for inclusions
in a gemstone of
thick
yellow resin, a
crystal in the making,
the genuine insect
in amber.
Everything now has
a variable
translucent body,
all that’s dark
has a concave
light.
This is not
happening, at least not
in the flesh. The
healers called Machi
first reach out in
dreams.
This Machi,
Francisco tells me, is calling you.
He knows it, he’s a
devoted Mapuche dream traveller.
As an artist he
lets dreams do the curating of his shows.
He often dreams of
messages for friends. I call him
to narrate my own
dream and he says go, drop everything
and go. There is no
other message, go to her.
Tonight a horse
breathes out clouds that drizzle first,
then become lighter
and rise as vapors
in the morning
frost. The horse exhales to my face.
In this second
dream the Machi speaks.
Take it all in, she
says, expand, allow
the entire horse in your rib cage.
More fog as the
horse neighs.
Its muscular neck
turns to the side now.
I’m left alone in
the dense cloud.
I hear the horse
walk away as it nickers.
The glass in the
Machi’s hands glints,
night dissipates.
I dial
Francisco’s number again.
[N.B. A related instance of Rojas’s translations into
English of contemporary Mapuche poetry can be found here on Poems
and Poetics.]
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