H e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s b e r g

N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i v e s E d i t i o n

RON RODRIGUEZ

Nocturne in Vermont

––by Cesar Calvo

They have  also told me that over there the nights

have blue eyes

and wash their hair in gin.

Is it true that over there in Vermont, when you dream,

silence is a jazzy breeze over the grass?

And is it true that over there in Vermont the geraniums

lean towards the dawn,

and in your voice, at the time of my name,

in your voice, the sad nesses?

Or perhaps from Vermont bejeweled by autumn,

kissed evening to evening by a pale language

submerges the head in oblivion.

Because in ships of snow, daily,

your letters

don’t reach me.

And because the prisoner who sustains

with his distant front

the stars:

smitten hands, daily

I look for you in the mist.

Nor the galloping of the sea: left behind

immovable your diamond hoofs in the sand

But, a wind more beautiful

awakes in my room,

a wind more full of shipwrecks than the sea.

(What unattainable moon

wears out your hands

in the meantime a stormy weather banging

the way a door of silence sounds. )

From the wind I write to you,

And it’s like the my words would sail

in the pearl jars that the survivors

entrust to the swaying of the mermaids.

At a distance I hear

the crumbled cellophane of the river

descending a slope

( a silence of jazz over the grass)

And I ask and ask:

Is it true that over there in Vermont

the nights have blue eyes

and wash their hair in gin?

Is it true that over there in Vermont the geraniums

autumn the sadnesses?

Is it true that over there in Vermont it’s august

and in this sea absence…?

[Cesar Calvo Soriano (1940-2000) was a Peruvian poet and writer, author of Sceptre of the Youth (El Cetro de Los Jovenes, 1967), Pedestal for No One (Pedestal Para Nadie, 1975), and The Three Halves of Ino Moxo: Teachings of the Wizard of the Upper Amazon (Las Tres Mitades de Ino Moxo y otros Brujos de la Amazonía, 1981). Calvo was part of the "Generation of Sixty," a group of prominent Peruvian poets that came of age in the 1960s. Calvo's works deal with indigenous cultures of Peru and the struggle for social justice. “Nocturne in Vermont” from Pedestal for No one (1975) by Cesar Calvo. Translation by Ron Rodriguez © 2010. Originally published in NHS 2011, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs11/.]