Guest Spot

GUEST SPOT

edited by

Daniela Gioseffi

Featuring

Carilda Oliver Labra (b. 1922–)

Latin-American Senior Poet of the Caribbean

CARILDA OLIVER LABRA was born in Matanzas, Cuba, in a Colonial home now under preservation by the state. The City of Matanzas is considered to be the Athens of Cuba as many important cultural and literary figures of Nineteenth-century Cuban Romanticism and contemporary Cuban literature had their roots there. She graduated with a degree in civil law from the University of Havana and went home to practice law for some years in the city of her birth. She taught for many years as a professor of Fine Arts there. The coveted National Prize for poetry came to her in l950 as a result of her popular and notorious book, At the South of My Throat [Al sur de mi garganta] (1949). In honor of the tri-centennial of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, in a contest sponsored by The Latin American Society in Washington DC, in 1950, she received first place the same year she won the national Cuban First Prize. Her work was highly praised by Nobel Prize Winners, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. Her debut collection, Lyric Prelude [Preludio lirico] (l943), immediately established her as an important poetic voice, even before At the South of My Throat—made her famous. In 1958, she published Feverish memory [Memoría de la fiebre], which added to her notoriety as a blatantly erotic poet. Like Alexandra Kollantai of Russia, Emma Goldman of the US, George Sand of England, or Simone de Beauvoir of France, she was a pioneer of woman’s independence in her homeland and has emerged today as one of Cuba’s leading poets. Carilda Oliver-Labra’s other works include: Song to the Flag [Canto a la Bandera] (1950); Song to Marti [Canto a Martí] (1953); Song to Matanzas [Canto a Matanzas] (1956). Today, in Spain a foundation offers the Carilda Oliver Prize for Poetry, and a documentary of the poet’s life has been produced and aired throghout Europe. Carilda Oliver Labra was a poet before her time. She is embraced by the youthful generation of Cubans for her espousal of “free love” as a movement against the old repressive mores of her culture. When Carilda Oliver Labra gives a poetry reading, there is always a traffic jam leading to it. She has a large following, attributed to her vibrant life-affirming content and her rich, emotional imagery. Carilda has said,

My best poetry is that which expresses erotic love, but the love between a man and a woman integrated with universal love. For me, poetry does many things: tells truth; creates and praises beauty; contributes to intellectural pleasure; allows us to unite with all humankind as it denounces injustice and captures the essence of life.

Some of these poems come from her first volume of poetry in American English, translated by Daniela Gioseffi and Enildo García, with a foreword by Gregory Rabassa, Dust Disappears (Merrick, NY: Cross Cultural Communications, 1995). In the foreword to Dust Disappears, Gregory Rabassa, the world’s greatest translator from English to Spanish, translator of Gabriel Garcia Marquez among other Nobel Prize Winners, said:

A phenomenon that had its roots in the poetical revolt called Modernism that took place in Spanish America toward the end of the century was the sudden appearance of a generation of women poets (stemming from isolated figures, such as Sor Juan Ines de la Cruz of the 17th century) who, in any number of ways, formed a bridge to the second revolt, that of prose, often referred to as “magic realism,” which came about at mid-century. . . . Their new poetry was called poesia femina, a rather obvious and hollow term. In view of the events between their time and ours, today we can correctly call it poesia feminista. As is so often the case, therefore, poetry was running ahead of history. A new reading of these and other female poets of times past will reveal much that slipped past unnoticed the first time. The feminist movement has its early counterparts in these poets of Latin America, where its aims were and still are sorely needed. . . . Carilda Oliver Labra is fortunate to have an established, credentialed American poet as her translator. . . . Making the dust disappear from her worthy but neglected work.

by Carilda Oliver Labra

To My Mother Who Lives in a Miami Letter

My mother, you’re only in a letter

and in an old scolding that I couldn’t find;

stay here forever in the center

of a blooming rose that never dies.

My Mother, so far away, tired

of snow and mist. Wait, I’m coming

to bring you home to live with the sun inside you,

My Mother, who lives in a letter.

You can give a date to mystery,

that would blend with bewitching shadows;

you can be the stone rolled away,

you can evaporate the circles under your eyes;

but remember, your small daughter, Mother;

Don’t dare to do all you can do, don’t die!

THE BOY WHO SELLS GREENS

You have no parents, it’s clear . . . I know

because of your indecisive look. I can tell because of your shirt.

You are small but grown up behind the basket.

You respect the sparrows. A penny is enough for you.

The people pass dressed inside with steel.

They don’t listen to you . . . You have shouted

two or three times: “Greens!”

They pass indifferently carrying packages and umbrellas;

in new pants and new yellow blouses;

they walk in a hurry toward the bank and the tedium

or toward the sunset through Main Street . . .

And you’re not selling: you do the game of selling;

and although you never played, it comes to you without trying

But don’t get close to me; no, child, don’t talk with me.

I don’t want to see the site of your probable wings.

I found you this morning around the courthouse,

and what a blow your unhappy innocence has given me!

My heart which was an urn of illusion

is now like wilted greens, like no heart.

OF THE WORD

I won’t tell you about truth,

because the word’s going to die

and others

will need it.

You came bearing the word

and I was sensitive to it.

I said:

give me a little of it . . .

I was weak

and I took the word from your shoulder.

You see:

it’s so heavy

that I, too, double over.

I want to say the word

over your grave,

but a flower already blooms there.

Between the final truth

and immortality

stands the poet

whose word was murdered by gunfire.

They killed your word

and covered you with earth,

but it doesn’t matter,

you’ll sing in the seeds.

EVE’S DISCOURSE

Today, I brutally greet you

with a grunt

or a kick.

Where are you hiding,

where have you fled with your wild box

full of hearts,

and your stream of gunpowder?

Where are you now;

in the ditch where all dreams are finally tossed,

or in the jungle’s spidery web

where fatherless children dangle?

I miss you,

you know I do—

as myself

or the miracles that never happen—

you know I do?

I’d like to entice you with a joy I’ve never known,

an imprudent affair.

When will you come to me?

I’m anxious to play no games,

to confide to you: “my life”—

to let thunder humble us

to let oranges pale in your hand.

I want to search your depths

and find veils

and smoke,

that will vanish at last in flame.

I love you truly

but innocently

as the transparent enchantress of my thoughts,

but, truly, I don’t love you,

though innocently

as the confused angel that I am.

I love you,

but I don’t love you.

I gamble with these words

and the winner shall be the liar.

Love! . . .

(What am I saying? I’m mistaken,

because here, I wanted to write, I hate you.)

Why won’t you come to me?

How is it possible

you let me pass by without requiting our fire?

How is it possible you’re so distant, so paranoid

that you deny me?

You’re reading the newspapers

passing through

death

and life.

You’re with your problems

of groans and groin,

listless,

humiliated,

entertaining yourself with an aspiration to mourning.

Even though I’m melting you,

even though I insult you,

bring you a wilted hyacinth

approve your melancholy;

call forth the salt of heaven,

stitch you into being:

what?

When are you going to murder me with your spit,

hero?

When are you going to overwhelm me again beneath the rain?

When?

When are you going to call me your little bird,

your whore?

When are you going to profane me?

When?

Beware time that passes,

time,

time!

Not even your ghosts appear to me now,

and I no longer understand umbrellas?

Every day, I become more honest with myself,

magnificently noble . . .

If you delay,

if you hesitate and don’t search for me,

you’ll be blinded;

if you don’t return now,

infidel, idiot, dummy, fool,

I’ll count myself nothing.

Yesterday, I dreamt that while we were kissing,

a shooting star exploded

and neither of us gave up hope.

This love of ours

belongs to no one;

We found it lost,

stranded

in the street.

Between us we saved it, sheltered it.

Because of that, when we swallow each other

in the night,

I feel like a frightened mother left

alone.

It doesn’t matter,

kiss me again and over again

to come to me.

Press yourself against my waist,

come to me again;

be my warm animal again,

move me, again.

I’ll purify my leftover life,

the lives of condemned children.

We’ll sleep like murderers

who’ve saved themselves

by bonding together in incomparable blossoming.

And in the morning when the rooster crows,

we will be nature, herself.

I’ll appear like your child asleep in her cradle.

Come back to me, come back,

penetrate me with lightening,

Bend me to your will.

We’ll turn the record player on forever.

Bring me that unfaithful nape of your neck,

the blow of your stone.

Show me I haven’t died,

my love, and I promise you the apple.

[Acknowledgement: From Dust Disappears, selected poems of Carilda Oliver Labra (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1953). Original Spanish copyrighted by the author.]