Poem: José Lezama Lima

I'm on my way to Cuba, as part of an educators' tour sponsored by the Center for Cuban Studies in New York and the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP) in Havana, and I'll write up the trip when I return, but I thought I'd post some Cuban poets (in Spanish, English translation, or both, as I can find them), as part of my Poetry Month offerings. So let's start with a poet I've highlighted before, the inimitable José Lezama Lima (1910-1976), whose work bridges the shift between Latin American modernismo, with its origins in late 19th century and fin-de-siècle symbolism and Latin American and global modernism, the more overtly avant-garde practice that followed. I would of course be remiss if I did not mention in a post on Lezama Lima that one of the signal elements of his style is the baroque, a complex layering of images upon images, much like Cuba itself, and that he authored one of the greatest of all novels written in Cuba, in Latin America, in Spanish: Paradiso. I also take one of his dicta from the opening statement in La expresión americana (1957) as one of my own: "Only difficulty is stimulating...."

MELODÍA

Melodía de la sombra penetra la dureza
de la piel acompañante y ya me pide
un anhelar pasivo que la incline
al borde níveo donde el aire empieza.

Dulce secreto la gaviota o ya se afine
la sombra que extendía la pereza
de la piel, negando que al irse se descuelgue
de la sonrisa en que muere su destreza.

No es melodía ni fuga en la marina
onda rota que recuerda el sueño salpicado
de pluma y pleamar en piel que el aire olvida.

Corvo vidrio en la mano destrenzado.
Frío dardo cayendo más afina
el humo hacia la flauta y olvido deseado.

Copyright © 1999, included in Poesía completa. José Lezama Lima. Edición de César López. Alianza Literaria. Alianza Editorial. Madrid. 1999.