Photo: G.blakyStudio
Book:
Mortal Leap of writing
Alberto Marrero
Alejandra Pizarnik award 2014
Translated by
Carmen Laura Contreras
MINOR POEMS
The minor poems don’t lift up nor touch
And they’re like little sparks that jump off and turn off.
Nobody remembers a minor poem.
Nobody quotes it at the medium or big speeches,
Nor at the cold and transcendental conversations,
Nor at the drunkenness, nor at the halls,
Nor at the disillusion lines counting nickels,
Nor at a festivity’s eve, nor at anything’s eve,
Nor making love to a woman,
Nor at an old man who has decided to die’s ear
Not giving other explanations but your weariness.
Because minor poems are usually boring,
And they’re like wings that fall off insects that mutate
Or vanish after a very brief existence.
There aren’t any minor poems’ anthologies.
Any bronze plaque gathers a minor poem.
Any epitaph is a minor poem.
Any university exhibits at the façade a minor poem.
Nevertheless, who could deny that life
Is almost always a sequence of minor poems
Written out of the evening’s thick saliva
Or the night’s revolving mirage?
Let’s see, who hasn’t sometimes run into
The dilemma of minor poems.
ABOUT TWO POEMS BY WALLACE STEVENS
I’m not what it’s around me, I told myself
Hearing my son’s cry who called for a park,
Who at that break up and disappointment time
Called for every park over the world.
I still remember my son’s face
When the truck parted with boxes and furniture.
Two unpeaceful divorces stepped me
Into a thick as sluggishness fog.
My ex wives don’t understand this,
The truth is that few understand
Why I can’t be what it’s around me.
Sometimes they call me for issues I ignore
Such as opening a door that the wind has slammed
Or to save a man that wants to die
Holding a blue bottle in his hands
(They’re just two examples, I could give so many more)
I have few abilities to deal
With outer simplicity, excesses and shadows.
That’s why maybe I could never be what it’s around me.
That’s why, as I write this poem,
Somebody knocks at my door and I stay still,
Between three of four hills and a cloud,
Waiting for the intruder to give up or go away.
APOLLINAIRE’S SAILORS
Apollinaire’s sailors never abandoned me,
But neither they spoke to each other at the sad inn
At which door they traveler with tears on his eyes knocked.
Dante ever named his comedy divine
But he considered it a sacred poem,
In which Heaven and Earth have put their hands.
One I imagined that Apollinaire’s sailors
Gave a beating to the traveler that turned out to be Dante
With his fourteen thousand two hundred thirty three verses inside a bag.
Perplexed, I asked what point it had to beat a man up
That only wanted a little bit of wine after an exhausting labour.
To knock a door has become a dangerous cliché.
Walkers avoid the sailors who never speak to each other,
But neither abandon each other at passing inns.
Writer’s note
Alberto Marrero Fernández (Havana, 1956), poet and narrator. Author of the book the well and the pendulum, published in the first edition of the new pines collection, in 1994. with salvation and the eclipse obtained mention in the julián del casal contest in 1991. In 2003 He won the national narrative prize with the last wind of March. His book the drowned of the tiber earned in 2004 the prize of the Louis Rogelio Nogueras contest, the center of the book and literature of Havana. That same year, the union published its book the infinite closeness. In 2007 he published the book of tales of Babel by the publisher of Cuban letters. The Julian poetry prize of the de la uneac in 2009 and the story of the Cuban Gazette of the same year. In 2014 he won the poetry prize Alejandra Pizarnik with the book the mortal leap of the book, sponsored by the magazine amnios, the house of Alba, the house of the yeti and the embassy of Argentina in Cuba. Poetry Prize Nicholas Guillén in 2015 with his notebook the attempts to count the thread and rope, summoned by the subsidiary of villa Clara in the 2016. Poems and stories of his have been published in magazines and anthologies From Publishers of the country and abroad. He’s a master of history and a member of the.
