MOTHER'S DAY WITH VICENTE HUIDOBRO

Amo la noche, sombrero de todos los dias.
La noche, la noche del dia, del dia al dia siguiente.
Mi madre hablaba como la aurora y como los dirigibles que van a caer. Tenia cabellos color de bandera y ojos llenos de navios lejanos.
Una tarde, cogi mi paracaidas y diej: "Entre una estrella y dos golondrinas." He aqui la muerte que se acerca como la tierra al globo que cae.
Mi madre bordaba lagrimas deseiertas en los primeros arcosiris.
Y ahora mi paracaidas cae des ueno en sueno por los espacios de la muerte.
--Vicente Huidobro [N.B. Due to being HTML-challenged, accent marks are missing from all the espanol]


I love the night, the hat of every day.
The night, the night of day, from one day to the next.
My mother spoke like the dawn, like blimps about to fall. Her hair was the color of a flag and her eyes were full of far-off ships.
One day I gathered up my parachute and said: "Between two swallows and a star." Here is death approaching like the earth to a falling balloon.
My mother embroidered abandoned tears on the first rainbows.
And now my parachute drops from dream to dream through the spaces of death.
--Trans. by Eliot Weinberger

So, as I described in the prior post, Michael had asked a family friend, Juliana, for help in getting me a Mother's Day Gift...and I chose

ALTAZOR: THE POEM BY VICENTE HUIDOBRO

translated by Eliot Weinberger and published as a Palabra Sur book (series editor Cecilia Vicuna) by Graywolf in 1988. What's wonderful about this book by the Chilean poet Huidobro is that it is in a bilingual edition. And, as I suggested to Juliana he suggest to Michael, he then can read the book with me by reading the Spanish and I reading the English.

Well, when Juliana gave the book to Michael and explained why she thought it would be a wonderful gift and realizing his Mama is a poeta, Michael apparently exclaimed, "What a brilliant idea!"

Chuckle. Then, per another suggestion to Juliana that I asked her to pass on, he wrote the following words in colored pens on the flyleaf:

I hope you licke (stet) it I love Mom

Espero que te guste mucho mama

Michael

I love it -- All the accoutrements of Mama-hood!

And right there at the Ahwahnee Lodge during their fabulous Mother's Day Brunch, I opened the page at random and he read:

El hombre se desgarra
Y se rompe en aullidos mortales por todos los poros de su tierra
Yo estoy aqui de pie entre vosotros
Se me caen las ansias al vacio

which I read in English translation as

Man leads a wicked life
And breaks down into a mortal howling through all the pores of the earth

and here I mentally interrupted moiself to think, Oh great--this is what you have your child reading? before continuing,

I am here standing among you
My longings falling through space

This is the same Vicente Huidobro who writes elsewhere in ALTAZOR:

All this is so sad like the child who's left an orphan

BUT ALSO

The earth has just given birth to a tree