In my post of 14 September, Villa Miseria, I wrote, among other things, of the state of the Riachuelo, allegedly the most polluted river in the western hemisphere, as it passes through the slum of Barracas 21/24 to the south of Buenos Aires.

At the invitation of FILBA, the Buenos Aires International Festival of Literature, of which I was a guest last month, I was invited to write a short piece on my visit to Barracas, to be read on the final evening of the festival, along with other pieces composed during the course of the festival  by fellow writers, which can be found at the FILBA Blog.

What I wrote was a poem about the river, in what is an unusually hectoring voice, as I was affected by a strong sense of outrage – quite apart from the social conditions of the people living in the slum – at how a river, which is traditionally such a potent symbol of live-giving purity, can become so vile and corrupt a thing as to breed ‘monsters of the mind’. I wondered what it would be like for a child to grow up by the side of such a river. I wrote this draft of the poem – which is clearly still unfinished – at short notice, specifically for performance at the event, and have not revised it, so it has a raw and unpolished feel to it. It is written in a mixture of English and Spanish because I liked the idea of a poem that played the two languages off against each other.

A ‘medialuna’ is a cartwheel as well as the small sweet croissants eaten for breakfast in Argentina (though certainly not by the inhabitants of Barracas 21/24).  The lines ‘Do you like this garden which is yours? / Make sure your children don’t destroy it // ¿Le gusta este jardín que es suyo?/ ¡Evite que sus hijos lo destruyan!’ are from Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, and his character, Geoffrey Firmin, becomes obsessed by the broader connotations of the phrase. The other Spanish phrases are either variations on this line or else echo the English.

 

 

River song/Canto del río

The reflected sky

burns blue

viscous and putrid effluvia

journey lethargically towards

any possible destination

and no one cares

no one cares

whether the detritus

on this sickly tide

reaches anywhere at all

battery acid sulphuric acid mercury

whatever it takes

anything at all

¿Le gusta este rio que es suyo?

its journey

a sickly progression

from one place to another

a gelatinous insult

inverted by forgetting

dreary with forgetting

and we deal with forgetting

by forgetting more

 

¿Le gusta este rio que es suyo?

Evite que

Evite que

¡Evite que sus padres lo destruyan!

 

A man emerges from the river

covered in a pall of flies

he pulls a pistol from his belt

calls out

¿Les gustan estas moscas?

I’ll teach those bastard flies

and blasts off his own arm

his wrist and hand explode

leaving a bloody stump

I’ll teach the little bastards

he tells no one

he tells the world

he tells his children

aunque nadie lo escucha

and all the people stare

and all the people stare

though no one listens

and the man does a cartwheel

on his single arm

y el hombre hace la medialuna

y el hombre hace la medialuna

stands up straight

and shoots himself in the face

the words sliding

from the remains of his mouth

 

I’ll teach the little bastards

Voy a enseñar a los pequeños bastardos

this is what the river spawns

Eso es lo que produce el rio

this is the ineluctable truth

of a Wednesday in September

this is how we deal with

remembering the things

we left behind

just as we deal with forgetting

by forgetting more

 

This is the river song

the river song

the river song

and from the river rises

an inestimable sadness

into the void of poverty

into the sullen entrails

of forgetting

in the place where

no birds sing.

 

¿Le gusta este jardín que es suyo?

¡Evite que sus hijos lo destruyan!

Do you like this garden which is yours?

Make sure your children don’t destroy it.

But you cannot blame your children

for the things that you forget to do

forgetting the future

just as you forgot the past

¿Le gusta este rio que es suyo?

Evite que

Evite que

Evite que . . .