César E. Chávez 3/31/1927 - 4/23/1993

-

To celebrate César E. Chávez,
the eulogy written on the occasion of his death 15 years ago.

---------A fines de abril

-------------------------a César E. Chávez


A fines de abril
las viñas ya verdes de brotos,
llegó la muerte al campesino,
al césar de las uvas vestidas de azul,
de las cebollas de fondos blancos,
de las manzanas de vestiduras rojas.

-----Le dijo — ¡Vén, César! —

Y se lo llevó de las uvas envenenadas,
las sandías, los melones llenos de mal,
de las batallas de los surcos,
de las emboscadas de las acequias,
del estandarte guadalupano,
de la bandera roja y negra.

Pero en los surcos
su voz dejó sembrado
su anhelo por justicia —
---que es decir reclamar
--------el pan para el hambre
--------el alivio para el enfermo
--------los libros para el inocente.

Su voz dará fruto
---y habrá regocijo
------en los surcos,
------las acequias,
------las mesas,
------la tierra.



-----------© Rafael Jesús González 2008


(Siete escritores comprometidos: obra y perfil; Fausto Avendaño, director;
Explicación de Textos Literarios vol. 34 anejo 1; diciembre 2007;
Dept. of Foreign Languages; California State University Sacramento;
derechos reservados del autor.)

----------At the End of April

------------------------to César E. Chávez


At the end of April
the vines already green with buds,
death came to the field-worker,
to the caesar of the grapes dressed in blue,
of the onions in white petticoats,
of the apples in red vestments.

-----She said to him, “Come, César!”

And took him from the poisoned grapes,
the watermelons, the melons full of ill,
the battles of the furrows,
the ambushes of the ditches,
the Guadalupe standard,
the red and black flag.

But in the furrows
his voice left planted
his longing for justice —
----which is to say, his demands
-----------for bread for the hungry,
-----------healing for the sick,
-----------books for the innocent.

His voice will bear fruit
-----and there will be rejoicing
----------in the furrows,
----------in the ditches,
----------round the tables
----------in the land.



----------© Rafael Jesús González 2008

by Robert Lentz
--

Earth Day

Si no hablamos

Si no hablamos para alabar a la Tierra,
es mejor que guardemos silencio.

Loa al aire
que llena el fuelle del pulmón
y alimenta la sangre
del corazón;
que lleva la luz,
el olor de las flores
y los mares,
los cantos de las aves
y el aullido del viento;
que conspira con la distancia
para hacer azul el monte.
-
Loa al fuego
que alumbra el día
y calienta la noche,
cuece nuestro alimento
y da ímpetu a nuestra voluntad;
que es el corazón de la Tierra,
este fragmento de lucero;
que quema y purifica
por bien o por mal.


Loa al agua
que hace a los ríos
y a los mares;
que da sustancia a la nube
y a nosotros;
que hace verde a los bosques
y los campos;
que hincha al fruto
y envientra nuestro nacer.



Loa a la tierra
que es el suelo, la montaña,
y las piedras;
que lleva los bosques
y es la arena del desierto;
que nos forma los huesos
y sala los mares, la sangre;
que es nuestro hogar y sitio.




Si no hablamos en alabanza a la Tierra,
-----si no cantamos en festejo a la vida,
----------es mejor que guardemos silencio.

© Rafael Jesús González 2008

(Siete escritores comprometidos: obra y perfil; Fausto Avendaño, director;
Explicación de Textos Literarios vol. 34 anejo 1; diciembre 2007;
Dept. of Foreign Languages; California State University Sacramento;
derechos reservados del autor.)

If We Do Not Speak

If we do not speak to praise the Earth,
it is best we keep silent.

Praise air
that fills the bellow of the lung
& feeds our heart’s blood;
that carries light,
the smell of flowers
& the seas,
the songs of birds
& the wind’s howl;
that conspires with distance
to make the mountains blue.


Praise fire
that lights the day
& warms the night,
cooks our food
& gives motion to our wills;
that is the heart of Earth,
this fragment of a star;
that burns & purifies
for good or ill.



Praise water
that makes the rivers
& the seas;
that gives substance
to the clouds and us;
that makes green the forests
& the fields;
that swells the fruit
& wombs our birth.



Praise earth
that is the ground,
the mountain, & the stones;
that holds the forests
& is the desert sand;
that builds our bones
& salts the seas, the blood;
that is our home & place.




If we do not speak in praise of the Earth,
-----if we do not sing in celebration of life,
----------it is best we keep silence.

© Rafael Jesús González 2008

(147 Practical Tips for Teaching Sustainability:
Connecting the Environment, the Economy, and Society;
Timpson, William M. et al, Eds.,
Atwood Publishing Co., Madison, Wisconsin 2006;
author’s copyrights)
-

Full moon: Celestial Prayer-Wheel

-

Celeste Rueda de Oración

Había un hombre, no sabio pero prodigioso con su corazón, liberal con sus bendiciones. Donde quiera que iba dejaba pedazos del corazón aquí y allá. Le llamaban tonto por entregar así su corazón, por ser tan libre con sus bendiciones. (No le importaba gran cosa porque creía que había cosas mucho más peores que ser.)

A través de los años, las personas, los seres (no decir los lugares) que tenían derecho a su corazón aumentaron hasta ser demasiados para visitar. ¡Ay! jamás podría viajar el mundo para bendecir a cada uno de ellos; los días eran demasiado cortos para escribirles cartas a cada uno de ellos; en verdad, las noches eran demasiado cortas para rezar por cada uno de nombre.

A lo más, recitaba sus nombres como una letanía y poco a poco esa letanía se convirtió en su rezo. Pero se adormecía y antes de que dijera la media, la tercera, la cuarta, la quinta parte de la lista, el sol lo despertaba.

Recurrió a escribir los nombres de cada uno y los colocó sobre su altar ante el cual hacía sus ritos. Pero pronto no había lugar para sus imágenes, sus talismanes, sus jícaras de ofrenda, su zahumador, sus plumas sagradas.
Entonces, aprendiendo de los Lamas del alto Tibet, obtuvo una inmensa rueda de oración en la cual colocó su letanía de nombres. Pero no era hombre fuerte y sólo podía voltear la rueda a lo más cinco veces, cuatro, tres, dos, una — y al fin ni una.

Así pasó que en noches de luna plena se sentaría en contemplación e imaginaría que la luna era una inmensa rueda de oración que contenía los nombres de todos los que él anhelaba bendecir rodada por los ángeles. Su alma coyote (su nagual) aullaba a la luna y él se imaginaba que su rodar celeste repercutía su aullido de oración, de bendición hacia cada uno que tuviera un pedazo de su necio corazón.

* ---*--- *

En ocasión de la luna plena, recogía los nombres y señas de los que pudiera (la familia, amigos, colegas de muchos años, de los que ocupaban un breve espacio en su vida, con los que se encontraba por un momento, tal vez en una ciudad extraña, o con quien, sin nombre, solamente había compartido una mirada que dejó una marca profunda en su corazón, su memoria) y enviaba al espacio electrónico (los otros no lo leerían) un poema que decía así:

---Rueda de rezo lunar


Esta noche la luna es
una rueda de rezo de plata
en las alturas del cielo
rodada por los ángeles.

Escucha bien:
cada rodar
te envía bendición.


Y luego volvía hacia la luna plena, intentaba vaciar su mente de pensamientos, y permitía a los ángeles su voltear, voltear de la rueda.

© Rafael Jesús González 2008

Celestial Prayer-Wheel

There was a man, not wise but prodigious with his heart, liberal with his blessings. Everywhere he went he left pieces of his heart here and there. They called him fool for thus giving his heart away, for being so free with his blessings. (He didn't much mind for he thought that there were far worse things to be.)

Through the years, the persons (not to mention the places) who laid claim to his heart grew to be too many to visit. Alas, he could not travel over the world to bless each one; the days were too short to write them each a letter; in fact, the nights were too short to pray for each of them by name.

At best he would recite their names like a litany and gradually this litany became his prayer. But he would grow sleepy and before he had said a half, a third, a fourth, a fifth the list, the sun would wake him.

He took to writing out the names of each and placed them on his altar before which he would perform his rites. But soon there was no room for his images, his power-objects, his offering bowls, his incense burner, his prayer-feathers.
So, learning from the Lamas of high Tibet, he obtained a huge prayer-wheel in which he put his litany of names. But he was not a strong man and he could only turn the wheel at most five times, four, three, two, one - and finally not at all.

It came to be that on nights of the full moon, he would sit in contemplation and fancy the moon to be a huge prayer-wheel, containing the names of all he could ever bless, turned by the angels. His coyote soul (his nagual) would howl to the moon and he fancied that its celestial spin echoed his howl of prayer, of blessing to each who held a piece of his foolish heart.

*--- *--- *

Occasionally on the full moon he would gather the names and signs of those he could (those family, friends, colleagues of many years. of those who occupied a brief space in his life, of those encountered for a moment, perhaps in a strange city, or with whom, nameless, he merely exchanged a glance that left a deep mark in his heart, his memory) and sent out into space of the electronic net (the others would not read it) a poem that read like this:

-Lunar Prayer-Wheel


The moon tonight is
a silver prayer-wheel
in the heights of heaven
turned by the angels.

Listen closely:
each spin
sends you blessing.


And then he would turn to the full moon, attempt to empty his mind of thoughts, and let the angels do their turning, their turning of the wheel.

© Rafael Jesús González 2008

-

Tax Day

-
-------------------Spam


-----Please, the e-mail says,
-----do not forward political material;
-----it clogs up my mailbox.

In the towns of Aleksinac, Medosevac, Cacak,
in the cities of Nis, Novi Sad, Belgrade in Kosovo,
Serbia, Yugoslavia the bombs drop
(to stop the killing, they say.)
The fleeing & the wounded clog up
the bridges & streets.

-----Please send only personal
-----or professional mail.

In San Cristóbal de las Casas,
in Acteal in Chiapas, Mexico, the dead
clog up the villages & fields, the refugees
clog up the rectories & naves.

-----Poems & good jokes are ok.

In Centla, in the city of Villahermosa,
in Tabasco, Mexico, the disappeared,
the taken, the imprisoned do not
clog up the streets or the polluted farms;
the armed soldiers do.

-----Hold political & religious messages;
-----I've pretty much made up my mind on all that.

In Becora, the city of Dili, Maliana in East Timor,
while their wives sew Nike sport shoes in Jakarta,
the Indonesian soldiers murder & murder
those men & women with gall enough to vote,
the children simply because. Their bodies
clog up the neighborhoods, the exiles the roads.

-----I hope you understand.

In Afghanistan, the country of Rumi,
in the city of Kabul & throughout the land
the wounded, the hungry, the cold,
the desolated clog the roads & byways

In Ramallah and Bethlehem, in Jenin
in the towns of Hebron, in Jerusalem,
in Israel/Palestine the bodies clog
the streets, the roads, the ditches.
Overturned ambulances & wrecked houses
clog up the entrances & exits. The blood
of the children of Isaac & Ishmael
clog the holy land.

In Baghdad & throughout Iraq the bombs fall
& the dying clog the cities & suburbs;
in Abu Ghraib (in Bagram and Guantánamo, too)
our young are turned into torturers
& the bloodied clog the cells.

-----Be well.

Except for the bay bridge & the financial
district at certain times, our streets & bridges
are not clogged. We take care our homeless do
not clog our streets, nor our ill the hospitals.

-----I do want to hear from you.

April 15 comes with taxes due
(for those bombs, those guns
in Yugoslavia, in Mexico, in Timor,
in Afghanistan, in Columbia,
in Israel/Palestine, in Iraq) & the rich get richer
while the hungry go hungry;
the homeless, homeless; the ill untreated;
the children and youth untaught.
& when I was a boy Spam
was a meat marmalade in square cans
to feed the soldiers.



-----------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008



(first published in Reclaiming Quarterly #75;
author’s copyrights.)



-

National Poetry Month

-
Poesía, del griego 'hacer'. Es el sonido jugando con el significado, sabiendo que el absoluto, eterno silencio del cual viene no tiene significado alguno mas que el juego que intenta cuando crea voces. La poesía es tautología. La poesía es un espejo que pretende reflejar una flor, un paisaje, un rostro, cuando en realidad sólo se refleja a si misma. La poesía es como qualquier otro objeto — un plato, un fruto, una bota — pero sean cuales sean los usos que pretenda, sólo uno está a sus raíces: nuestra justificación.

Poetry, from the Greek 'to make', it is sound playing with meaning, knowing that the absolute, eternal silence from which it comes has no meaning except the game it undertakes when it creates voices. Poetry is a tautology. Poetry is a mirror pretending it reflects a flower, a landscape, a face when in reality it reflects only itself. Poetry is like any other object — a plate, a piece of fruit, a boot — except that whatever uses it pretends, only one is at its roots: our vindication.

Wall in Havana, Rafael Jesúa González

--------------El Poeta

--------------poeta eres tú que lees

-------------------------(grafiti en una pared
--------------------------de La Habana)


El poeta dice sus versos
al deslizarse el lápiz
sobre el blanco —
enigmas de quimeras y dragones
de lirios y de jaras
de nubes pesadas como plomo
peñascos livianos como suspiros.
-----Allí quedan
ni más ni menos encantados
que una mosca prisionera
en una gota de ámbar.
Allí esperan que los rescate
otro poeta —
-----tú, lector
-----que descifras
-----estas letras.



-------© Rafael Jesús González 2008




--------------The Poet

-------------- poeta eres tú que lees

---------------------------(graffiti on a wall
----------------------------in Havana)


The poet says his verses
as the pencil glides
over the blank —
enigmas of chimeras & dragons
of lilies & of darts
of clouds heavy as lead
boulders light as sighs.
----There they remain
no more no less enchanted
than a fly imprisoned
in a drop of amber.
There they wait to be rescued
by another poet —
----you, reader
----who deciphers
----these letters.



------© Rafael Jesús González 2008

The Poet Reading by Judy Cheung

-
-

Leon Morrocco

-

Leon Morrocco 1997

-----The Metaphysics of Paint

-------------------for Leon Morrocco


There is a sacredness to light
but only as it glances off
the surfaces, the depths, of things —
the sea, the moored boats upon it,
a wall, the peeling door
--------that opens beyond it,
a melon, a lemon, an orange,
a palm frond, a buttock, a rose.

What is most worth knowing of light
is how it molds & colors things,
-----breaks upon them
into shards, & splashes, & planes,
composes their configurations.

Light is like silence, like God.

-----The purpose of words
---------is to praise silence
-----the purpose of paint
---------is to praise light.



------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008

by Julio Jaureguy 1965

--------------Metafísica de la pintura

-----------------------------a Leon Morrocco


Hay algo sacro en la luz
pero solamente cuando se refleja
en la superficie, la profundidad, de las cosas —
el mar, los barcos en amarre sobre él,
un muro, la puerta escarapelada
-----------que se abre más allá,
un melón, un limón, una naranja,
una rama de palma, una nalga, una rosa.

Lo que más vale saber de la luz
es como moldea y colora las cosas,
-----se quiebra en ellas
en pedazos y salpicones y planos,
compone sus configuraciones.

La luz es como el silencio, como Dios.

-----El propósito de las palabras
----------es para alabar al silencio;
-----el propósito de la pintura
----------es para alabar a la luz.



------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008

Leon Morrocco, Berkeley 1005-
--

My Friend Leon

One day early February of 1965 in Athens, where I found myself traveling on a fellowship, a friend in the Uruguayan Embassy, Lucila Romero called to ask whether I minded if two newly arrived Uruguayans joined us for dinner. When we met Julín Jáuregui, an architecture student, and his cousin María José Morandi, with them was another man they had met on the boat to Pireus, a crazy Scot artist on a grant to paint on the island of Mikanos, they said, named Leon. Of olive complexion, with a high forehead, hooked nose, black mustache and beard, he did not conform to my idea of a Scot, but what struck me were his merry eyes, easy smile, and infectious laugh. It was love at first sight.

The four of us, Julín, María José, Leon, and I, became instant friends and spent a short and intensely joyous week together carousing in the tavernas, careening down narrow streets at 2:00 o’clock in the morning in appropriated grocers’ carts, the four of us sneaking into my hotel room because they had missed curfew at the youth hostel, watching sunrise from a hill turn the Acropolis a rosy pink, and generally consuming large quantities of resina. Julín, María José, and I decided to travel in Italy and Spain together and I promised Leon to visit him that spring.

In May, just before my return to teaching at the University of Oregon, I visited Leon in Edinburgh where I also met his future wife Jean whose English beauty not a little intimidated me (and does still.) On my leaving, Leon gave me a large ink drawing of a building undergoing demolition. It is entirely in black and sepia tones, a strong work but such as one can now hardly imagine to be a Leon Morrocco, so morose and brooding is it, so murky in color.

As the years went by, my friendship with Leon and Jean grew through letters, and, in 1970, I returned to Europe and visited them in Glasgow where he was Lecturer in Painting at the Glasgow School of Art. While there, I sat for him for a fine portrait in charcoal and chalk, “The Poet as Intense Young Man.” (Leon won the Latimer Award that year and exhibited the portrait at the Royal Scottish Academy and in 1971 brought it as a gift when they visited me in California; it was reproduced on the cover of my book of poetry El Hacedor de Juegos/The Maker of Games published in 1977.) From that visit to Glasgow, I have a small study of moored boats in oil on particle-board painted after his sojourn in Mikanos. Though the colors lack the cleanness, the clarity we have come to expect in a Leon Morrocco work, there is evidence of things to come, a sense of light and its refraction, its play upon things.

In the thirty-three years of our friendship, I also became friends with Leon’s father Alberto and his mother Vera, and on brief, intermittent and occasional visits in Scotland, England, California, Australia, I saw Leon’s and Jean’s sons Pier-Paolo and Theo grow and consider myself their friend as well. And my love of Leon’s art became hardly divorceable from my love for the man, so much is it a reflection of him.

Over the years, I have seen Leon’s pallette become ever cleaner, clearer, luminescent. Here lies the essence of Leon’s art: his utter joy in and obsession with forms and the light upon them. One might say that in his paintings, forms become mere excuses for surfaces upon which light can play. And play it does, with full abandon. Leon’s is a gifted eye that can discern nuances of color that escape the untrained eye. This minute discernment of the subtleties of color allows him to play it as a musician might improvise with sounds, always in the most brilliant registers. He is audacious in their combinations, playing ultramarine blues against turquoises and underscoring them with magentas, rose madder, mandarin orange; striking a Prussian blue with an alizarin crimson, counterpointing it with a cadmium yellow. Then he poises colors of such intense vibrancy against others of incredible delicacy, tenderness. He invents or discovers colors, shades, tints, hues too subtle yet to be named. But never do his experiments with color result in cacophony as they could so easily do. The eye continually is amazed at the tricks of his pallet; in his hands color has texture, an immensely rich texture. Of Italian descent, Leon finds his inspiration in the environs of the Mediterranean and logically so, for one must transcend the muted light of the British Isles to achieve the vibrant colors of his paintings, gouaches, pastels. Even his vivid still lifes of fruit, drapery, crockery, cutlery and musical instruments done in Glasgow or London seem foreign in spirit to those parts.

He is a keen observer and his masterly, sure sketches and drawings done on the spot in the many sketch books from which he works attest to this. But his translations of them into finished paintings are selective. In his landscapes no bill-boards appear, no trucks, no cars; in his seascapes, no speed-boats, no oil-tankers, and the nearest we come to the machine is a bicycle, a boat’s propeller, a winch. The Mediterranean, the world, he paints hardly exists, exists only in fragments, instances, incidents. In fact, his might be called an iconography of incidents, even his still lifes feel like incidents. In the guest-room hangs an ink drawing of my favorite chair Leon did on one of his visits. It has a feeling of story; the homely chair has just participated in a scene; it awaits to take part in another. Incidents, effects are by definition never disconnected, but, like a cobweb, are linked to everything else and there is a potential, an implied narrative in Leon’s works.

Also in Leon’s vision there is almost an innocence, in the best meaning of the term. It ignores, not because it does not see (Leon the man is highly critical of current economics and politics), but by an act of selective and generous fancy. Seeing one of his paintings, gouaches, pastels feels like a sudden, unexpected, happy memory from childhood recalled by a smell, a taste, a sound. It has that pristine, sharp, luminous quality of a happy incident from one’s childhood, isolated, ever-new, inviolate, complete in itself. But still, it is not nostalgia with what sentiment the term carries. It is too immediate a vision for nostalgia. It is a vision recaptured and maintained, devoid of anticipation or regret. It is, in a word, pure beauty.

Perhaps this is the key to understanding Leon Morrocco and his work, for unmitigated beauty and joy is the first and final impression one receives from it. It is a celebration of the senses and of life in which time does not exist, and, if it does, it is as leisurely and long as a summer is to a child. Far from childish, Leon’s art makes us see as a child sees, with that intensity and lack of judgment, with that joyful surprise that makes everything neither ordinary nor remarkable, but ineffably there. What is impossible to overlook is that Leon sees the world, and paints it, with a great kindness, the love and kindness of the true hedonist, Epicurean if you will, for whom creation and the senses through which we perceive it are blessings to be continuously celebrated. His paintings have great generosity, a friend recently commented.

Leon doesn’t talk much about the sacred, but his work has much of the holy, as implicit in ‘whole,’ ‘health.’ It renews our vision of things and makes us see forms and colors in a pristine light as if the world were new, untainted. Today, in a culture that has for far too long divorced the sacred and the profane, it is risky to talk of the sacred in art, but sacred are the senses and sacred is what hones and pleases them, gladdening the heart. After all, contrary to the myth, we were never kicked out of paradise; we have just mucked it up royally.

Last October 1997, Leon and I met in Florence to spend a week at his parents’ summer place in Castello di Tocchi exploring Siena and some of Tuscany. We spent most of our days roaming the streets of Siena, wandering into the basilicas, lounging on the Piazza del Campo. Over bottomless glasses of red wine, we discussed the Medieval and early Renaissance masters, and philosophical questions of art, drunk, not on the wine, but on the color of the Duccios, the Lorenzettis, other masters of the Sienese School. We confirmed how much we see things similarly — and how we see things differently. After hours spent in the Pinotecca, discussing the paintings, we discovered that he and I saw different things in them. When I made reference to subtle variations in the iconography of the myriad Madonnas, I found that Leon had not seen what I saw. What he had seen was form and color, combinations of these that were like variations in a musical form, a fugue perhaps, or a jazz improvisation such as he himself likes to play. There was no question that what we had just seen was sacred art and the awe was still upon us; I read the symbols; he saw only the source, the light within and upon the things of the earth, and its celebration.

If one looks for influences on Leon Morrocco’s art, one does not have to go far. His father Alberto, too, had this vitality, humor, sensuality, kindness, generosity, respect, celebration of life. It is for these qualities that I loved Alberto and that I love my friend Leon most.

Even as I write, I glance at the little painting of beached boats that Leon gave me when I visited him and Jean last fall. It is like a little window into a world of light on this rainy day in Berkeley, California where El Niño hides our sun in gray clouds. It makes me happy, and what more may one ask of art — or of a friend — or of life?

---------------------------------------------------Berkeley, California 1998

© Rafael Jesús González 1980


(Leon Morrocco, Journeys and Observations;
John Martin of London Ltd.; London 1998)

-

April Fools' Day

-

-------------El loco


Permíteme enseñarte la locura —
----ver la calavera en la rosa blanca,
----su mollera un espejo
----en que los laberintos del pensar
----se pierden.
El perro fiel ladra a tus talones
pero el precipicio te llama:

Allí están los ángeles precisos,
no para impedir tu caída,
sino para presenciarla;

con eso basta.


-----© Rafael Jesús González 2008





-------------The Fool


Let me teach you madness —
----to see the skull in the white rose,
----its pate a mirror
----in which the labyrinths of thought
----are lost.
The loyal dog barks at your heels
but the precipice beckons:

The necessary angels are there,
not to break your fall,
but to witness it;

it is enough.


------© Rafael Jesús González 2008


(El hacedor de juegos/The Maker of Games;
Casa Editorial, San Francisco 1977;
Author's © copyrights)
-