Halloween

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- - ----------Trick & Treat


Death at the door,
----or lurking among the leaves,
death itself is the inevitable trick;
the only treat worth the having,
----to love fearlessly,
------------------------and well.



-------© Rafael Jesús González 2011



(The Montserrat Review, Issue 7, Spring 2003;
author’s copyrights)



-----------Chasco y Regalo


La muerte a la puerta,
----o en emboscada entre la hojas,
la muerte misma es el chasco inevitable;
el único regalo que vale la pena,
-----amar sin temor,
------------------------y amar bien.



---------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011





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Dylan Thomas (October 27, 1914 - November 9, 1953)

-

-------Occupational Hazard-

-------------------------to Dylan Thomas


'Write,'
--------they said,
-------------------'of love —
how the wind turns
& calcifies the blood.
-----Erect pillars of salt
-----smoke crowned of pity
----------where witches meet
----------to gossip of despair —
set down the foot-steps of the heart,
their echoes climbing
the perpendicular bone streets of loss
-----into a thin tomorrow —'
----------The angular hands of saints
----------accused;
their tears of stone
clanged loudly on the pavements
-----& their incense breath
-----embalmed the lungs.
----------He saw his hands
----------turn to lizards' claws,
---------------his pen's ink
---------------turn to dust,
blow off the page,
blind him —
---------------& he died
of an insult to the brain.



---------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011


(El Grito, Vol. 6 no. 3, Spring 1973;
author's copyrights.)

Dylan Thomas

-----------Gajes del oficio

----------------------a Dylan Thomas


'Escribe,'
----------dijeron,
-------------------'del amor —
como voltea el viento
y calcifica la sangre.
-----Erige pilares de sal
-----coronados del humo de la piedad
---------donde las brujas se encuentran
---------a chismear de la desesperación —
fija los pasos del corazón,
sus ecos escalando
las calles verticales de hueso del perder
-----hacia una mañana flaca —'
----------Las manos angulares de los santos
----------acusaron;
sus lágrimas de piedra
resonaron fuertemente en los pavimentos
-----y su aliento de incienso
-----embalsamó los pulmones.
----------Vio sus manos
----------volverse en garras de lagarto,
---------------la tinta de su pluma
---------------volverse polvo,
disiparse de la página,
cegarlo —
-------------y murió
de un insulto cerbral.



--------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011


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Feast of St. Rafael Archangel

---------En la fiesta antigua
-------de San Rafael Arcángel


Ángel, un poeta me dijo
que tu raza era terrible,
-----pero tus dedos son suaves
-----sobre mis cicatrices,
---------tu bálsamo de luz de pez
---------en la luna plena de octubre
---------escurre dulzura.

Tal vez sea porque
ya no me importa
luchar —
----------consolar, en vez,
----------acariciar las plumas ojosas
----------de tus alas.



------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

San Rafael Arcángel, Mexico, early 19th century

------------On the Old Feast
--------of St. Rafael Archangel


Angel, a poet told me
your kind was terrible,
----but your fingers are gentle
----on my scars,
---------your balsam of fish light
---------on the full moon of October
---------drips sweetness.

Perhaps it is because
I no longer care
to wrestle —
---------------caress, instead,
---------------stroke the eyed pinions
---------------of your wings.



----------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

---(Metamorfosis, vol. III no. II vol. IV no. I;
----------------author’s copyrights)




Na festa Antiga de S. Rafael Arcanjo

Anjo, um poeta me dissera
que tua raça era terrível,
-----porém teus dedos são suaves
-----sobre as minhas cicatrizes.
------------Teu bálsamo de luz de pez,
------------Numa lua cheia de outubro,
------------escorre doçura.

Talvez seja porque
já não me importa
lutar
-------consolar e sim,
-------acariciar as plumas com olhos
-------de tuas asas.


---------- © Rafael Jesús González 2011


Tradução:
© Clevane Pessoa de Araújo Lopes 2007
Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brasil.
(25/10/2007)
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-
-

Scorpio

-
-

-
---------Escorpión

El alacrán
---en sus ojos de ópalo
---guarda los secretos
---del agua inmóvil.
Eleva, tenaz, su cola de hierro
y su aguijón de topacio
refleja las luces rojas de Marte,
---las luces obscuras de Plutón.
Se esconde detrás del palo erecto,
------en la cueva húmeda;
y sabe los secretos del alma.



----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011


----------------Scorpio

The scorpion
-----in its opal eyes
-----guards the secrets
-----of the immobile water.
It tenaciously raises its tail of iron
& its topaz sting reflects
----the red lights of Mars,
----the dark lights of Pluto.
It hides behind the erect pole,
---in the moist cave;
it knows the secrets of the soul.



----------© Rafael Jesús González 2011
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Días de Muertos Exhibit, Oakland Museum of California

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Love & Loss/Amor y Pérdida

17th Annual Exhibit/Exhibición anual 17

Días de los Muertos 2011

October/octubre 12 - December/diciembre 11, 2011

Oakland Museum of California/Museo de California en Oakland

1000 Oak Street

Oakland, California

http://museumca.org/

Guest Curator/Curadora invitada: Patricia Rodríguez
Participating artists/artistas participantes: Amalia Mesa Bains, Chris Granillo, Xóchitl Nevel Guerrero, Roberto Guerrero,
Rubén Guzmán Campos, Joaquín A. Newman, Ernesto Hernández Olmos, Dee Dee Rodríguez, Tessie Barrera Scharaga,
Consuelo Jiménez Underwood, Andrés Cisneros Galindo, Irene Pérez, Rafael Jesús González, Herminia Albarrán Romero, Bea Carrillo Hocker
Participating School & Community Groups/Escuelas y Grupos comunitarios participantes: Peralta Elementary School;
Laney College; Clínica de la Raza & Sutter VNA & Hospice, Emeryville

Community Celebration/Celebración Comunitaria

Sunday, October 23/Domingo 23 octubre

12:00 - 4:30 pm

Featuring ofrendas, music & dance performances, arts & crafts demonstrations, activities for children, plus food & arfts & crafts vendors. Events included with Museum admission / Con ofrendas, música, grupos de danza, actividades artesanales para los niños, demostraciones, comida, y arte para su altar y hogar. Incluido con al entrada general al Museo.



--

Columbus Day/Día de la raza

-October 12 is a feast-day known in various regions and times by many names: Columbus Day, Discovery Day, Hispanic Culture Day, Day of the Americas, Day of the Race, Day of the Indigenous Peoples.

In Mexico in 1928 at the insistence of the philosopher José Vasconcelos, then Minister of Education, it was named Día de la Raza (Day of the Race), denomination of the Iberian-American Union in 1913 to declare a new identity formed by the encounter of the Spaniards with the native peoples of the Americas. In 1902, the Mexican poet Amado Nervo had written a poem in honor of the President Benito Juárez (a Zapoteca Indian), which he read in the House of Representatives, titled La Raza de Bronce (Race of Bronze) praising the indigenous race, title which later in 1919 the Bolivian author Alcides Arquedas would give his book. Bronze (noble metal amalgamated of various metals) came to be metaphor for mestizaje (the mixing of the races.) According to the thinking of Vasconcelos, a Cosmic Race, the race of the future, is the noble race that is formed in the Americas since October 12, 1492, the race of mestizaje, an amalgam of the indigenous races of the Americas, the Europeans, the Africans, the Asians, the world — in a word, the human race made of a mixture of all the races which Vasconcelos called the Cosmic Race.
But that this race is formed at great cost to the indigenous American peoples (and to the African peoples brought here as slaves) cannot be ignored. Since 2002, in Venezuela the feast-day is called Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance.)

Be that as it may, by whatever name we give it, however way we cut it, it is the same cake — the date commemorates the arrival of the Europeans to America (which for them was a “new world”), not a visit but an invasion, a genocide, a subjugation of the peoples of that “new world” which we know today by the name of a European cartographer who scarcely set foot on the sacred ground of the continents that bear his name. What the date marks is a continuous colonization, exploitation, abuse, outrage of the indigenous peoples of the Americas that has scarcely lessened, that has persisted these five-hundred and some years.


It could well be called Day of Globalization. Since that date, the Earth is concretely, definitively proven to be truly round, a sphere, a ball, a globe. And from that date is imposed by force upon the indigenous American peoples a quite strange (in my view, mistaken) cosmology, attitude toward life, toward the Earth, toward economics, toward the sacred, toward the human being him/herself — a single truth narrow and intolerant, a rapacious disdain toward the Earth seen only as a resource to be exploited, a concept of progress difficult to distinguish from greed and the lust for power.

The cause of the indigenous peoples screams for justice: their lands, their fields continue to be stolen from them, destroyed for their valuable woods and minerals; their agricultural creations, such as maize and the potato, which have saved a great part of the world from famine, are modified at the molecular level and controlled by rapacious corporations; their traditional medicines are patented by those same corporations; sacred water is privatized and stolen from them; even their right to their own beliefs and cultures is not respected. Even putting justice aside, we should all ally ourselves with the indigenous peoples of the Americas (and of the entire world) in their resistance against such abuse because what threatens them threatens us all throughout the whole world — and the Earth itself. They have a very much to teach us about a healthy relationship of humankind with the Earth.

In an Earth much smaller and more fragile than we imagined, we find ourselves in full globalization and struggle against the imposition of an unbridled capitalism and the fascism, its logical extension, that accompanies it. The indigenous resistance that has never ceased these five centuries and some continues in spite of a brutal repression and now all of us of the cosmic race, of pure necessity, must align ourselves with their struggle, for that struggle is ours if we are to survive on the Earth, holy mother of our race, the human race — and of all our relations, the other animals, the plants, the minerals. On the round, seamless Earth all borders are fictitious and what threatens one threatens all. To think otherwise is not only immoral but insane.

Berkeley, California, October 12, 2007

© Rafael Jesús González 2011

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full moon: Lunar Song of the Blue King

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----Canto lunar del rey azul


La luna plena busca al rey azul
que fue a los mares de la China
que antiguos cartógrafos cuentan
son habitados por dragones.
Déle la madrina de los cangrejos,
de las sirenas y los tritones,
que encuentre lo preciso
para hacerse entero el corazón
del rey azul renuente aventurero
absorto en documentosque bajo su albor lechoso
con ojo desapasionado
los mares chinos ve.


------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011






----Lunar Song of the Blue King


The full moon seeks the blue king
who went to the China seas
ancient cartographers tell
are inhabited by dragons.
May the godmother of the crabs,
the sirens, and the mermen grant
that he finds what is necessary
to make his heart whole,
of the blue king, reluctant adventurer
absorbed in documentswho under her milky shining
with a dispassionate eye
sees the Chinese seas.



--------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011

-

10/10/11

--------

-----Rezo a Huehuecóyotl

---------------(al modo nahua)


Señor Coyote Viejo,
-----Señor del regocijo de la carne,
levanta tu flor de jade,
---------------tu sonaja de oro;
luce tu penacho de plumas,
-----tu manto bordado;
a la luna levanta la quinta copa.
Señor del canto, Señor de la danza,
-----Señor del deleite sensual,
sálvanos de la prudencia cobarde,
-----máscara opresiva
que pretende ponerle buena cara
-----a la prudente cobardía.
Señor del exceso,
---------------------Señor del festín,
-----deslúmbranos con la vida.




------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011








-----Prayer To Huehuecoyotl

---------------(in the Nahua mode)


Old Lord Coyote,
-----Lord of the flesh's rejoicing,
raise your flower of jade,
---------------your rattle of gold;
sport your headdress of plumes,
-----your embroidered cape;
raise high the fifth cup to the moon.
Lord of the song, Lord of the dance,
-----Lord of sensual delight,
save us from cowardly prudence,
-----oppressive mask
that pretends to put a good face
-----on prudent cowardliness.
Lord of the feast,
---------------------Lord of excess,
-----overwhelm us with life.




------------© Rafael Jesús González 2011
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