Ode To Conger Chowder
In the storm-tossed
Chilean
sea
lives
the rosy conger,
giant eel
of snowy flesh.
And in
Chilean
stewpots,
along the coast,
was born the chowder,
thick and
succulent,
a boon to man.
You bring the conger, skinned,
to the
kitchen
(its mottled skin slips off
like a glove,
leaving the
grape
of the sea
exposed to the world),
naked,
the tender
eel
glistens,
prepared
to serve our appetites.
Now
you
take
garlic,
first, caress
that precious
ivory,
smell
its
irate fragrance,
then
blend the minced garlic
with onion
and
tomato
until the onion
is the color of gold.
Meanwhile steam
our
regal
ocean prawns,
and when
they are
tender,
when the savor
is
set in a sauce
combining the liquors
of the ocean
and the clear
water
released from the light of the onion,
then
you add the
eel
that it may be immersed in glory,
that it may steep in the oils
of
the pot,
shrink and be saturated.
Now all that remains is to
drop a
dollop of cream
into the concoction,
a heavy rose,
then
slowly
deliver
the treasure to the flame,
until in the chowder
are
warmed
the essences of Chile,
and to the table
come, newly wed,
the
savors
of land and sea,
that in this dish
you may know heaven.
Ode To Wine
Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine
with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of
earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious
velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of
wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one
song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be
shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries
us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we
weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is
different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the
day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring,
happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and
rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou
beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine
pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.
My darling, suddenly
the
line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your
breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of
spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the
vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light
that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.
But you are
more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of
life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of
discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we're
speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and
remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple
ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the
ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and
of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.
Ode To Tomatoes
The street
filled with
tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light
is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the
streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the
kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on
countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It
sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder
it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a
cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of
Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the
union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its
halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its
magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its
flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the
roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the
table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its
canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no
husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery
color
and cool completeness.
Ode To Maize
America, from a grain
of maize you grew
to
crown
with spacious lands
the ocean foam.
A grain of maize was your
geography.
>From the grain
a green lance rose,
was covered with
gold,
to grace the heights
of Peru with its yellow tassels.
But,
poet, let
history rest in its shroud;
praise with your lyre
the grain
in its granaries:
sing to the simple maize in the kitchen.
First, a
fine beard
fluttered in the field
above the tender teeth
of the young
ear.
Then the husks parted
and fruitfulness burst its veils
of pale
papyrus
that grains of laughter
might fall upon the earth.
To the
stone,
in your journey,
you returned.
Not to the terrible stone,
the
bloody
triangle of Mexican death,
but to the grinding
stone,
sacred
stone of your kitchens.
There, milk and
matter,
strength-giving, nutritious
cornmeal pulp,
you were worked and
patted
by the wondrous hands
of dark-skinned women.
Wherever you
fall, maize,
whether into the
splendid pot of partridge, or
among
country beans, you light up
the meal and lend it
your virginal
flavor.
Oh, to bite into
the steaming ear beside the sea
of distant
song and deepest waltz.
To boil you
as your aroma
spreads
through
blue sierras.
But is there
no end
to your
treasure?
In chalky, barren lands
bordered
by the sea, along
the
rocky Chilean coast,
at times
only your radiance
reaches the
empty
table of the miner.
Your light, your cornmeal, your
hope
pervades America's solitudes,
and to hunger
your lances
are
enemy legions.
Within your husks,
like gentle kernels,
our sober
provincial
children's hearts were nurtured,
until life began
to shuck
us from the ear.
Ode To a Large Tuna in the Market
Among the market greens,
a
bullet
from the ocean
depths,
a swimming
projectile,
I saw
you,
dead.
All around you
were lettuces,
sea foam
of the
earth,
carrots,
grapes,
but
of the ocean
truth,
of the
unknown,
of the
unfathomable
shadow, the
depths
of the
sea,
the abyss,
only you had survived,
a pitch-black,
varnished
witness
to deepest night.
Only you, well-aimed
dark
bullet
from the abyss,
mangled at one tip,
but
constantly
reborn,
at anchor in the current,
winged
fins
windmilling
in the
swift
flight
of
the
marine
shadow,
a mourning arrow,
dart
of the sea,
olive, oily fish.
I saw you dead,
a deceased king
of
my own ocean,
green
assault, silver
submarine fir,
seed
of
seaquakes,
now
only dead remains,
yet
in all the
market
yours
was the only
purposeful form
amid
the bewildering
rout
of nature;
amid the fragile greens
you were
a solitary
ship,
armed
among the vegetables,
fin and prow black and oiled,
as
if you were still
the vessel of the wind,
the one and
only
pure
ocean
machine:
unflawed, navigating
the waters of
death.
Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground
From bristly foliage
you
fell
complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,
as perfect
as a violin
newly
born of the treetops,
that falling
offers its sealed-in
gifts,
the hidden sweetness
that grew in secret
amid birds and
leaves,
a model of form,
kin to wood and flour,
an oval
instrument
that holds within it
intact delight, an edible rose.
In the
heights you abandoned
the sea-urchin burr
that parted its spines
in the
light of the chestnut tree;
through that slit
you glimpsed the
world,
birds
bursting with syllables,
starry
dew
below,
the
heads of boys
and girls,
grasses stirring restlessly,
smoke rising,
rising.
You made your decision,
chestnut, and leaped to
earth,
burnished and ready,
firm and smooth
as the small breasts
of
the islands of America.
You fell,
you struck
the
ground,
but
nothing happened,
the grass
still stirred, the
old
chestnut sighed with the mouths
of a forest of trees,
a red leaf of
autumn fell,
resolutely, the hours marched on
across the earth.
Because
you are
only
a seed,
chestnut tree, autumn, earth,
water, heights,
silence
prepared the germ,
the floury density,
the maternal
eyelids
that buried will again
open toward the heights
the simple
majesty of foliage,
the dark damp plan
of new roots,
the ancient but
new dimensions
of another chestnut tree in the earth.
Ode To an Artichoke
The artichoke
of delicate
heart
erect
in its battle-dress, builds
its minimal
cupola;
keeps
stark
in its scallop of
scales.
Around
it,
demoniac vegetables
bristle their thicknesses,
devise
tendrils
and belfries,
the bulb's agitations;
while under the subsoil
the
carrot
sleeps sound in its
rusty mustaches.
Runner and
filaments
bleach in the vineyards,
whereon rise the vines.
The sedulous
cabbage
arranges its petticoats;
oregano
sweetens a world;
and the
artichoke
dulcetly there in a gardenplot,
armed for a skirmish,
goes
proud
in its pomegranate
burnishes.
Till, on a day,
each by the
other,
the artichoke moves
to its dream
of a market place
in the big
willow
hoppers:
a battle formation.
Most warlike
of
defilades-
with men
in the market stalls,
white shirts
in the
soup-greens,
artichoke field marshals,
close-order conclaves,
commands,
detonations,
and voices,
a crashing of crate
staves.
And
Maria
come
down
with her hamper
to
make
trial
of an artichoke:
she reflects, she examines,
she candles them up
to the light like an egg,
never flinching;
she bargains,
she tumbles
her prize
in a market bag
among shoes and a
cabbage head,
a
bottle
of vinegar; is back
in her kitchen.
The artichoke drowns in a
pot.
So you have it:
a vegetable, armed,
a profession
(call it
an artichoke)
whose end
is millennial.
We taste of
that
sweetness,
dismembering scale after scale.
We eat of a halcyon
paste:
it is green at the artichoke heart.
Ode To a Lemon
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight,
love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the
lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's
planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with
it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the
halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the
starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible,
changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the
sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and
acerb.
Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little
cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to
the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic
facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a
world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your
touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming
the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.
Ode To Salt
This salt
in the saltcellar
I once saw in the salt
mines.
I know
you won't
believe me,
but
it sings,
salt sings,
the skin
of the salt mines
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the
earth.
I shivered in those solitudes
when I heard
the voice of
the
salt
in the desert.
Near Antofagasta
the
nitrous
pampa
resounds:
a broken
voice,
a
mournful
song.
In its caves
the salt moans, mountain
of buried
light,
translucent cathedral,
crystal of the sea, oblivion
of the
waves.
And then on every table
in the world,
salt,
we see your
piquant
powder
sprinkling
vital light
upon
our food.
Preserver
of the ancient
holds of ships,
discoverer
on
the high
seas,
earliest
sailor
of the unknown, shifting
byways of the
foam.
Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean
night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the
smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than
domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste infinitude.
Acknowledgment
Gracias a quienes ayudaron u ofrecieron su ayuda de
varias formas, incluyendo a Steve Wiley. Unas gracias enormes a Victor Cabrera y
Andy Daitsman, que se quemaron los ojos y los dedos transcribiendo odas a
granel.
Recopilación:
Patricio Mason
pmason@chasqui.mic.cl
Santiago, Chile