The Poetry Project

from Donde Mancó el Árbol de la Espada y Arcoíris

Cesáreo “Chacho” Martínez (trans. Judah Rubin)

Cesáreo “Chacho” Martínez’s Donde Mancó el Árbol de la Espada y Arcoíris is one of the Peruvian poet’s “conjunctural poems”. Written to address the specific political conditions of the end of the Morales Bermudez dictatorship in 1980, the text builds on his earlier Cinco Razones Puras Para Comprometerse (Con la Huelga), published in the wake of the 1977 general strikes in Peru. Martinez’s work demands that the reader work through their political conditions via a dialectical poetics that must arrive at a praxis beyond the passivity of the page. Though the internal conflict between the Sendero Luminoso and the military would end hopes of the type of party politics that Donde Mancó el Árbol de la Espada y Arcoíris proposes, Martínez’s poem sets out a political/poetic matrix that continues to resonate in the Peruvian present, dominated as it is by political cynicism and a kleptocratic right-wing post-neoliberal extractivist government.
—Judah Rubin

from Donde Mancó El Arbol de la Espada y el Arcoiris

And the camel, no matter how clean, will have to see itself in the mirror.

But who am I that my body turns in disquiet that my being sweats distrust and confusion

That I see my soul’s objects watered specular and without glory who am I stranded

On such a strange corner and terrified of the men

Stained by light and indigence who am I

So obscured that I am off so often why so many

Doubts where is the entrance or the exit

What hustles have my extremities pulled without my being

Alerted to them who am I who am I

What surplus what lack who am I that I don’t feel the embrace, not even the embrace who am I

Living with loneliness concubine of deliria in a

Building beyond the world beyond

My body what am I doing laying out under the shooting stars

When everything in the world

Is world and insanity what crazed animals have I known and what

Abysses devour me discovered

By a black sun in my obscene thoughts who am I

With neither authority nor prestige

Without the burning attachment of a girl what did I do in

The years prior to be undeserving of such a world

Where did they maim my sword and my vast spectral rainbow

What became of my marvelous beast

That shattered the stained-glass windows with its booming voice why do my eyes

Betray my heart

What sort of filthy camel will I be and the cleanest and coarsest

Dromedary will have to see itself

double humped or confined to the consequences of the double

Illusion am I such an individualist

That I have nothing that merits the gallows for not having anything

That I detest to have nothing what can I put in the air

Who am I

With this impatient bomb in my hands with this

Mind that struts recklessly how many times

Will I swear that I’ll change that I’ll be calmer in my handling

Fire I who know

The most varied forms of being despised that I consider

men when I trap a star

Who am I that I grudgingly wander in dreams and get drunk

Each time more delusional stalking

The abrupt apparitions of the poem who did I stop being to

Be no one to not know

A peak of sanity or a twig of lemon balm I crazily

Greet the comrade leaders

who piss on the wailing wall who don’t

know the blind alleys and uphold

the multiple rigors of responsibility who am I

why is my finger shaking pointing them out

and why wouldn’t it if that’s what it was born for

who am I that I detest them

for being egoists and whores what do my eyes want shedding

tears on the pages woven with sacrifice

and still I went all in for my part what more human

version did I stop rehearsing who is going to tell me

how does one suffer out there among the cold’s knives without

a house without you without a family

or snoring spurs that fuck your groin up who am I that

I despair I place the firewood

My time and above all my body I undertook to clean

my body make it gleam

The rose among the masses and more than once the rose sang

Like a leftist rally in the Plaza San Martín

The sun, so alone, sang but what do I do in this moment without

Returning to my frills without returning

To the marvelous reality of my frills calling to what

The leaders barter with the masses

What do I do without demanding my dreams with my own

Hands or rather where are my weapons what

Can I do without practicing

My shooting and revenge who am I by definition that I

Drown that I ask myself who am I

That I let myself be devoured by the marvels of fury why don’t

I speak calmly and serenely with everyone

The exploited of my country why don’t I gather them in all

The plazas where we can share these

Wild fruits when will I find the path in what way will

I pledge myself without mortal concessions

Nor regrets for my incapacity faced with the syndicate

What prevarication have I committed why

Don’t my readings become swifter darts what

Effervescence thus lives in me

What thirst for health has me so stubbornly insomniac why

Do I demand so much without even groveling a little

Blind doves and snakes only hem me in what happened

To the blue bird bathing on my forehead

Where did the owners’ prestigious river get diverted to what

Songs will I leave to my descendants

What songs and what descendants who am I who am I

Without songs

Because there were songs that gave me such highs and

Such disastrous lows

Like the No of a girl in the Plaza Francia

The perfumed girl who am I where have I left

My arrows my imitations of the most class-consciously

Efficient worker where have they disappeared

My aptitudes that made me the most experienced with the suffering

That they caused me

The most experienced dodger of happiness what mediocrity

Has me trapped and why do my contemporaries

Avoid me what implacable truths clash in their

Dull hearts where do they hide that I only see

Phantoms still more solitary than I why don’t they return

The hope in these eyes studded with phantoms

What do I do without resolving the most dogging of my problems why

Do I leave myself dumped beneath the

Bridges of misfortune what do I do without seeking out the most

Dangerous tasks and what does the party do

Without offering me them who am I who am I without party wife

Or serenity who am I

Why don’t I humanize myself a bit and I sneak around on

Tiptoes when night is more night

And I transform myself into the tiger’s son that I am and I go on

Accommodating my claws raaxs raaxs raaxs

Like that and on tiptoes and tiptoes just like that and tastily

Accommodating my claws raaxs raaxs and pandangan

I fall on

His neck the most miserable minister my god who

Am I who am I that until today I haven’t killed a

Minister

What kind of cowardly bug am I what blue or pink girl would

Yello-ve me, one who hasn’t even killed a minister

And to kill a minister is perhaps more beautiful than killing

A rat at 4 in the morning

Or perhaps it’s not very clever a disagreeable

Operation but who am I who am I

That I haven’t dedicated myself to the massacre of the rats I who live

Protected by the difficult tree of virtue

I am the enemy of the rats but what am I doing talking about

The rats what am I doing but looking for the compañeros that

Return me my confidence and that frighten off this

Magic lightning that simmers in my head

My head many times sought out by death or rather

By suicide at noon

And on the highest seaside so they could see Her eyes who

Am I with these arguments

Who am I that my body rolls without calm though I have tired

Of tossing ceaselessly, uselessly

Who am I who am I why don’t I just leap into the battle’s

Fray, dammit?

#277 – Summer 2024

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