The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Thu 10/2/2008)

[RetroLounge]

Permanence

So hard to say:
I love you.
Look at all the time, distance and pretense
I've created out of my fear of those words,
those words like a serpent,
slithering in silence, threatening:
denied once, twice, so many times,
dismissed like an evil thought,
a weakness,
a mistake,
something we can't allow

           -- a shudder so basic
           that it takes us to the beginning of the world,
           to the elemental language of touch,
           the cave's darkness
           the man and the woman
           licking their fear of thunder from each other --

To look in the mirror
and recognize
the traces,
the absence of bodies embracing and talking to each other.

To sense
a fierce love
trapped in the cage of reason,
condemned to die of starvation,
without giving itself to anyone else,
obsessed with an inevitable face.

To spend days
lifting the hand to search
for the right welcoming gesture, then being sorry,
unable to master fear,
a lack of courage,
dreading the sound of a certain voice.

To flee like a deer frightened by its own heartbeat,
screaming a name in the silence
and making noise
to fill the internal void with other voices,
only to go on tearing each other apart
and increasing the fear
of having forfeited the sky forever.

Gioconda Belli

************************



"I had exposed myself to bullets, death; I had smuggled weapons, given speeches, received awards, had children -- so many things, but a life without men, without love, was alien to me, I felt I had no existence unless a man's voice said my name and a man's love rendered my life worthwhile," writes Gioconda Belli in her memoir, "The Country Under My Skin." Clearly, Belli, a Nicaraguan Sandinista and award-winning, groundbreaking poet, is no wimp. At this point in the book, Belli has suffered terribly over an emotionally tormented love affair with a Sandinista guerilla named Modesto, whom she was working with at the Nicaraguan ministry of planning, and swears to change her ways. Still, how did a brave, brilliant rebel become submissive to and obsessed with her compañero?

In "The Country Under My Skin," Belli unravels these contradictions -- as she says, all too common among powerful women -- with characteristic candor and dignity. Her often joyous, surprisingly fluid memoir phases in and out of Belli's romantic and political life, the tumult of her love affairs sometimes coinciding with moments of upheaval in her homeland. Belli, a member of the upper class, joined the growing Sandinista movement in 1970 when she was just 20 years old, and four years later fled her stifling and unhappy six-year marriage.

After the rebels ousted Nicaragua's reigning Somoza regime in 1979, Belli went on to hold intermediary positions in the Sandinista government. At the height of the U.S.-funded Contra war in the early 1980s, Belli, then working in the media department at the Sandinista party headquarters, fell in love with Charlie Castaldi, an American reporter. Eventually, Belli and Castaldi married and moved to the United States, where Belli still lives six months of the year. She spends the other half of her life in Nicaragua. The author of "The Inhabited Woman" and other works of poetry and fiction...

http://www.arlindo-correia.com/020303.html



************************

:hi:

RL

[blueraven95]

1. ...

:sigh:




:hi:

[RetroLounge]

5. ...

:hi:

RL

[Chorophyll]

2. Wasn't sure...

but I kept reading and I'm glad I did, because it turned all dark and spare. Thanks for posting her bio, too!

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

6. You're Welcome

:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. nailed it

:donut:

[RetroLounge]

7. ...

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. My dear Retro...

Wow, how beautiful.

So much of her life in this poem.

Yup, she nails it.

Thank you!

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

9. ...

:hi:

RL

[Gonzo Gardener]

8. It sounds like Gioconda Belli has led a fascinating life

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

10. Yup.

:hi:

RL