We presenting the poetry of Fernando Rendón as Editor’s Choice, these poems are mainly written in Spanish and been translated in to Translated into English by Laura Chalar taking from On W

aterline. We know him as poetry festival, but we could see his sensitiveness as poet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Porfirio Barbajacob)

 

 

 

If it were possible, if what is dreamed were, if it were reached, you say.

 

 

If that which lies on the bottom should rear up, if its sun loved our land, if it were achieved.

 

 

If we could recognize each other, if we did not attach ourselves to what ties us, if it were managed.

 

 

If that moment should arrive, if the ferocious joy invaded us, if one could.

 

 

And if we loved each other, if we founded that country, if you came back to stay among us forever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Consider the song of a wounded bird.

 

 

Its fair plumage –sky-blue, gold and blood– level with the grass.

 

 

Consider the flight of the falcon, coming down in circles after sighting its victim.

 

 

As the life-oozing wound comes nearer to the claws, beauty seeks death, hope seeks the ordeal decreed by chance, and they remain in suspense.

 

 

However, even at the risk of the chain of cause and effect’s breaking, consider also that the hand of poetry will touch the bird of prey in its fall, bringing death down, for love too has arrived at the rendezvous heralded by fate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If Odysseus had turned a deaf ear on the sailors

he would have rejected wax and mast

 

 

would have plunged in after the songs of madness

of those women ended like a fish

 

 

thus crossed the threshold of this world’s kingdom

there would burst the song of new love in all cardinal points

 

 

we mortals would conceive children with Dream

a school of invisible warriors would arise

 

 

the most heartless tyrant would lose his mind

listening to the thunder of reinvented drums

 

 

the sun and the wind would give back their senses

to the self-willed blind and deaf

 

 

someone would cure at the root the forest’s old plague

in all latitudes the paths of instinct would be found

 

 

Ah Troy, exiled from yourself,

your sages publicly shamed

and ferocious cutlass fishes prowling your iron beaches!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The unwary Margarita gave a terrified scream when her delicate foot sank into a gelatinous swamp that called her by name.

 

 

For nearly eight endless hours she howled, holding an invisible child in her arms.

 

 

It rained, and only the word hell could be made out.

 

 

The wind and the spring, peer juries, silently condemned her executioners.

 

 

Trees leaped, cursing, and then went back to their roots.

 

 

Pain meandered, eroding the water’s shores.

 

 

In the distance: the age of the earth.

 

 

Nerves were stung by the poppies’ stalks. And we waited between patience and impatience.

 

 

Maddened plants, we could not run – as in nightmares.

 

 

After the supreme effort, we barely held on to life, in the lowest rung of human ridiculousness: a clockwork drunkard.

 

 

On the next day, the battered body, the wings more vigorous than ever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lying like logs, our red bark wrinkled, we are as buffaloes who rotting melt on the green meadow.

 

 

But due to an inexplicable random act, lying like mushrooms on the grass, we explore all the millennia, flee from prehistoric beasts, fight all the wars, are millions of beings stretching under the arc of eternity, while dragon and yearning fight in the clouds.

 

 

The sun calls us and to hesitate is to die. Fly, fly, beauteous swan of desire, everything can be achieved.

 

 

Walking on the white dew, remove your shoes: the age of man is that of his gaze upon the legendary forest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To the grave we go not, we go not to fear or to pain.

 

 

This bluest of regions will not be forgotten, let us not return now.

 

 

Red times passed by, green times flew by, hope belongs to the past.

 

 

Millions of us form the body of light.

 

 

At the doors of another civilization that sings among us, the species will die, the species will be born, suffer no more.

 

 

This bomb is dismantled, the huge highway is enlarged, we pick each other up, complete each other.

 

 

Each century is a moon once the eagle of time is vanquished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there will be no more mine, but ours

 

 

Of me it may be said that I was an alder tree with naked roots, spitting seeds into the waters of the Erydanus river which flows in the sky, at a year’s beginning, at a century and a millennium’s close.

 

 

Tree that took root in the wind and in the earth, moved in the forest towards the lake, and belonged to the wild feast of all elements.

 

 

Of me it may be said, tree that cursed its executioners. And tree that suffered listening to the growth of abandonment’s curse on its fellows of all ages, the cutting-down of enjoyment, the eroding of hope in my brethren, the song of dark stone-age birds, the trembling of sap through the future of shoots as green as the human eye has not yet seen.

 

 

Of me it may be said, alder tree that lived in the era when man mutilated dream, put a straitjacket on senses, decreed the jungle’s wings an unreal matter.

 

 

 

Of me it may be said, alder tree that sheltered travelers from themselves, its roots in the light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The beast is the cage

 

 

The future comes to us like a caterpillar joy spares no effort

The past is a dormouse snoring on a few beautiful dreams

Hope is a white phoenix

And my eagerness a scarlet hind chased by the king’s hounds

 

 

This zoo is a city of cages on each door padlocks and rusty locks on each window bars and eyes

 

 

 

In the corners apes that deny being relatives of Darwin night panthers with incendiary eyes crocodiles weeping like love’s penitents       boas with the appetite of bishops and banker’s poetry-colored macaws     hyenas that laugh listlessly at the dull day

lions that lose their dignity and their manes       hieroglyphic tigers

men looking into their own eyes in the infinite eyes of animals

and many jailors chained to their chains

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fernando Rendón was born in Medellín (Colombia), in 1951. He has published Contrahistoria, Bajo otros soles, Canción en los campos de Marte, Los motivos del salmón, La cuestión radiante, La rama roja, En flotación y Piedra de la memoria. His poetry books have been published in United States, China, Vietnam, France, Italy, Romania, Albania, Cuba, Costa Rica and Venezuela. Actually he is general coordinator of World Poetry Movement (WPM), director of International Poetry Festival of Medellin since 1991. and of Magazine Prometeo.

 

The Foundation Right Livelihood Award has decided to grant the 2006 Alternative Nobel Prize to the International Poetry Festival of Medellín, “for showing how creativity, beauty, free expression and community can flourish amongst and overcome even deeply entrenched fear and violence”.

 

He received the Arabian Bahrahill Foundation Prize (Saudi Arabia), Rafael Alberti Poetry Prize (Cuba); Mihai Eminescu (Romania); Mkiva Humanitarian Award as the Foremost Cultural Icon (South Africa), Literary Award 2017 (Bangladesh), Medal Homero for Literature and Art (Belgium) and a jade plate from International Poetry Festival of Lake Qinghai (China).