Poetry: Ximena Gautier Greve

Ximena Gautier Greve

BOW  FIGUREHEAD

Cut the seas
figurehead,
run ominous waves! ...

Shew us
new damned reefs,
coral of human vermilion
loaded with chunks of rails
the ruthless sowed
on the high seas.

The Pacific roars its distress
rises to sky its monstrous waves,
as arms that last rocked
agonizing bagged bodies
on the innocent cradle of sea ...

But they fall not silent,
not die nor rest.

Badly wounded,
this waning boat
goes aimlessly.

Badly wounded,
ardent bow figurehead.

(This poem has appeared in book 'Requiem for Chile', and also in the anthology 'A thousand poems for Pablo Neruda' )

THE MANGER

He always was one scanty-means man.
Never reached learning to read or write.
They treated him like an idiot.
But he was not.
He knew it from that day
when trembling with love
knotted to her soft arms and legs,
he saw the immortal and sublime light
that lived in his body.

The months they lived together
near the river and the forest,
were times of brilliant ecstasy,
like crystals of cave stalagmites.
Until the baby was born:
the most delightful baby
like the pink medlars.

He did not know afterwards
exactly what had happened.
When he tried to make sense of things
he saw those men again
like soldiers who marched
between the smoke and the shrapnel.

And he felt again
his painful flash wounds
while somebody snatched from his lap
She’s and child’s corpses.
In that moment, he knew that death does not exist
and he found consolation in the words of worker
who raised the rods of his devastated hut :
“They will let up for Christmas”

That is why the luminous star, that appeared
while staring at the Great South’s blue immensity,
did not surprise him. Neither did bewilder him
when She descends from sky with the baby
to snuggle up next to him,
between the rocks of the river
and the trees touching the sky.
Neither did amaze him the neighbours coming.
The cow, loosed after the force raid,
and the sore donkey, so beaten as he was
come to lie by his side.
His arms plenty of She and their child,
he closed his eyes accepting. He was happy.

Almost at dawn the Magi came
with gold myrrh and incense
but he was already very tired
and could not greet them.
“What happened is regrettable”, declared the Senator
while he was opening his gold snuff box
“It was a misunderstanding” added the Major,
waving the grass among the fireflies
“We must eradicate these lousy”, howl the General,
emerging from the cloud of gases
and grenades of the kingdom of order.

Setu, January 2018