Poetry: Ximena Gautier Greve

Ximena Gautier Greve

Nestor the Hope 

(Mourning for Néstor Kirshner, Argentina’s President)

All my friends are weeping for a President.

Nestor the Hope has died and he should not.

The regret imposes itself like immense wave

over light-blue and white flags

And 

also pains me my Argentinean homeland,

neither by right of the blood nor soil, but of the 

soul:

the one I have loved in her snows and pampa's suns 

in 

her faraway bandoneons and neglected guitars

in her forests and jungles, mothers,

feverish malaria, serpents and wide rivers

bolas, gauchos, kerchief, labour

in her gourd yerba and metal straw,

those like from Cuyo, but with something else 

--“Sabés?”

The one from porteños and their public tragedies 

covered 

of miseries and hopeless dreams,

and 

sharp haze leaning in the shadows

against the wall window of the barrio,

the buggy and its usual delay

and pain and the rendezvous in Juramento

at Belgrano, Barrancas or the Tigre

from Retiro to La Boca, job, mooring, 

tango, brothel, fire, sex and meekness 

open 

the mouth to feed, hungry and cries

harbour, violin songs, pianola, boardwalk and harlot

because 

of this and further, I want to caress the soul

of 

all my brothers, white-cloud, blue-sky and sun,

sweetie, slang, Ché and kultrun

with air's love, in my clenched hand

to protect this open dangerous orphanhood 

that will fall upon us now. One never knows.

Let us take care of Christina. 

Condolences.

***

Under The Cobweb

Every day I check 

messages

that reels off 

incessantly 

the gossamer 

suspended beneath the 

starlit 

sky

I open 

those luminous and imperfect 

eggs

which for an instant burst, 

flooding my black and white existence 

in 

universal plasma.

Know not what I expect to find

in 

their entrails, 

why to decipher or download 

them for? 

Not know the kisses I hope or tragedies I fear,

but 

it is like I was stalking

not 

to miss the moment 

to hear intact

the howl of the last human being,

me, tied hands, sealed eyes with adhesive tapes.

Every day 

I observe 

the monstrous arachnid lay eggs 

on 

my messy world of unfinished papers,

leaves 

getting old under quotidian rain and sun,

amid misleading altruisms and shy selfishness,

wagging the Stock Exchange’s inconsequence

toward 

family high risk quotes.

Someone 

has to assert the absolute 

Impossibility of re-encounter or return:

On all this monstrous dimension’s planes 

of 

superimposed and equivalent parallel worlds, 

every thought, not being lineal nor circular, 

opens 

on each gorge of the spirit

a new ambush that dries rivers 

and 

moistening the green visions of basilisks 

and 

phosphorescent serpents 

sinking into the matrix mud that fertilizes 

the virgin arachnid's plethoric abdomen

whose eggs repopulate the net.

***

---

Setu, January 2024