Because I speak in metaphors, I believe this Congress will never understand my column. But I speak for my readers who have been assuring me how my meditations on the perfect breakfast and the ultimate in coffee had made their day. That while I promise to continue writing about clouds and omens and destinies, these perorations are shelved for the moment.
Let the songs wait on the wings. The article on tangos and why the dance always ends with the woman prostrate shall have its day. But for the moment, I cannot talk about songs and poetry. Something is happening around me and I feel I have no right to enjoy cups of coffee and warm toast, with Greek salad on the side. Civilization, with its notion of the rights of human beings, have been murdered and the murderers are walking free, with their rights ironically solid and intact. But my words are figures of speech and those in Congress shall never figure out the meaning of my discourse.
Young boys and girls are being killed, even those who are related to the king, the last a sample of what this nation has become, a theater of the most absurd. Justice is reinterpreted in many ways, most of them in the guise of bringing control to this society. The truth is those who are in institutions of justice are out of control.
If, for today, you are reading my rhapsody about a day that is to come or a world going to its end, in language that charms, then I am living in another world, in another dimension.
But I live in this world. You are, therefore, not reading a contemplation. You are reading a rage.
Let us leave Congress, for that place has already lost its hope. Let us go to the Senate, to that august hall. Let that modifier stay. Our senators love words and they love to listen to their words. Many have the articulation of a bullfrog. One punches the air with words that never seem to hit their target. It is painful listening to him punch even as his fist of a conscience never knocks us out. In the Senate lives a comic. He can be fun sometimes over television when the reason for his being is to entertain. He is lucky, though, because in this nation, even politics is a domain for laughter. There are fans of his kind of politics and that is not funny.
Bear with me, therefore, if you do not get to smile at my thoughts. I am not able to smile. I am not able to sing.
Okay, let me talk about Tango music. Quiero verte una vez mas. I want to see you once more. I want to see you once more, my beloved politicians, my dear leaders. I want to see you once more to ask what happened.
When some one hundred plus of you voted to give a thousand to an office that takes care of those who cannot approach you, you must have sped off in your air-conditioned sport-utility vehicles. You must have been dressed in scented suits and starched shirts that day, the fashion reeking of solid purity as fashion can be—on the surface as an appearance.
Quiero verte una vez mas. I want to see you one more time. I want to see you, my country once more. What happened to you? What happened to us?
Decent friends see the killing but remain loyal to their king. Decent friends learn about people being killed and they blame the slain.
So, Deo (Antazo), the essay on love that you have been asking me to write shall have to wait when love has the right to live in our country.
Perhaps, I can speak of poetry, after all, poetry and love are rage with rhythm. Yevgeny Yevtushenko has a poem called “Lies”. Listen to him: Telling lies to the young is wrong./Proving to them that lies are true is wrong./Telling them that God’s in his heaven/and all’s well with the world is wrong./The young know what you mean. The young are people.
Yevtushenko concludes by saying: Forgive no error you recognize,/it will repeat itself, increase, and afterwards our pupils/will not forgive in us what we forgave.
Perhaps, I can use a simpler story. Let me recall a children’s tale made by Jimple Borlagdan, fictionist, good poet and rock artist. In the story, frogs threaten to poison the water from where other animals drink unless they learn how to croak. The small birds and the ducks and other animals had to learn how to croak, or else the pond will be poisoned and they will not have anymore water to drink.
Go figure that out.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.