Best Vicente Poems
Baile con migo, hips made from the rhythm of merengés and cumbias, samba, swagger and a pinch of azucar mixed into my backbone.
My first language was Spanish.
Learned from sweet stories told by my papi at bedtime.
My tongue a formation of the stardust of my heritage,
An intertwined galaxy of rolled r’s and the pledge of allegiance.
It was something I would soon forget after I was told it was wrong
Taught a new way to introduce myself “mi nombre es” turned to “my name is” after the girl in my class told me she couldn’t understand me.
So I was taught to reject the language of my family and to be proud to call myself American over Mexican.
Now my Spanish 2 native class seems so god damn foriegn and I can't seem to remember what comes after domingo on my pop quiz.
I would learn to hate my name, much preferring something like Tiffany,
Leaving behind my silent TL and X that sounds like an S because they said it was strange.
When I visit my grandmother all I could do is nod or shake my head,
Because her native language sounds like a tongue twister I can't seem to master.
So she reminds me that the colors in my soul and the rhythm in my bones are blessings and that I come from the Incas, the Mayans, the Aztecs, los Mexicas, who built an empire nunca imaginado.
That we are a children of an oscuro pasado,
A mixture of pain, sadness and oppression,
But we inherited the strength.
We have inherited the passion.
She reminds me that my name holds the power of the most legendary Aztec princesses who ruled with the grace of the most beautiful flower.
So this is for the women that still name their children in nahuatl and the men who wake up on Sunday mornings to listen to Vicente Fernandez with their fathers,
And families that still pass on recipes of arroz con pollo.
Because we are the sons and the daughters,
And we hold the stories,
The journeys of the remembered,
Those who walked through deserts, waded through rivers.
We wear their legacies on our shoulders with pride,
And we do not lose ourselves to broken perceptions,
But rise above with the help of our powerful stories.
Our melodies, our galaxies,
Por que somos Latino-Americanos
And we will not be forgotten
Categories:
vicente, 11th grade, 12th grade,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
jago christos uma rose
ethan cuevas corone
kelly elizabeth christos
alexia daniel wade jonathan james
emily-rose pau and willow too
we didn't start the family
it was always growing
since the world's been turning
we didn't start the family
no we didn't fight it
but we did light it
juan estanislao alicia
george atha jennifer ann
diego agustin angel carlos
maria del transito cuevas gallego
eve corone bosch jim louis nick christos
lynette shirley helen lorraine
smither tracey linda middleton
marisa jane owen wastle haylock
we didn't start the family
it was always growing
since the world's been turning
we didn't start the family
no we didn't fight it
but we did light it
francisca bosch ferrer
josep corone company
maria del transito gallego llorente
vicente cuevas garcia
kalopa christou stefandis
triain szosza todol christou
shirley rose brian fredrick haylock
vanne lena milanko etcetera
we didn't start the family
it was always growing
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the family
No we didn't fight it
But we did light it
[to be read like billy joel's "we didn't start the fire"]
Categories:
vicente, birth, brother, family, father,
Form:
Lyric
Fear of God, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem, Miedo de Dios
(The second and fourth lines of these quatrains all end in the same rhyme, a feat it’ll be hard to maintain without appearing to be inflexible with the sound rather than the sense of the poem. This poem is from Carlos Bousono’s first collection : Subida al amor, 1945, which he dedicated to Vicente Aleixandre, marking the commencement of his steadfast admiration and association with the Nobel laureate. T. Wignesan)
And nevertheless, O ! God ! when imbued with feelings of love
I placed my hand in within your bosom,
I felt the love which subdued me
as with one wave from your kingdom.
But I was afraid of the darkness that could
accumulate in the depths of your mystery,
so deep down where even stars could not reach.
Only the penumbra. Fear gripped me.
Ah ! My God ! With what height of pity you espied me,
yet with so much love you my blindness bless
for having feared the darkness where slumps
the light of all the universe.
Because you are the ultimate hold of knowable protection.
Besides, those who love you will with looks inward train
and see an azure horizon
where a perpetual sunrise will reign.
But here I am on the surface of the earth,
here, across the floor, stretched,
because I was afraid of the horrible night,
perchance locked up in your breast.
And a confused ignorance holds me up :
crossed and brutal, impure and dried.
Closed yet interminably increasing
as with the hardened dead.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
vicente, fear, god, universe,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
Somber psalm, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : Salmo sombrio
(from Carlos Bousono’s first book of poems, written before he was 22 : Subida al amor (Ascent into love), 1945, and dedicated to the 1977 Nobel laureat, Vicente Aleixandre.)
Do not pass by me , O ! God ! incognito,
do not cross my path like a sky emptied of its stars,
for my body turns in upon itself in flames,
loving you in silence with such persistent anguish.
Do not cross my path while I keep loving an obscure entity,
while I continue to whimper among cactuses, among stones.
So turn Your face away, Your face that I fear
during such a roaring and wild night !
Keep Your distance from me ! Abandon me in the dark !
so that I may wish to be the source and thirst of this earth
in order to be able to love this twisted
trunk of a body sans light, all alone in this blinding wilderness !
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
vicente, god,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
The Question, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : La Cuestion
« …Oh ! God, Oh ! Centre »*
for Vicente Puchol
(* Note by the editor, Alejandro D. Amusco, attesting that the above quotation was not included in Bousono’s Antologia poética, 1976, and on the « mysterious Centre » on which the poem is a cogitation. T. Wignesan)
Yes, we know it : would you like to find the secret precinct,
the invulnerable enclosed sanctum,
to enter through any hole into the incredible spectacle,
to penetrate the labyrinth and find the powerful Centre.
As if a thief could rob the totality of light
to find, as I say, the powerful Centre, the absolute Centre,
the immobile Centre of the tempest which moves by itself,
a Centre where nothing is found to budge,
where everything is absorbed into itself, like love, containing
itself in itself,
not on its periphery, but fully wrapped in its contents,
overflowing like the apparition of a card in the suit of Spanish cards,
like an enormous cup of manifestation which augments,
like a wave which continues to mount higher and higher and beyond
its highest limits,
farther yet than possibility’s horizons ;
and keeps growing afterwards, going on for days, and the spectacle of its extermination – the hideous knowledge and the joy of recognising its loss ;
and which continues growing for an immemorial duration in the
direction of its own centre : terrible,
like a persistent cascade pouring down its interior, a flooding within
the experience of feeling well in one’s being,
an existential waterfall without end which retracts - having stopped
flowing – inwards into its own Centre.
Ai ! The crucial question is therefore to enter the labyrinth,
The big question comes down to making the move.
Be warned that it is only an act of penetration,
a simple act of transfer ; it would suffice to make a gesture with an
idea that brings joy,
perchance it might suffice just to find water in the barn
or a path in the woods, or in the woods
to fall upon an exit
through the hole (where we came in), to proffer with the key to the
enigma
the solution of the charade,
and discover the other side of the abysm, the reversal of the plot,
before the roof deteriorates
under probing fingers…
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
vicente, introspection, , memorial,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
Elegy on the Death of Vicente Aleixandre, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : Elegia en la muerte de Vicente Aleixandre
(Born in 1923, Carlos Bousono, a renowned prize-winning Spanish poet and eminent theoretician on the aesthetics of poetry, held the Chair of Stylistics at the Central (Complutense) University of Madrid. ; later as E-meritus.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation, in 1950, on the poetry of Vicente Aleixandre, the recepient of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Literature. It is evident, he witnessed the Nobel laureate’s passing in 1984. Bousono’s every lecture, delivered off the cuff, earned him an indomitabe world-wide reputation. T. Wignesan)
In Death
Eyes that kept looking
so full of pain
on the last day, hardly moments
before dying,
and from the deathbed
he recalled in sadness,
from far away, very far away though somewhat hazily,
those days with his friends,
out there in the distance
of his childhood,
having himself a great time,
life even then being immortal,
they (may have) roamed through small orchards, or through the
pinewood, or the soaring heights
bathed palpitatingly in the light.
Then to run, concealing themselves,
in the rear of some thickets, awhile :
why were they not being called to
yet from the house.
A little later, a little later feeling really lonesome
for the very last time, and that would be it.
And when they put
a crown on his head as on the king of the world
the day when it all came to pass
the king* had reigned for seven years,
seven years as lord
over everyone in the universe : the air, the sea.
He breathed. He looked tired
and the impossibility. Life, the crown,
painted cardboard, feeling yet happy,
later in love, in the company
of those slinging shots, such happiness. Years without
knowing doubt, and all that was
just an instant so lonely,
bitter grief
real.
And now the tears –
he who never cried – filled his eyes,
sliding down ever so slowly
over his pale cheeks,
soaking the skin,
the mouth,
and continued sliding
even though he was already dead.
The tears lasted longer
than his sorrow-laden eyes.
Much longer
than his own pain.
• Probably a reference to King Juan Carlos of the House of Bourbon.
© T. Wignesan – Patis, 2013
Categories:
vicente, poets, universe, , literature,
Form:
Elegy
THE RIVER SEA
Even from islands of the Antilles -
Taking Pinzon’s route to El Dorado
In the very foothills of the Andes
And its golden yellow meadow.
Death-dealing its piranha and crocodile;
Life-giving, the earth’s river-daughter -
With its fast bore fierce and tidal -
Floods half a continent with water,
Floods half the planet with oxygen.
Large ocean ships sail up it free.
Probes fresh lobes far into salt ocean.
To Brazilians it is - The River Sea.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
NOTE
Vicente Yanez Pinzon was the first European
to visit the Amazon in 1500
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Entered in Barbara Gorelick's Contest "A River Runs Through It"
Categories:
vicente, adventureriver, planet,
Form:
Quatrain
Chente—mi amigo, compadre, hermano
Troubadour of our pain untold
Minstrel of our abandoned souls
Keeper of our traditions bold
So loved by La Virgen de Guadalupe
That she took you on Her day
Now heaven’s honored balladeer
For Her now, you may play
You leave us with our sorrow
Our inconsolable despair
So, with a soft prayer on our lips
We plead—Volver! Volver!
Categories:
vicente, celebrity, death,
Form:
Epitaph
AMAZON
Death-dealing its piranha and crocodile
And its fast bore fierce and tidal.
Life-giving, the earth’s river-daughter
Floods half a continent with water,
Floods half the planet with oxygen,
Probes fresh lobes far into salt ocean.
To Brazilians it is The River Sea -
Large ocean ships sailed up it free,
Even from islands of the Antilles
To the very foothills of the Andes,
Taking Pinzon’s route to El Dorado
And its golden yellow meadow.
…………………………………
NOTE
Vicente Yanez Pinzon was the first European to visit the Amazon in 1500
Categories:
vicente, places
Form:
Imagism
For Vicente Fernandez
The dirt
The sweat
The horses,
Saddles off,
Brushed.
The girl who thinks she is pregnant.
The woman who is.
The man with no money is his pocket
The man with pockets full.
The man who stumbles.
The women who watch.
The broken hearts
The soon to be’s
The finger waggers
The I-will-nevers
The I-told-you so’s.
But listen!
Everything stops.
The world and its noise
And clatter and-
He sings!
Listen!
You can hear
The sound of falling in love
The quiet flames filling space
And space and space again.
The skirts swirl
The men dance when they couldn’t before.
El Charro!
El Charro!
Nothing is wrong
When we hear your voice
Fill the night
Across our lonely plains
And valleys and mountains.
Turn up the radio
Turn it up loud-
Loud.
El Charro sings!
El Rey!
He sings!
Categories:
vicente, guitar, lonely, love,
Form:
Free verse
You came and faded in the rising sun like snow
But left my heart a glow
Your smile was ever golden and pure
Like the heart of your nurture
You shed tears so my hopes and dreams will show
Even though the wheel of fate was slow
You poured your sweat and blood on loam
So this young soul would not roam
I wish you stayed longer to see me grow
But deep in my heart I know
One day I shall feel those loving arms again freely
May it be for eternity
For your memory never failed to guide my dream
Though I see you no more
I feel your hope like a stream
Like surging waves on the shore
In memory of my grandparents Vicente and Antonina
Categories:
vicente, grandparents,
Form:
Rhyme
P-oetic
R-emembrance's
E-njoyable
S-entence
C-onveys
I-nspiring
L-etter
L-etting
A-nnual
V-erse
I-n
C-omposition
E-mploy
N-ame's
T-rue
E-ssence
Topic: Birthday of Prescilla Vicente (March 06)
Form: Vertical Monocrostic
Categories:
vicente, birthday,
Form:
Acrostic
P-oem
R-ightfully
E-mploys
S-imple
C-ompaser's
I-nspiring
L-ines
L-etting
A-crostic
V-erse
I-mplement
C-aptivating
E-vent's
N-iftily
T-hought
E-xpression
Topic: Birthday of Prescilla Vicente (March 06)
Form: Vertical Monocrostic
Categories:
vicente, birthday,
Form:
Acrostic
D-o
I-t
A-gain
N-ow
A-s
M-inutes
A-nd
E-yeblink
V-anish
I-nto
C-louds
E-very
N-ight
T-ill
E-arliness
Topic: Birthday of Diana Mae L. Vicente (September 02)
Form: Vertical Monocrostic
Categories:
vicente, birthday,
Form:
Acrostic
V-iew
I-n
C-oolness
E-rases
N-ight's
T-wilight
E-ndorsing
B-eacon
A-s
R-ainy
C-old
E-vening
L-ets
L-ight
A-nd
N-ewness
O-pen
Topic: Birthday of Vicente Barcellano (June 01)
Form: Vertical Monocrostic
Categories:
vicente, birthday,
Form:
Acrostic