As i was going up the stair

As i was going up the stair
i met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd go away!

By Wilson Hughes Mearns (1878-1965)

A tale of an uncaring mother

My brother's wife has a very interesting family history. Her paternal grandfather, for instance, fled Croatia at the time of WWII, running from the nazi pogrom. He was so scarred by that experience that his children didn't know about it until the man was about to die, some 40 years later. Even then, he kept telling them it was better that they not know much, that they "should never attempt to go back". He was scared for them, perhaps? Had he done something terrible in order to get away?

What i was remembering earlier today, however, is the story of one of her maternal great-grandfathers, son of a spanish criollo and a pehuenche or puelche woman. According to the story, the criollo man was a police inspector in some little town in Mendoza province, at a time when some mapuches were still living according to their own traditions in that region. I imagine it must have been at the end of the XIXth century, because those were the last years the indians kept some of their freedom. After that, it was mostly integrate, or die.

In any case, the inspector had to visit the mapuches' tent-villages from time to time, as part of his duties. A young woman caught his eye there, and although she was already in love with a man of her tribe, the inspector's authority had apparently had enough weight to make her leave her people and marry him in town. Over the next 5 or 10 years, she bore him 3 kids, one of them being Celeste's great-grandfather. Then, one day, she abandoned them all and went back to her man and her people.

This story stayed in Celeste's family because her great-grandfather always told it with great anger. In his view, the inspector had brought his mother to civilization, giving her a "real" house and taking her away from "the wild"... And she had paid him by abandoning him and his children. I imagine it must have been hard for a little boy to understand this abandonment, especially growing up with such a father... Even for the grown man he became it was obviously impossible. This is probably the reason why neither her name nor her people's are remembered in the family.

Marilena la malabarista

Conozco una muchacha
requeteachicharrada
que con el fuego juega
y se mea en la cama.

Sus hombres: un patrón.
todos machos de acción
tocaos en la cabeza.
Pero ¡guau, qué erección!

Ojalá espabilara,
se dejara 'e pavadas.
Al fin para problemas
el circo diario basta.

Another Poem

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West.
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

-- W. H. Auden

A babe unborn i grieve

A babe unborn i grieve
a hollow in my arms
a child never conceived
a love that i can't give
but that i have.