Adrian Castro

The Cantos

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead."

-Albert Einstein

(continued from last issue...)

VII.

This is only a greeting
short shout out to our sister
to our helmet of calabash
whose face is a calligraphy
of red & white circles
tiers of tears of chalk
cascadas de cascarilla fúnfün
hojas of rojo deep
in the grooves of our heads
Our crown/ adé beaded with glass
ella with fountains of' cowries crying like
strands of four virgin tufts
braided at that
cocolo at that –
Dada. . .

VIII.

Son los jimaguas son dos jimaguas
(kere kere yan)
son los jimaguas son dos jimaguas
(kere kere yan) –
bit by bit you see twins
become chiefs of scattered cliffs
hills shaped like practical jokes
sometimes a pebble
sometimes a stone
We see these twins become
patrons
of peculiar births
Esos with births peculiar
spill balls of candy–

Imagine
the river's surprise seeing
two children wrapped in rainbows
spring from her spring---
Bells gongs/agogo agó ting tunes in 6/8

But todo el mundo
eventually loves a twin
people con their jimagua
their favorito
ldowú
even
if they were born
solo y solito

IX.

We purchased a piece of thunder
a ki-lak-um of ilú/ tambor
We caught the thundercelt
in its rapid descension to
the dance of flames

We've seen the face of power
inside the inverted pilón
mortar con(secretos)
There were certain shadows
of caudillos on white horses –
Trujillo before his last date with the mistress
Batista entering one of his casinos
Barrientos posing with el Ché
Diaz Ordáz & corpses of 300 students
Videla surrounded by Plaza de Mayo mothers
Somoza slipping on a banana from United Fruit
Rios Montt wearing the cloth of countless massacred indios
Fidel is surfing the Gulf on a raft with his favorite cow
There were certain shadows
of the ceiba tree where they hung themselves
within the inverted pilón
mortar con(secretos)
After the tyranny
there are so few places to go
places to sing
eat gourds of kimbombó & kalalú
kalalú y kimbombó

We purchased a pinch of
kin-ki-lak kin-ki-lak kin-ki-lak
Who would be struck by red thunder
being summoned by goatskin?
And how would the first flame
arrive at the throne?
A palma showed us its kingdom –
we were smiling like red-vested mummies
like dancing worms
in a puddle of stones
pile of water
streams of smoke
smoke of streams sending signs
estamos vivito y coleando
this culture is still burning fresco
cool y caliente like guaguancó/columbia/yambú
Muñequitos de Matanzas style
like bomba y plena
Cepeda style
like merengue
Ventura style

There were certain shadows
of the imprisonment of Masayá
of the day he found Olufina's horse
on the path to the big mortar
on his way to greet
him
The horse had been missing for some time
But just as Masayá was approaching the throne
Olufina's guards saw riding the stolen horse
(ki-ti-tak ki-ti-tak ki-ti-tak)

saw him as a thief
(ki-ti-tak ki-ti-tak)
saw him prisoner
(kó-kó-kóóóó)
Don Masayá stated his case to small burned stones
He remained prisoner with a pen as a pillow
& white cloth
Yet mothers were giving birth to death
crops wilted the river
was now a snake of clay

A poet with yellow & green tongue & wrists beaded
told Olufina there was someone
wrongly wrapped in iron boxes
someone of some relation
This retribution
was the source of much trouble
Masayá would later brand a poem
unto the turtle's shell
offer it to Olufina ---
". . .so long you kept me hidden
& never saw my face
When would you've realized that I
did not steal yr horse
that I came to yr land to greet you
& bring you a gift. . ."

El pueblo dice: Obakosó o
& drums summon thunder
dicen: Ohakosó o
& stones rain from the sky
dicen: Obakosó o

& the caudillo dangles from a ceiba
dicen: Obakosó o
& the old memory is the new
dicen: Obakosó o
& the new memory crackles
dice Masayá: Obakosó o
& odu burns beyond

X.

I. COTTON

We are still arriving at this
side of the gulf
draped with white wool
Clouds of cotton lick our skin
this is after all
how we hope the year to swell
to he tutu atoned
These tufts of peace dangle
from our hands
We don't see them or
we forgot what they look like
but all we need to ting the memory
is the white hair of viejos y viejas–
they walked through the pewter door
with pelts of pearl goatskin above
it touched their heads
it was how they got that way
The story is true

2. FROM COTTON TO CLOTH

There were 16 windows with
panes of cotton tufts–
we saw them yawn like several wide fields soft
dented hills with cutlass on their apex
ceiba with a dove-shaped
treehouse
where the sun beamed through its eyes forming
two slowly sonorous circles
on the cloth floor
rhythm lazy like those
who live
by their wisdom

3. EWÉ

When your head is too hot
bathe under umbrellas of almond leaves
mucho/cha lime chalk
y chacho
be cooool
If the headache persists
trap a leaf of prodigiosa
inside yr white hat kufi or sombrero
(y pa' que fue eso!)

4. HAIKU FOR WAR

Has the time come for
sabers to ride his horse? But
where are herbs of truce?

5. SNAIL

Oye
it's not so much that the snail
carries a home on its happy trails
but that it does this
with patience
like clearing paths of broken rhythm
leaving a trail of luster
trail of wisdom

The first migrants brought
from the other world
sus tierras
wrapped in snail shell
some soil & spread the first mound
(fue la creation of criollos with hyphens)
They declared their space–
built hands to grip scrolls of' joy
stir snakes of sadness
gather latters of serenity
quarter-moons of warriors
while the sun lit candles to compassion
We
did this
galloping
on a snail

6. CAUL

The kid was born
in a caul the
ruin shall be
if they sprinkle hot
palm oil on the head
the shroud shall be sliced
they will burn with the slightest tropical sun
se acabó/adagbó
salakó

7. LA VIEJITA CHISELS AWAY

One voice spilled its breath
into the womb

La vieja sat on her rocking chair
with the tail from her son's horse
With a mellow whisk
the butterflies circling her head
then danced towards that womb
as if they got the idea from her white hair
as if each flutter finished the sculpture
as if the sculpture was shaped in her head

8. ALBINO

We sat among large bleached stones littered
on the river with body
like snake
scales y todo
A bearded viejo with white guayabera
cane headed nacar/pearl
eyes strung with clouds
swirled to our huddle
He said el rio no se rie
stones of honey don't spring their joy
fish y cocodrilos forgot the tradition
of oracles porque
baba mí remains inside an iron box
the box encircles peace & knowledge
but knowledge & peace must he free to
penetrate the cream color of our bones
The poem must tell y spell the story
words must dance with memory
our memory keeps
swelling
¿Sabes?

XI.

This story could take place
inside a caramel cave
large amber balls dangle faithfully
above the entrance where
there's a copper key
to another kingdom

She sat on the edge
of her home
stirring a bowl of amalá
She recalled the tale
of her headtie &
why
it covered her ears–

Years had passed since she was married to a rumbero
& olubatá with one hand red the left white whose
sound was sublime whose rhythm smoked stones of
tones But he was always off at some rumbón crack–
ing goatskin He was never home never tranquilo
So she asked her good friend who had honey swim–
ming through her veins & was hip to such mysteries
to find a way to keep el sublime home el sublime to
herself Her girlfriend suggested she cook him his
favorite dish of amalá But instead of putting meat
she should cut off her ear (eh?) her ear cut off so he
will always listen to her So she did this And when
he came home sat down to eat he wondered why she
had a headtie covering even her ears And what was
that stain on her left side anyways El Sublime tore
the cloth from her head He was horrified at the
empty hole & sent her off bien lejo This is where
she stayed––away from most people

This could be a cave
where a lady who severed her ear
fed it to her husband
covers her ear everyday
to remember that she must be
heard

Editor's Note:

To read Adrian Castro is to plunge into the innerspeak of the collective. His poetry entices; is alluring. If you have not plugged your inner ears with wax, if you have not bound yourself to convention’s mast, you will cast yourself into the exquisite turbulence of his verse. Those waters, however, are not soft. Your beliefs can be pushed into your face if you do not keep them tightly together or set them aside. Your notions of prosody, metaphor and ethnocentric image will be broken on the outcroppings of his narrative – and it hurts so good! There is, too, the pleasure/pain of the stretched membranes of your inner ear when they resonate/reproduce the ritualistic drumming, the incantations, the choruses of ancient and modern tongues as you are pulled down, engulfed in the whirlpools, the liquid magical theater of his poetic soul.

Quien es? Ta ni omode yi? Who is this small boy, this youthful pluralingual singer of songs; this lyrical latino griot? Hmph, this one no be small-o! This man’s verse is as large as his spirit – a spirit who straddles three continents. The romantics among us may hear in his song a hint of Garcia Lorca, or even Jorge Luis Borges, but all that is flamenco or tango is alloyed, like zinc to copper, to Merengue, UPA, IFA and Jazz.

Others may liken his undersong to Niyi Osundare’s, for his poetry is not to be read, but sung, chanted and even danced! But these comparisons fall short, as a memory is less than the event experienced in the moment.

This poet is full and his verse is likewise fat, not with the technical wizardry of trilingualism or the dilettantish apothegms of the dabbler, but with the wisdom of the river and the forest. He is the “old-man-boy who sits on the curb laughing in spurts.” He is Don Masayá who never follows his own footsteps. He is the chosen of Oshun, who wears the crown that awakens all pleasure, and snared by her sweetness was cleaned inside out and filled with the Spirit of Earth that wanders freely. He is a father of secrets!

In his book, “Cantos to Blood and Honey”, Castro sketches out the contoured spaces of his lifepoem. In his tour de force, the 16 part “Cantos”, all that he is and to that which he aspires are evident in the distillate lines, the saws and shibboleths of its serialized divisions; each poem a pearl by itself, but strung with a master’s hand into a strand of great beauty. As he strives to personify wisdom, so do his poems embody/resurrect voices long dead:

They smithied a message on white cloth
signed it with honey & basil
They said: "give us a brush a pen
drums or a chekeré
the path will take you there ..."
signed "M & M"
So the gulf was narrowed
with machetes of sound
So it was draped in white cloth
Mario y Machito lit the Afro-Cuban
& smoke the jazz
The artists promised access
to words on the chain
link by link
to the tune of the dancing knife
they said
dancing outside makes
thorns disappear

His occasional animal familiars betray the gentleness and innocence of his worldview; his hunger for new adventure is captured in the physical pacing and body awareness of his cadences and meter:

On our way home to the stretched earth
we saw a family of deer
by the hissing creek
We understood this to be an omen
of abundance
for the deer has many stories to tell
& a belly full of metaphors

His minimalist icons and images are stretched and tensed like the vocal folds of the Ewi praise singer whose pitch patterns carry a primal message in the syllables that drop easily, like ripe leaves, from his tongue.

First you must puff libations to silence
invocations to stealth
There is enough static
enough exhaust
markets have become too big
the fruteros
la negra who sold ekó y cheketé
don't emanate from their albino cloth
the scent of sacred mysteries
Las antenas get jammed
our antennas se trocan

The omniphonic tonality and the polyrhythms of his runic stanzas, like the Spanish and Yoruba which season his English, designate different aspects of truth, or reality, separate then blending; pointing to an underlying unity – indeed, a great mystery.

Adrian Castro, babalawo, musician and accomplished poet, is a luminous body moving through our literary spaces, and like a thunderstone, he bears watching... and reading! We are pleased to include him into the Asili family.

J.McNair

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©1997-2005 by Adrian Castro