Ali Calderon [Mexico]

 

Letter to the Corinthians
 
I’m not much, just barely
these blue days
this legion of nobodies
and this childhood sun,
trace of ruins.
The herds break with the silence
of the bells. It is Corinth.
We walk the town, preaching
the pallid hope, the compass rose.
We are alone. We erase ourselves
into the hidden memory of things.
Aimless, with only dogs following us.
What does it matter if Daniela and everything else are lost?
Night falls on Ephesus.
Isn’t that where the apostle wrote
that light and passing
anguish? I read
in everything that surrounds me
the signs of downfall.
I search again in my pockets. Nothing:
wounds, blows, open sores,
disjointed words, objects
forever detached from their names.
There is nothing, there is suspicion
of distant lights in the gulf,
signs perhaps imperceptible
which faintly, gloomily attest to
another possible reality
yet unlived, foreign, unapproachable
just now, one sky passes
and beneath the dark thrush
the icons gaze at us, indifferent.
 
(Translated by Ramón Flores Pinedo)
 
 
 
              Constantinople

[Church of the Holy Savoir in Chora]
 
Edirnekapi
4^th Century a Byzantine church
Outside the walls of Theodosius
are only dust ruined foundations
My elderly grandfather would always go
to the Lady of Our Carmen at eleven
Did he receive communion? Only hear mass?
The light of the stained glass windows falls on the frescoes:
it’s Jesus
multiplying the bread
there are some fish
also empty baskets
Someone beside me says “God”
but in the narthex nothing is heard but the echo
beneath the indifference
of a Christ Pantocrator
Time has worn down the glass
miniature mosaics
Where the Baptist stood a layer
of sand and mortar shows through
The wall was gold and lapis lazuli
now the tar
hidden fifteen centuries ago
behind images of apostles and saints
is lord and master of the parecclesion.
Plaster and limestone outline dark
Greek script: come to me you heavy laden
read the faint almost
invisible inscriptions
The cracks
The domes above the healing
of the paralytic flake off
The brick the stone
That’s when these closing lines come to mind:
My father answered – “that’s just décor;
the sculpture is you” – and he pointed to my chest.
 
(Translated by Jeremy Padden)
 
 
 
Now that the night
 
Now that the night is a carnivorous flower of shadows
and that every glimmer in the darkness
invokes old wounds that humiliated my flesh
N o w that silence and day are
the ashes that inhabit me you are probably
a necklace of flowers and scratches
calmed down
unknown in other hands
Turned loose by the wind and spread out
a scandal must be lowering about your hair
Your earrings must be trembling to the terse rhythm of your laughter
and n o w must be a point in time
united forever between us
Now your stiletto heals must be inundating the house with their echo
you’re probably putting on your scarlet shade of gloss   your low-cut top
your subtle sweet perfume
Distance will be the n o w that extends beyond
that which is touched on by sight
and n o w
while I am consumed in this rarified air
and you remove your makeup in a slow spiral from your face
your nakedness burns beneath my eyelids
 
Now that your name is surrounded by dust and silence
that my words won’t change into flesh naming you
you will be an unfinished premonition
and you won’t have to appear suddenly if I think of you
n o w precisely n o w
n o w
I break down
 
(Translated by Gordon McNeer)
 
 
 
Author’s Bionote: 
*Alí Calderón was born in 1982 in Mexico City. He is a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, the founder and editor of the electronic literary magazine “Círculo de Poesía”. As editor of this journal he received in Russia the Andrei Bely Prize. He won in 2024 the Premio Iberoamericano de Bellas Artes de Poesía Carlos Pellicer para Obra Publicada (iberoamerican book of the year) for "El sin ventura Juan de Yuste", a book written in the Spanish Language of 16th Century.