In the 1990s, I worked with the Argentinean Ministry
of Health toward improvements in their healthcare system. At the conclusion of
my first visit to Buenos Aires, a colleague who had read my poetry gave me a book
entitled “La ùltima Inocencia “as a
gift.
“You probably do not know Alejandra Pizarnik’s work”
he said, “She is our femme fatale poet. I found the first edition of her book,
published in 1956. I think you will like it.”
I read the book during my flight back. One poem
stood out entitles “La de los Ojos Abiertos“(The
One with Open Eyes) and I read it a few times at 40,000 feet.
This weekend, as I was searching for a book, I came
across that copy and many memories of B. Aires kept me away from continuing my
search for the initial book. So, I sat down and reread the above poem.
Pizarnik was a lost soul, often lost in her own
loneliness and despair about a life she did not figure out how to live. Or why
to live through it. And she put an end to it at age 36, but her poetry
continued to hold a special place in modern Argentinean poetry. Thirty years
after my first reading of “La de los Ojos
Abiertos“, I found new meanings to her imagery. Here are a few lines from that poem and an
attempt to translation to English:
La vida juega en la plaza
Con el ser que nunca fui
(Life plays in the square
With the being that I never was)
Mi vida
Mi sola y aterida sangre
percute
en el mundo
(My life
My lonely and frozen blood
Beat in the
world)
… ... Pizarnik’s “open eyes” is an inverse metaphor;
rather, her depression of seeing her life pass without the achievements she
wanted would better be described as “eyes shut and chin touching the chest” reading her own tortured entrails.
And that thought surprisingly made me think of a photo I took, also in the
1990s on the streets of Taipei, Taiwan. There was a young woman, in front of a Buddhist
temple, holding a white umbrella. Perhaps she was leaving the traditional
written message for the spirits hoping for an answer. Perhaps she was just
there for no reason. And I could not see her eyes.
A few minutes later I wrote my feelings of the moment, in my own way:
In the shadow of a tree
I found the tree
In solitude
Yet unhurried
Under a white umbrella
Her smile
Remained tender
Yet unshared
In streets of concrete
A promise was left
To become a poem
Yet unread
And the river forgot
That in every flow
The old dance
Loses its foot
Unhurried
Unshared
A secret smile
Under a white
Umbrella
November 3, 2024
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024
