There it was: I Was Forsook. Signed: Aurelio Anceis.
He opened the book. Was hit by the unforeseeable. By way of a preface, two lines from a medieval poem by Pero Guterres:
They all say God never sinned,
but mortally I see him sin.
What was this? He turned the page. Read:
CRUMBS
Word-crumbs
rounded and
polished
by the fingers of silence,
with the inflamed accuracy of
beads in a rosary
on the star-map of
an oilskin tablecloth.
Crumbs like these
can save hands.
He read:
CRUSADE
I the warrior thank you,
my God,
for crippling me.
I was a good shot,
but you, Lord,
direct a bullet with your eyes:
in the rifle’s soul,
an hallelujah caws.
Commander Dez would recite the poem ‘Crusade’ that evening at a literary gathering in Rita Angélica’s home. Everyone was amazed. Somebody had just dedicated a piece of nonsense to Christopher Columbus. They were all sitting around in armchairs decorated with chintz. They knew he was forthright. They still remembered the day he read Pemán’s ‘Beast and the Angel’, which sounded like a further declaration of war. But this poem. .
They were stunned. Rita suggested, ‘It’s very different from your previous work.’
You could say that again! He read:
CONCENTRATION CAMP (I)
Your rays
this beautiful Sunday morning
are like a divine roving eye
moments before the attack.
He read:
CONCENTRATION CAMP (II)
You’re like the house-cat, Lord,
which doesn’t go out to hunt,
but makes corpses
to play with.
He read:
BURNING BOOKS
As the fruit falls,
the emptiness is not left alone.
Why else
this itching of the eyes?
He lifts the receiver. Dials an internal number. He can’t picture the visitor. Can’t see his face. He’s too anxious. Tells his secretary, ‘The guy waiting in a sailor’s hat and coat, don’t let him leave.’
‘Why are you so angry with God?’
The cough that exploded violently from his chest, which Anceis suppressed by placing a handkerchief over his mouth, didn’t make him any weaker. Rather it suggested he had little to lose. Dez the censor finally understood the unusual precision, the physiological composition, of certain passages. Like this one from ‘The Fisherman Remembers the Matchstick-maker’:
The ball of spit won’t come out,
strikes against glass-paper lips
and ignites like failed phosphorus
in the white Nova Scotia night.
After the coughing fit, he was again strong enough to speak.
‘What do you think? I censured myself before coming here,’ said Aurelio Anceis suddenly. ‘Imagine a verse that simply reproduced the legend on official coins: “Caudillo of Spain by the grace of God”. This excess is overt blasphemy. The total lack of God is an excess and excess, a terrible lack. Which leads to a second verse, an elementary question: “Could I speak to the Boss, please?”’
‘You did well to censure that,’ said Dez ironically. ‘It would have been unpublishable. But the sense of unease, the constant allusions to defeat. This poem entitled “News of Defeat”. . You could have found another date that wasn’t the 1st of April. You discourage the victors, so imagine the losers. This other one that speaks of the 18th of July. You should be more careful. Coming here. Talking about it.’
Aurelio Anceis’ face had a knotty seriousness. He didn’t move and his breathing, a loud, inner bubbling, sounded like that of someone living inside him. His eyes, half-closed, seemed to have landed on gaps in his rough skin, like shiny beetles attracted by his elongated eyelashes.
‘In the poem about a doris, there’s some respite at least: “The lonely fisherman constructs a place with his oars. . Constructing somewhere with a lonely fisherman from Halifax.”’
‘You think? Do you know what a doris is?’
‘I do now. I asked. Thanks to you. Poetry’s mission is also to inform.’
Dez the censor stood up and went over to the window. He referred to the labourers, all the people in the street, ‘Everybody keeps a safe distance. Everybody except for the poets. Those who reveal the inner sanctuary, get to say the unspeakable.’
Aurelio Anceis watched his hand moving like a baton.
‘They’re unaware,’ Dez continued, ‘of a metaphysical change in history. From being to time, and from time to being. Off with time!’ He rubbed his hands. A way of applauding himself, thought Anceis. And then lamented, ‘They think I’m talking about watchmaking. Makes no difference. Your poems, Mr Anceis, are extraordinary!’
He fell silent. Looked at him. He was waiting for some kind of reaction. That was a real compliment, thought Anceis. But he didn’t say anything.
‘In short, I’ll do whatever it takes to publish them.’ And he added jokingly, ‘If necessary, we’ll move heaven and earth!’
Then Anceis had a sense of foreboding. Something that sprang up in his intestines like a biological warning and affected his poems. Suddenly the reason he was there ceased to be relevant. He held his sailor’s hat, turning it slowly, not always in the same direction, but like someone steering. He stood up, put on his hat and made to take back the original. Dez got there first. ‘Extraordinary.’ He opened the folder and read an extract he didn’t know, but pretended he did. He recited the last bit as if he knew it off by heart.
Silent woman of Godthab,
I can hear the purple pigment of your eyes,
the thread of your murmur
linking a long, luminous word I don’t understand.
Blessing on the kayak leading this needle through the sheets of ice.
‘Mysterious,’ said Dez. ‘There’s something moving.’
Anceis watched him silently.
‘Godthab?’ asked the censor. ‘Somewhere to do with God?’
‘It’s a port in Greenland.’
Not wanting to be subjected to a poetic interrogation, he volunteered a few bare details.
‘Most of the cod-fishing fleet refuels in St Pierre, St John’s or Nova Scotia. I spent time on a ship that went a little further, to the Davis Strait, on the edge of the Arctic Polar Circle. We stopped over in Godthab.’
‘Just once?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So the Godthab woman really existed? Was she an Eskimo?’