Although he defines himself as “disorganized,” there is no doubt that Juan C. López Cantos is a thoughtful and adept poet, who knows how to crystallize images of great literary density. The present “Notebook of Notebooks” is an excellent example of this.
At Zenda we present five poems from Notebooks of a Disordered Poet (Pre-Textos), by Juan C. López Cantos.
***
February 11
If you have heard of trains,
of those trains that only pass
once in a lifetime and never return
and you’re told it’s wise to catch them, as they say,
you’ll have heard of dead railways
where perhaps one night,
after all the stations have passed,
you wake up and discover
among the shadows of the carriage
that only the loneliness of your suitcase remains.
You’ll agree with me:
it would be fitting to put an end to these railway manias.
***
February 1
Undoubtedly, today is one
of those days when rain does not stop
pouring fire, hell with every drop.
You look outside, but you only see flames.
Flames sliding down your throat,
flames pressed against your chest,
flames pounding with pain
on the fourth thoracic vertebra, or wherever it is,
it doesn’t matter: today everything
the water falling is fire in the eyes.
This storm burns,
it hurts like the time that lies between
who we believed we were
and who we are.
This storm
burns because of the time that passes.
And your own weakness enrages you,
you, who enjoyed the wind
and the rain so much.
– Rainy Day –
***
July 10
Everything hidden in these signs
is begging to be now.
If it happened, if it was a wish,
it remains stored forever.
Is it perhaps relevant
that these dates be true,
those faces, those clouds?
No light or shadow would cast
whether the events had occurred
or had not.
– Poetry and Truth –
***
April 29
Not always the oasis,
nor the palm grove or the valley or the uncertain
naked dance at the desserts,
is a reason for joy. Be it
for the gray, blunt wasteland,
and empty as a proper name,
or for the infinite sickle in flames:
what for some is distraction,
for others is martyrdom.
***
August 24
Oleg Verniaiev, gold on the parallel bars.
It was an August night. The neighbor
went out in her underwear to hang the clothes.
She made two mistakes: loss
of verticality in the legs
and a tiny hop at the finish
as she carried toward the sky her magnesium-dusted hands.
The neighbor’s thigh sweated;
her lament could be heard among the crickets.
Writing a poem is similar,
I told myself, to the parallel-bars final:
to stretch the balance, to hum in underwear
and in the dismount to land with an imperceptible step,
almost always backward.
Sometimes success arrives, fleeting indeed
—, among the crickets,
like Oleg’s gold, like all golds.
– Olympic Games –
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Author: Juan C. López Cantos. Title: Notebooks of a Disordered Poet. Publisher: Pre-Textos. For sale: All his books.