Wild flowers. With a butterfly between the fingers and a sound of bees inside the skin

        On Nancy Morejón and Her Work
        

A Portrait of the Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Award Winner 2006
      
        Vera Čejkovska
        
        WILD FLOWERS. WITH A BUTTERFLY BETWEEN THE FINGERS
        AND A SOUND OF BEES INSIDE THE SKIN
      
        On Nancy Morejón and Her Work
        
        Universal conscience, the true meaning of human existence, has a face etched with deep scars.
        In one of those scars we can still see the long line of Africans in shackles, violently taken away from under the clear African sun, treated like merchandise at Europe’s ports, exchanged for American sugar, tobacco or coffee, and also like merchandise loaded onto ships sailing towards the New Continent, to meet the hardships of slavery…
        How many pounds of sugar did the White Man give for each stolen African body and soul?
        Did the number equal that of the burnt Indian bodies and souls for each cross raised on the New Continent? Red bodies and souls, which bled through another scar of conscience…
        But the continents—separated at the geological seams of the Globe hundreds of millions of years ago and then set afloat in the Ocean towards a haze of opportunities—connected again…
        ...in the brotherhood that Jesus secretly formed with the good Indian and African spirits—despite the Conquistadors and their luxurious churches in America—the spirits that had withdrawn into the slaves’ tents and cottages, powerless in the face of violence…
        …on the island of Cuba that realized this was good, sheltered it and waited for its fruit, keeping it safe from harm…
        …in the poetry of Nancy Morejón, who was born on this island, on the 7th of August, 1944 in Havana. Nancy Morejón’s poetry, written in Spanish, encompasses more than fifteen books, beginning from Silences (Mutismos) published in 1962. And Nancy Morejón in her origin unites no fewer than three continents: Africa – from her father’s side, Europe and Asia (China) – from her mother’s side…
        Her poetry reveals a strong poetic talent, a talent that has an inexplicable and unstoppable urge to unite the separated parts of the primordial unity of Man and Universe. Morejón’s poetry bridges the imprudently dug out, horrible gaps between the races living on different continents, although only after examining those gaps, only after every pore of humiliation, abuse and slavery is felt; only after the fierce fling of the whip and the kick of the Master’s boot is felt as much as the urge for freedom, for conquering the land, the sea and the sky with one’s own breath. Thus, Nancy Morejón shapes the first of her most important poetic subject matters. Focused on the African slavery in particular (and not only in America but also in Africa), she creates poems a large number of which can be included into a world anthology on this topic. (Let’s just list Black Woman (Mujer Negra), I Love My Master (Amo a mi amo), Black Man (Negro), Farewell (Farewell), The Road to Guinea (El camino de Guinea), Famous Landscape (Paisaje célebre), Bamboo Cloak (Funda de bambula), Mississippi (Mississippi) etc.)
        The anthologised poem Persona (Persona) is the best proof that Nancy Morejón doesn’t explore this subject matter as an attempt to systematically cleanse the universal conscience, as if taking up antiracism as a task. Neither does she do it in a pathetic, self-pitying way. On the contrary, she conquers gaps etched in her own tissue, the task being to save the dignity of miracles and the essence of one own’s existence; to save them from the imprudent exaggerations of the ephemeral. In this poem Nancy Morejón identifies herself with a series of female characters tied into an organic chain which pierces the darkness, female characters in whose eyes the bright reflection of a heavenly bird can be seen.
        The persona Nancy Morejón assumes, deeply felt within her chthonic genetic codes, is the persona which creates poetry. And whenever this poetry touches upon history, mythology, politics, social and urban life of contemporary Cuba, her poems don’t avoid this contemporary Cuban context; she inscribes within her poetic tissue and firmly embeds elements rounded up into an organic entity—ethnic features, cultural differences, regardless of their Spanish, African or Indian origin—thus creating a unique Cuban identity. Nancy Morejón is simply a Cuban woman—a great creator—and as she clearly states in the poems Worlds (Mundos), Clarity (La Claridad), and Trophies (Trofeos), she understands Cuba as a home/a ship which sails through familiar or distant seas, or as she prefers to say, the omnipresent sea, upon which the sailing ship is constantly beaten by waves and storms of differences, only to arrive at a new, previously unforeseen reality, eventually resolved in 1959 with the Revolution that established basic human rights for everyone. Nancy Morejón understands Cuba as a ship sailing towards a myriad of new possibilities, a ship that shouldn’t be abandoned. This is emphasized in her outstanding poems dedicated to the Cuban immigrants who left Cuba after 1959, such as Anna Mendietta (Anna Mendietta) and Before the Mirror (Ante un espejo). It is up to man, whether a creator, a politician, or a commoner, to carry out the struggle for oneself in the places where one can recognize one’s roots, one’s image and one’s soul. Or, vice versa, in the places where one can recognize one’s roots, one’s image and one’s soul, whether those places be the very source of one’s suffering. This persistence takes Nancy Morejón back to the ancient, mythical prototypes or, to be more exact, it elevates her poetry to the newly created prototypes of human heroism. As a result of this, her poems dedicated to the everyday scenes reflect the life of her own family, as is the case in the poems My Mother (Madre), Supper (La cena), Coffee (El Café), and Premonition (Premonición), where her father, mother and relatives are presented as people who attempt to balance the hardship of the past with the hardship of the present with such perseverance that they seem to raise themselves above all human virtues.
        Nancy Morejón's poetry interests don't stop there, however. She also writes urban life poetry, intimate love poetry, erotic poetry and reflexive poetry.
        Although the backdrop to these poems is again the Cuban and Caribbean landscape in all of its many-coloured facets, Nancy Morejón here opens up circles of correspondence and unity with all phenomena of the physical world, the human psyche, the world's heritage and our present times.
        Urban themes are presented either in a condensed manner, as the object in a poem (for instance, Veranda in Havana / Un patio de la Havana), or tied into collages (as in the poem At a Meeting / Et una reunión, to mention just one) and interspersed like intermezzos throughout her many poems on different subjects. Most frequently created by using images, the poems—influenced by a concept of the avant-garde painters from the early 20th century—radiate an atmosphere laden with neo-Cuban mythology of urban life, in which one can hear echoes of the sounds and rhythms of the Spanish music and African spiritual and carnal rituals. In the cobbled street of the Cuban city of Morejón's, the Cuban woman Merceditas walks like a queen, dressed all in yellow that evokes sunflowers, yolk, wheat and a scented colibri, colubrine forever covering the ephemeral river waters with the silk of gold dust. The veranda in Havana in the poem of the same title has been painterly brought to the purest edges of a Bachelardesque phenomenon of space, which is here a reflection of the human position somewhere between the land that houses the ancestors' bones (the past) and the unhindered view towards the constellations (the myriad of open possibilities).
        Love flutters suddenly, like a swift cord in the air, tying together the bodies – two cool rabbits (as in the poem Swift cord / Cuerda velos); its vibration appears again whenever the lover arrives (as in the poem Thus Legends Speak / Así lo cuentan las leyendas), then it is also sought and recognized in seascapes (as in the poems: Polished Stone / Piedra pulida and Dreams / Ensoñaciones) then retreats in absence, protected by the icebergs of the Arctic (as in the poem Absence / Ausencia) or is torn between dogs' teeth and sea foam (as in the poem Remnants of Coral Island / Restos del Coral Island), in order to leave behind eternal traces, unexplained by any map of the visible elements (as emphasized in the poem Nautical Map / Carta nautica).
        The boy in Nancy Morejón's poetry is an embodiment of eroticism defined in its purest kind as an expression of the organic, the utmost aesthetics and awareness of them. The three above-mentioned elements are here given together with the evolutionary chains from time immemorial until today. In the anthologized poem To The Boy (A un muchacho), the boy raises his back from the beginning of life -- from the foaming tidal sea, whereas the woman strokes "his eyes / like grass among the brown Pacific shells"; she touches "his fine lips / like salt boiling in the sands". This boy is molded after the Biblical attributes of beauty, and speaks out himself Biblical hymns. This boy arouses to death the real woman – "the wet bird".
         Nancy Morejón introduces us to her poetic treatment of the everlasting philosophical themes of existence and creation through her intimate poem about the body, The Drum (El Tambar). One's own body is strong, bright like the full moon; it is a call to embrace the flames of passion; it is an ability to withstand the sacrifice and the smoke of extinction, an ability to exist as an island beaten by the irreversible water, but at the same time it is as soft as the body of a bird that sinks into the chasm of the sky. Be it as it may, that body cannot be clearly drawn by words or by any kind of light, because it always retains in itself a certain ungraspable physical or spiritual shape, a certain kind of freedom.
        Nancy Morejón enters the circle of life and death with this kind of body. Within that body, she resides in life, that "imaginary garden" from the poem Those Who Depart (Los que se van). It is a garden through the barred fence of which one can observe those who depart into death on a sailboat – death being a night full of speechless stars, a night in which something else is just about to be born. Nancy Morejón also depicts the circle of life and death through the symbol of a tree in the poem Uttered to a Tree (Expresamente a un árbol). It is a tree which was naturally transformed by growing within someone's heart and, in a time to come, it will grow above her own heart like wings of victory of her physical existence over death; in the meantime, her body saps from the tree's living juices.
        The poem comes out of this given and unbreakable link between body and nature, as well as out of the freedom interpreted as a continual realization of that connectedness. Nancy Morejón goes for a walk among the wild flowers, the pink and white oleanders and, upon first seeing them, she already notices a mirage on their petals, a mirage that gives birth to a poem, a poem which in its full swing will erase all differences in the surroundings (the landscape, the suburbs), but also all differences between those surroundings and the poet's self (a seeker after truth); it will realize the original all-encompassing unity (as in the poem Picking wild flowers / Arrancanto flores silvestres). This unity in the poem Walk (Paseo) is depicted as a space bordered by columns and mirrors, where an inside and an outside are being intertwined: you can freely come out inside, you can freely come in outside. In the poem A Piece of Paper (Hoja de papel), the poem arrives like a fish rushing towards the piece of paper, whereas the poet's eyes are the river. In the poem Robe (Manto), the poem escapes the used-up words like a victorious dolphin's tail.
        Hence the conclusion that the unexpected appearance of an idea for a poem through the room's window (as in the poem Carpet / Alfombra) as well as its short duration (as in Poems / Cantares and again, Carpet / Alfombra) is a result of the momentary non-perception of the link between body and nature, freedom. It seems that the choice to support the poem's appearance, to write poetry, is tightly connected to the conscious choice of the writer to throw off each forced breech of freedom, a conscious choice for peace. In order to defend that freedom and that peace, one "must love creation until death", as Nancy Morejón writes in the poem Trophies (Trofeos). Here she says that the very act of poetry writing has to be performed by someone who has "a butterfly between the fingers / and a sound of bees in the skin", someone who between "the sword and the carnations, loves utopias". In today's world of lost human values, of war and new divisions, this seems almost impossible. But, according to Nancy Morejón, there is a way to win, which is to cultivate the innocence of a child, to cultivate daydreaming and doubt, to arrogantly fly "a child's kite with a moon" into the heights. The one who wins will have "the freedom which is an everlasting flower", "a loaf of bread / and a few simple lights in the night", which are "a book / and a rose tightly held in the hands".
        The poetic subject in Nancy Morejón's poetry speaks most often in the first person singular, although there are also poems with an omniscient narrator. In some of her poems on African slavery, this persona is an expression of the African people's collective consciousness, created during the whole historic period of slavery. In the other poems, her persona is realized in the present times, as a cognitive and/or emotionally involved participant, observer or listener, who can most often be identified as the poet's own personality.
        In the poem Coffee (El Café), Nancy Morejón has given us, knowingly or unknowingly, the most complete illustration of her poetic language. This poetic language is a net knit from two kinds of threads. The first kind comprises simple statements and real images, sober threads (like the "sober thread" from Nancy's mother's childhood, a thread which according to the poem Coffee (El Café) has endured in the family). The second kind of thread is made of images, which through unusual similes, syntagmata and metaphors are closer to the surrealist and the constructivist poetic expression (these are the "golden gloves" seen in the morning sun above the "sugary hair" of the mother while she is serving coffee). The non-sober threads are sometimes stretched enough to hold a whole poem, as is the case with some of the shorter poems (The Beauty and the Poet / La bella y el poeta, Oregano / Oregano, Woman With Fish / Mujer con pescado, In La Quinta De Los Molinos / A Quinta De Los Molinos, Piece of Paper / Hoja de papel, Robe / Manto). However, in most of her poems, the sober and the non-sober threads are stretched equally, weaving a homogenous net, which points to the most real human condition: a monotonous and problematic everyday life, in which there are interspersed hopes and daydreams for something different (as in the poem Coffee (El Café): "distant seas", "a tree tall as a tower, / a mountain in flames, / and in its noble shade / the troubadour perhaps fell asleep"). Here one can recognize the great communicative capacity of Nancy Morejón's poems, their bursting into flames in front of the reader's recognition. Her poems' communicative capacity can also be seen in the fact that some of them have been set to music, and the songs were hits in Cuba (for instance, Marta Valdes with the song Te amo, which was written by Nancy Morejón).
        Nancy Morejón's poetry isn't the only thing that she uses to re-unite the circles. Professionally inclined towards the French language and literature (which she studied in Havana), and fluent in English since she was 13, she has translated many books into these two languages. She is an esteemed essayist and literary critic as well. She has authored two important studies on the renowned Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén, a book of reviews of Cuban and Caribbean literature, as well as five other books of articles and reviews. Studying and promoting Caribbean culture is also a part of her duties as counselor in the Casa de las Américas in Havana. She has written plays, poetic performances or mimetic recitals, and she has taken part in multimedia projects. Lately she has taken up drawing as well, illustrating some of her poetry books.
        She has received many awards for her work, both in Cuba and abroad. She has won the Cuban Critics' Prize (Premio de la Critica) three times: in 1986, in 1997 and in 2000. She received the Cuban National Prize for Literature in 2001. Several editions of her selected poems in Spanish have been published in Cuba and in other Caribbean and South American countries. She became a member of the Cuban Royal Academy of Language (Academia Cubana de la Lengua) in 1999. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, including English, French and German.
         Nancy Morejón has come here, into our Macedonian holy church, near the beautiful, glistening Ohrid Lake, to accept another great award for her openness towards all challenges of the past and present; for the poetic craft in her dealing with those challenges; for all the circles of unity she has created, and for the scattering of fresh, shimmering light over the Globe.
      
        Vera Čejkovska,
        Struga, 26th of August 2006
      
        Translated from Macedonian by: Magdalena Horvat