Poems by Carlos Garrido Chalén

Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού

POETRY BY CARLOS HUGO GARRIDO CHALÉN, TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH is a lawyer, journalist, poet and writer. He’s the CEO and founder of the Unión Hispanomundial de Escritores (UHE), co-chair of the World Nations Writers Union from Kazakhstan, Universal Ambassador for Peace in Peru from the Circle of Universal Ambassadors for Peace in Geneva (Switzerland) and Paris (France), academic at the Royal Academy of Córdoba (Spain) and president in America of the Spain’s Poets Association. He is an Honorary Doctor from several universities and has been the recipient of honors, distinctions and awards from different institutions worldwide.

CONFESSIONS OF A TREE
(OF CARLOS H. GARRIDO CHALÉN)

Before being a man
I have been a good tree
on whose branches grew with the season
the evening and its shadows.

Back then I had my own stalks
and my own roots
and I served as a goldfinches’ park.
It didn’t hurt me when lovers
carved hearts on my bark
to cross with arrows their dreams
into mine.

I was a firm tree
and nothing I cherished more
than seeing my fruits
defeating hunger in a child’s mouth.
I cherished more
than seeing my fruits
defeating hunger in a child’s mouth.

I didn’t pick grapes from the hawthorn
or figs from the thistle.

My soul was vegetable
infinitely sensitive.

That was known by the crickets
who orchestrated my celebrations.

I was a tree for everyone. A vegetable trunk,
silent and majestic.

But over my sap grew
old illusions and my rage,
And I soared to infinity irrigated
by the tears of the firmament itself,
and I stoically resisted

the weather’s ingratitude
and its get-togethers.

I was a tree eager to be a tree!
My language was the language that
geraniums secretly whispered
and I was for them a big brother
surrounded by eucalyptus and gardenias.

I don’t know if I have been an oak
or perhaps a green-leaved guaiacum.

I just kown that it’s my pleasure
to be the calandra larks’ umbrela
There were many things I got to know then
and sometimes I felt like lifting up my roots
and start to fly with the seagulls
and since I was in the wilderness
I longed for the enchantment of the fields

and I was fond to share my loneliness
with the evening.

You won’t believe this, but I, before becoming
a passer-by
– being that silent and majestic tree-
had a human heart.

SPRING COMES CLAD IN GREEN AND ROAD
(OF CARLOS H. GARRIDO CHALÉN)

I always wait for Spring in my poet’s finery
because she comes clad in green and road
When she arrives, I offer my devotion and compliments
and I climb into her bodice of roses and magnolias,
to know her moans from inside
Her path is a landscape of green;
and of poppy and hymn, her beat.

I like her because she always comes back,
bringing God to spur on and boost life
and she’s nacre and party; light and daybreak,
her destiny.

When she arrives clad in green and road,
I celebrate her dressed in eucalyptus and aoidos,
in tree, in gardenia, in myrtle,
sea and river
because love comes to my shores
and is an Oregon pine
this song of mine.

HOW GOD CREATED POETS
(OF CARLOS H. GARRIDO CHALÉN)

When God made light, he first
basked in his glory by looking
at dawn;
and it is said that off his light
luminosos shafts
gave unfathomable colors
to the Heavens.

The Earth was covered in his splendour
and the Great Maker of the Universe
had a brilliant notion:
“From that light I have just created,
basking in my Omnipotent brightness
I’ll create the soul of the best hearts”

– He promised to himself
full of blueberries and lightning
and made them the incendiary molecules
from which conquerors and brave ones
are made of.

And so he was satisfied and ready to enter
his thunder and miracle shelter
and he pondered and said:
“Why not taking this moment
to make the soul of great and true rulers”

He took a part of heaven
and mixed it with the unmistakable air
of this earth.

– Be the light in the soul
of prophets and warriors done he ordered.

– Be from this majestic light
– he noted, immensely satisfied-
the earth molecules done
of the forerunners and the heroes,
from the fighters and the ideologists,
of thinkers and goldfinches.

From this very immensity,
from the scent of sleepless winds,
may be done the heart of those who love,
and the heart of those who suffer the pain
of their peoples
and take to their room a hope
may be sculpted the soul and heart
of the sincere and magnanimous beings,
who are pained by others’ pain
and cry their misfortune.

– Let it be formed – he added-
the soul and heart of the true leaders
for their voice and their hope never falter.
And when – mad with love-

God’s soul noticed his inspiration
overflowing,
he created the poets’ heart,
and put in it the colours of all his landscapes
and the unending sweetness
of mango trees’ forests.

I INVITE GOD TO GO DOWN FOR BLACKBERRIES (OF CARLOS H. GARRIDO CHALÉN)

Because I have survived a war
not yet declared
and I’m the inventor of an imagined city
never conquered,
my house is built in the summit
of a mountain with no peak
from where I daily summon bats
to partake my sadness.
I’m an open pit miner
and explorer of unexpected fires.

I search for treasures in
rough mountains
where the indomitable condor
made its nest
and I rejoice with my own
sparrow hawk’s ways
climbing up the abyss.

Hermit, loneliness hunter,
I sometimes take shelter
in any molusk’s empty valve
and I ceaselessly leap on
the thirty-two routes
in which God divided the horizon.
I am a dam built at any port’s entrance
and I love with all my might
by looking a seagull
on its way back.

My hut is on the edge of a cliff
from which I sometimes fall off
into nothingness
and I suffer the bonfire’s sadness.

Nobody knows that I am one
of the Three Wise Men
who worshipped Jesus
(a perpendicular line traced
from a regular polygon’s center
to any of its sides).

I take the horses to the pasture
and hard as a flint
I cast my shadow at midday
to the opposite direction.
I am perhaps the stone holding
a net’s buoy that stations
the height of illusion
to interview the muses
of that Parnassus so close to its heart.
Because of that, I sow acacias
in the sheepfold
and magnolias in the rain
and since my health is that of a half dead fish
I step in between fighters
so that they make peace
and though I’m irreverent
I respect nature’s order
and since I’m a thrush that has learned
to repeat sounds
I’m at the entrance of a tunnel
to which a crowd comes hastily
and I run away from satraps.