Cesareo Martínez’s “Land of Exodus” was published in his book El Sordo Cantar de Lima. The book, in part, deals with Martínez’s relationship to Lima as city, but also as migrant from outside the capital, and in the figures of work, migrancy, and their inherent contradictions. For more from Martínez, please see the excerpt of his book-length poem Cinco Razones Puras Para Comprometerse (Con la Huelga) (Five Pure Reasons to Side (With the Strike)) here.
Translated from Spanish by Ryan Greene
From Puno in flames,
toward Arequipa or Lima
we descend into the night.
C.M.
I.
As we ascended to the ruins of the night we carried our tongues
gnawed at by the dust of days.
Tongue of the living, so suddenly stuck!
Turbid with eagles, the phantasmal sky towers over us.
And a dry-branched wind erases our slight shadow.
And here we’ve arrived dragged by our senses, each
grasping at their own fate.
Ascension of worms.
Oh reality, living nakedness of the instant, puddle of dreams
deliciously
drowned on the other shore.
And we used to say: “Before morning (cursed sun)
the sign of Santa Bárbara shall fall
as a single, sweet cry.”
Then came the unsettledness.
The collapsing in the streets, the cries of the terrified
crowd overflowing the alleys.
II.
Being as we are, oh reversed door of the heart.
We were ash from the bonfires silenced by the verdict
of the raging years.
When we woke at the foot of the world faded
like a dirty heap of husks.
Or we used to go around—when you still could—our guitars held high
plucking
old men from the udders of death.
These days we fall like a cry of fresh leaves.
And we’ll no longer know how to restrain ourselves or we’ll die trying.
But we have the crashing in the street, the wild winds
trapped in the boquerón.
And time’s old stretch between the father who pursues
and the son who persists.
III.
Now tell me, watchman:
What other landfills should we urge our feet toward, assured
of our path thus consumed?
On this shore the day’s mouth vomits out squirming ardor.
From yesterday a torrent of shrieking voices rises up,
only to hammer at our ears,
and so, we’ll never dream again.
Tell me why the flocks down on the hillside are yellowing,
what does the women’s tangled hair
show us?
You went around stirring up evils for your daily consumption
and upon you falls
the collapse of the seasons.
It’s drought.
The chiquitines, stick-lipped, look back up at the sun
silent,
and a newborn vicuña’s white eye torments them.
Don’t speak!
Because your silence is the growing moss and your simple
gaze will be our word
IV.
What’s that which advances both senseless and soundless, cloud
or nightmare?
Ah, my eyes that have seen the falcon born and grow,
and in its clasped
talons the writhing snake.
That have seen well-trained vines and deep wine presses.
Because I remember the smooth pond waters which
the throat
lapped and the bell tower when, late afternoon
in the central plaza
the town hall was burning to call down the rain.
We’d thrown the town priest on a bald
donkey.
It was then when a thousand stories were spun
about the jornalero swallowed by the mine,
who, perched high in the night, would flap his arms out
through the windows.
And who, at twilight, would sorrowfully measure
our shadows.
V.
Oh winds. New and old winds
Living murmurs in a dead ear
We drew ourselves to the common things with a certain
distance
The common things were our only sustenance
All that’s left of those skies are brown fields (burned
stems of grass
illuminating the deserted patios)
and the house we abandoned for the growing scarcity.
As we ascended to these ruins (the ruins of the night) we were
scattered like skittering vermin.
Neither bird’s wing nor skin’s scent.
Everything hidden in shadow:
Our souls’ flight over the roofs, over
the March puddles,
chasing the single drop of water that soaks us,
chasing the great splintering dream.