Translated by Thomas Ward
NOCTURNAL BAND
To those 80s Warriors
Under the transparent nocturnal sky
the sidewalks are burning
streetlights wink over the dirty
blue jeans of teenagers lost on the streets
and chiaroscuro parks and black jackets
between phosphorescent mists and the whitest craniums
white teeth and white fingers candied over by the herb
Their gazes glitter like belt buckles made of silver
drums fill the plazas bathed in oil
and terry cloth police.
At night, I go out. By day, I smell tear gas,
the crowd absorbs me with its angst
but I linger in spots of sunshine to breathe
without a cigarette to smoke / the cold freezes my limbs
and there is no place to rest to see
the red ants carrying bones
breadcrumbs / everything is walled in by worn-out beasts
solitary benches / broken by the silence and that blue
shell that separates me from you oh scraggy land
my body is only
an opaque and fleeting wake of craziness
in the natural order
uninterred eternal dust
And those flowers and those guys seduced by lines of white stuff
by the order. Oh scoundrels of this century!
America is an Acid; there are thousands of anguished people there
They who did not survive this unfinished war tell me the Law is cruel
this war where my band of lumberjacks tried
to demolish the thick columns of Justice, where
all that remained
were your corpulent thighs/ Oh Cecilia/ your derrière /
your fleshy face
and your heart breached after resisting the police
with an army of twisted metal
that were our bones after the fire
on an illusory highway where
the warm horses’ hearts fallen before
ours
did are still throbbing and
bleeding
despite their innocence/ their stout muscles
their dexterity in eluding the difficulties
that we now endure when darkness reigns
and the panic of the beasts of burden /
come closer
street by street/ zone by zone covered with
young people
bodies from my gang that have tasted the calamity
before the sun erases the traces and the debris
to which we were subjected.
Oh the blinding glare of horror! It will be better to leave
this city where we have never belonged
I no longer have a banner or multitudes
I am lost
among the buildings
among the streets
and street corners
among the big hills and dumps
wandering with your image filling my mind
(and you my little Sara you are like a rock n’ roll song in my bosom
smelling the basic paste that my band is taking in and thinking of you
up in heaven that you offer for a few coins)
What can I do? I bring a simple love
that does not calm me on the long trip
through soft sands
where I met you Oh sweet Cecilia
like the Chicha music you were singing
for me in those days when we were assaulting
striking destroying and twisting and turning on any
mat under the warm moon and the serene sea
that was twining in your blouse of clouds/ all ends
and this our enemies
have known/ they fucked us taking away the night
And alone I am staying/ dazed before breakfast
and the response that I am writing difficultly
because of the flickering of the sail
I am condemned to death/ they have thrown my shadow
to the sea
I am divinely desolate/ my soul grumbles like
a torrent
and it says to me while dying, KILL YOURSELF!!!
and silent rocks rolled
On the streets like a squadron preparing me for an
ambush
in the middle of day with transit police and paper
helicopters
They arrest me/ they throw me out/ and I get organized
and wander through
plazas and neighborhoods demolishing the thick columns of
Justice
while my band moves away
on land
as smoke
as dust
as shadows
as nothing…
(From: Arquitectura del espanto, 1988; Translation from: China Pop, 2015, 17-23)
NN
Today, Friday, I have left home
I bought what I needed/ I rented a suit / to be
far from that individual from recent days
How shall I explain
If José left to bring you flowers
at the hospital where you are resting
with your grey hairs
that I no longer caress or you were caressing
me, a little animal in your arms
Today, Friday, the newspapers announce catastrophes
but mine is twice as much
twice like a coin
that has the same weight
heads or tails
the same empty pain
that I never felt
I am sure that in the hospital
they will not tell me anything new
or anything old
nothing about that which today
I am suffering not even recorded on an electrocardiogram
that easily could be a beautiful letter
that you never wrote
nor can x-rays
capture the emptiness of this anguish
of waiting
Like possible liters of dextrose
that will purify
your body and return your voice
like two rivulets that
conjoin
from the kitchen to the street where I was playing a game of
five-a-side soccer
Today, Friday, I could go serenely to visit you
and surely I would not find you not find
any trace that would guide me to your bed
like when we were young I would run to your room
terrified from those stories you would tell me
at midnight
I no longer will find you with your white hands
trying to draw some bird
that you imitated in a song
like the songs in Quechua that you accompanied with your
magical guitar/ violin or harp that were unfamiliar
to my ears and the tongue of my
Mother
Today, Friday, I hope to see you as in my eternal dream
I see you outside my window
arriving tall young and calm like the bird’s song
at the daybreak
that fades away behind the door
(From: Arquitectura del espanto, 1988; Translation from: China Pop, 26-31)
Domingo de Ramos was born in Ica, Peru in 1960. He studied Sociology at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima and was a founding poet of the Kloaka Movement (1982-1984). Some of his poetic work captures the social context during the Peruvian Internal Conflict, beginning in 1980 and eventually claiming over 70,000 lives, most belonging to the indigenous people targeted by both sides of the civil war: Sendero Luminoso and the military. De Ramos was an up-close witness to the generalized violence of terrorist strikes, blackouts, assassinations, police actions, and curfews that defined life in Lima, Peru, during those years. He is presently involved in a poetic tribute to his mother, a large project, from which a few poems have started to circulate. De Ramos is now considered one of the premier poets of Peru. His poems have been translated into English, German, Italian, Finnish, and Danish.
Thomas Ward teaches Spanish and Latin American and Latino Studies at Loyola University Maryland. His most recent book, Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking was published this year by Arc-Humanities Press. He has become friends with Domingo de Ramos and translated the bilingual edition of China Pop, published by Carboard House Press in 2015.
Editor’s Note: For further reading on the critical reception of Domingo de Ramos, please see Olga Rodríguez-Ulloa’s essay, here.