See our Andrade Feature
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Work by Steven Ford Brown can be found at the following websites:
Britannica Article
Cortland Review Issue 7
Cortland Review Issue 10
www.jacket.zip.com.au/
translations of Angel Gonzalez
the Marlboro Review
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Work by Steven Ford Brown can be found at the following websites:
Britannica Article
Cortland Review Issue 7
Cortland Review Issue 10
www.jacket.zip.com.au/
the Marlboro Review
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Critical writing by Steven Ford Brown at barnesandnoble.com:
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"Sunday" first appeared in Poetry. Copyright 1998 by the Modern Poetry Association. Reprinted with permission.
"Hydrographic Poem first appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review. Reprinted with permission.
Jorge Carrera Andrade
Hydrographic Poem
Everywhere in the world rivers seek each other,
spreading throughout the earth their glass trumpets.
Navigation charts contain
the blue biographies of rivers.
Equatorial hydrography
illustrated with fruits of the earth.
Ecuador: South America, in its parrot
stupor, dozes in your hoop of color.
From the tree-lined coast
embraced by the bow of a silly snake.
Mulatto coconut trees with flexible waists.
Banana trees with rosy entrails.
Forests pierced by parrots,
cane huts, homes of shore dwellers;
tamer of mosquitoes
and decapitator of coconuts.
Fierce mountain rivers:
waters that bite like spurs provoke
horses to rear up on hind feet.
Infant scribble of bridge where
each morning an Indian woman passes
carrying a pitcher of milk.
Eastern shores populated by partridges.
Turtles with eyes of stone,
gold washings,
and paralytic roots of science.
Rubber tree, with its deep wounds,
—staircase for Indians—,
soaring high into the sky.
Blonde immigrants
carrying seeds and rifles
in boats of rough wood.
Booming sound of plows
close to the great rivers.
Barefoot colonists see a rainbow reflected
in an earth combed with blessed furrows.
Sierra of toiling rivers,
sea coast of artisan rivers,
Orient of missionary rivers,
let us launch our ships on fresh waters!
- 1935
Sunday
Fruit seller church
seated at the corner of life:
crystal orange windows,
the sugar cane organ.
Angels: little chicks
of Mother Mary.
The blue-eyed bell
wanders off on bare feet
throughout the countryside.
Sun clock:
angelic burro with its innocent sex;
wind, in Sunday best,
bringing news from the mountains.
Indian women with loads of vegetables
embracing foreheads.
The sky rolls up its eyes
when it sees the church bell
run barefoot from the church.
- 1929
Sierra
Ears of corn, with canary bird wings,
plucked from roof beams.
Guinea pigs
deceive the illiterate silence
with bird squeaks and a dove-like cooing.
There is a silent rustling in the hut
as wind pushes at the door.
The fierce mountain
has opened —with ribs of lightning—
its dark umbrellas of cloud.
Francisco, Martin, Juan:
working the mountain plantation
are surprised by a downpour.
A shower of birds
falls shrieking into the tilled fields.
- 1929
Festival Of San Pedro
Sorrel horse, sorrel horse.
After a meal of plums,
a mad gallop toward the village
roofed with straw hats from the highlands.
The horseman carries a roll of wind
in the wing of his poncho.
Shouts in the street ruffle handbills
posted on windows of tobacco shops.
A drum roll of wind echoes in our ears.
Trees run Indian file up the hill.
A howl throws its lasso of ice
around the throat of silence.
The first house of the village
has a coiffure of lights.
The peons of Santa Prisca have come
in their plum-colored ponchos:
drunk on fireworks
they lean in the shoulders of doorways.
The Shouting Wheel! The Wheel of Lights! The Wheel!
Night with its brandy-colored eyes
dies pierced by rockets.
- 1929
Election Handbill for Green
Marine green, admiral of greens,
terrestrial green, comrade of farmhands,
numberless advance payments on everyone's happiness,
infinite sky of livestock grazing on cool eternities.
Thicket of submarine light
where plants, insects and birds consume their lives
in the silent love of a green god.
Green odor of fleshy agave
brewing in its vegetable cauldron,
a profound liquor
blended from rain and shadow.
Tropical plateau where the tattooed head
of a pineapple —with green plume— sweats.
Hunchbacked green shrubs,
poor relatives of the hills.
The green music of insects eternally sewing
a coarse cloth of conch grass,
where waders live in violins
amid the drumming of opaque little, green bullfrog drums.
A green anger of cactus,
the patience of trees that harvest in emerald nets
a miraculous catch of birds.
All this green appeasement of the world,
drowning itself in the sea, climbing mountains to the sky,
running through the river —school for nudity—
and in the nostalgic cow which is the wind.
- 1935
Translated by Steven Ford Brown
