for high voice and guitar (poems by Marjorie Agosín)
The works of Chilean poet and essayist Marjorie Agosín often deal with the terrible events in Latin America, particularly in her native land, of recent decades.
The title of this group of poems translates rather awkwardly to “The Disappeared Women.” Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and his counterparts in other countries, adopted a technique from Nazi Germany: those suspected of anti-government activities were simply kidnapped and killed. The government never acknowledged having taking them into custody, and their families were never officially informed of their fate, nor were they able to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones. This became so commonplace that the word “disappear” took on a completely new grammatical form: it became possible to say “they disappeared her” and “los desaparecidos” (the disappeared ones) became an everyday phrase.
I have chosen five of the original six poems on this topic, taken from Agosín’s book, Las zonas del dolor (The Zones of Pain). Her passionate and intimate poems bring these tragedies to life in a way that statistics or polemics cannot.
This song cycle was written at the request of soprano Eileen Moore, a member of the Moore-Better Duo.
| I Soy la desaparecida, en un país anochecido, sellado por los iracundos anaqueles de los desmemoriados. ¿Aún no me ves? ¿Aún no me oyes en esos peregrinajes pos las humareadas del espanto? Mírame, noches, días, mañanas insondables, cántame para que nadie me amenaze llámame para recuperar el nombre, los sonidos, la espesura de la piel nombrándome.No conspires con el olvido, derriba al silencio. Quiero ser la apaparecida y entre los laberintos regresar, volver nombrarme. Nómbrame. | I I am the disappeared woman, in a country grown dark, silenced by the wrathful cubbyholes of those with no memory. You still don’t see me? You still don’t hear me in those peregrinations through the dense smoke of terror? Look at me, nights, days, soundless tomorrows sing me so that no one may threaten me call me to give me back name, sounds, a covering of skin by naming me.Don’t conspire with oblivion, tear down the silence. I want to be the appeared woman from among the labyrinths come back, return name myself. Call my name. |
| II Encontrarla, hallarla, tenerla aunque sea su cuerpo una fábula mutilada, un equinoccio de heridas como leyendas.Encontrarla. Sentir su aliento. Imaginarla. Lejos de funerales e infiernos.Sujetarla para enterrarla como Dios manda con su nombre apegado a la greda con flores para su santo. | II Find her uncover her, hold her even though her body be a mutilated fable, an equinox of wounds like legends.Find her. Feel her breath. Imagine her. Far from funerals and infernos.Bind her to bury her as God commands with her name attached to the clay with flowers on her Saint’s Day. |
| III La sueño a orillas del camino, a orillas de un mar intermitente. Lleva peidras sin inscripciones bajo su manta de cielo, y su pelo coagulado abandonó la miel de antiguos presagios.Viene entre sus chales de sol y sombra, lleva golondrinas en sus bolsillos y migas violetas como faros, iluminando el sendero de sus antepasados.La sueño entre mis tinieblas llena de la vida, los espectros de la mala muerte revoltean, como los monstruos, los captores, pero yo la oigo y en los umbrales la abrazo. | III I dream her by roadsides by the shores of an intermittent sea. She carries stones with no inscriptions beneath her cloak of sky and her clotted hair has left behind the sweetness of ancient omens.She comes wrapped in shawls of sun and shadow, carrying swallows in her pockets and violet-colored crumbs like beacons illuminating the path of her ancestors.During my dark hours I dream her full of life specters of evil death are fluttering round her, like the monsters, the captors, but I hear her and on thresholds I embrace her. |
| IV Yo no tuve testigos para mi muerte. Nadie elaboró sacrilegios y epitafios. Nadie se acercó para una despedida oscurecida.A mi entierro, no se pudo asistir porque el silencio de la incertidumbre cubrió un cuerpo desvanedico, des- encontrado asomándose pérfido entre las neblinas.Las autoridades, me han desmentido. No aparezco en los huesudos murmullos de la morgue, No existo in los cardexes nadie me vió alejarme trastocada de mi país. Nadie plantó nombres bajo mis plantas. Soy una extraviada, una mano fugándose y maldecida. Soy de lluvia by de granads y cuando my nombran me aparezco porque a mi entierro nunca fuí. | IV I had no witnesses to my death. Nobody carried out rituals, wrote epitaphs. Nobody came near for a veiled farewell.No one could come to my burial because of the silence of uncertainty covered a body disappeared, dis- encountered rising up treacherous amid the mists.The authorities have concealed me. I do not appear among the morgue’s murmuring bones, I don’t exist in the Cardex files nobody saw me transmuted leaving my country. Nobody put numbers on the soles of my feet. I am a stray, a hand fleeing and accursed. I am made of rain and grenades and when they call my name I will appear because I never went to my own funeral. |
| V Madre mía sé que me llamas y que tus yemas cubren esas heridas, abiertas muertas y resucitadas una y otra vez.Cuando vendada me llevan a los cuartos del delirio. Es tu voz nueva, iluminada, que oigo tras los golpes desangrados como los árboles de un patio de verdugos.Madre mía yo duermo entre tus brazos y me asusto ante los puñales pero tú me recoges desde un fondo lleno de dagas y serpientes. | V Mother I know you are calling me and that your fingertips are covering those wounds, open dead and re-opened over and over again.When I am blindfolded they carry me to the rooms of delirium. It is your voice, new, luminous, that I hear after the bloodletting blows like trees in a patio of assassins.Mother I sleep in your arms and feel frightened by the knives but you gather me up from the abyss filled with daggers and serpents. |
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