After Rubén

Poems + Prose

Francisco Aragón

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781597098571
• eBook ISBN:
  9781597098168
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

This collection of poetry, prose, and translations explores Latinx and queer identity through homage to the great Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío.
After Rubén unfolds a decades-long journey braiding together the personal, the political and the historical. Throughout the text, acclaimed poet Francisco Aragon intersperses English-language translations and riffs of the Spanish-language master Rubén Darío. Whether it's biting portraits of public figures, or nuanced sketches of his father, Francisco Aragón has assembled his most expansive collection to date, evoking his native San Francisco, but also imagining ancestral spaces in Nicaragua.
Readers will encounter pieces that splice lines from literary forebearers, a moving elegy to a sibling, a surprising epistle from the grave. In short, After Rubén presents a complex and fascinating conversation surrounding poetry in the Americas—above all as it relates to Latinx and queer poetics.

II

KEOUGH HALL

November 9, 2016
University of Notre Dame

“deplorables
knocking
at your door”

he shouted
the day
after—“build

the wall—
we’re
building

a wall
around
your room!”

minutes
felt
like hours

“cowards!”
you managed,
catching

a glimpse
by cracking
your door:

there were three
of them
scurrying

down the hall,
their faces
obscured . . .

your back
against
the wall, you slid

to the floor—
“Hail Mary . . .”
you began

whispering
to yourself
and back

they came their
laughter
louder

minutes
felt
like hours

and the thumping
in your chest—
his fist

pounding the door

for Gregory Jenn (’18)

THE INEVITABLE

I envy that tree.
It barely feels.
Envy even more
this stone
that hasn’t felt
for ages. Tell me
of an affliction
more acute
than breathing,
of something worse
than knowing
that we are, yet
knowing nothing,
unsure of which
path to take.
And what to make
of this sense
we’re on a wheel,
uncanny hunch
of bleaker things
to come, the only truth
one day we die?
We endure this life,
shadows, what we
ignore and hardly
suspect, skin that glows
like a shimmering piece
of fruit, visions
of a wreath
beside a tomb, all
the while without
a clue
of where we began,
where we go.

after Rubén Darío’s “Lo fatal”

TO GEORGE W. BUSH

2006

Should I quote the good
book you claim to know;

or perhaps our late bearded
bard—might these be ways

of reaching you? Primitive
modern, simple complex—

one part wily astute
animal, three parts owner

of a ranch: conglomeration
is what you are, poised

for another incursion.
Lean, strong specimen

of your breed, polite you
hardly read when not

in a saddle, or spreading manure.
You see a building in flames

as vital, progress a spewing
volcano. And where you point

and place your bullet
you stake the future—yours

and ours. And so:
not so fast. O there’s

no doubting the heft
of this nation: it moves it

shifts—a tremor travels
down to the tip

of the continent; you raise
your voice and it’s

bellowing we hear (The sky
is mine), stars in the east

sun in the west. People
are clothes, their cars,

Sunday attire at church,
a harbor lady lighting

the journey with a torch.
But America, sir,

is North, Central,
and South—delicate

wing of a beetle,
thundering sheet

of water (our cubs
are crossing

over). And though,
O man of bluest eye

you believe your truth,
it is not—you are not

the world

after Rubén Darío’s “A Roosevelt”

TENOCHTITLAN, 1523

an erasaure of Andrés Montoya

WIND & RAIN

And that day years ago—no
umbrella, the stroll
lasting four hours, your socks

soaked—doesn’t matter
you thought: crossing, re-crossing
the Thames on foot sheer

pleasure, coming upon
Leicester Square, that throng . . .
—What happened?

to a petite lady wearing glasses, but
before she could speak
a slick wall of coats

slowly parts and there
he was: plum-colored,
rolling past on a stretcher . . .

Moments later they cover his face.
The rest of your walk
a blur . . . —I think his heart

gave, said a man wearing
a tie, but those weren’t the ones
that spoke to you, still do:

poor chap, softly, her light-blue
hair in your eyes . . . and his wife.
I saw the ring. expecting him home

for supper

1985

Long and black, the streaks
of gray, aflutter in the light
wind as she prepares to tell

her story at the Federal Building:
reaching into a tattered sack
she pulls out a doll

missing an eye, balding—
singed face smudged with soot
from the smoke her home took in

as her village was being shelled.
Next she retrieves what’s left
of a book—a few pages

the borders brown, coming
apart in her hands: hesitant,
she raises one, starts to read aloud:

por la mañana sube el sol y calienta el día
la tierra nos da dónde vivir y qué comer
la vaca nos da leche para beber y hacer mantequilla

It’s her daughter’s lesson
the poem she read to her
the day they struck—

(in the morning the sun rises and warms the day
the earth provides a place to live and what to eat
the cow gives us milk to drink and churn butter with . . . )

. . . mid-way through, her voice begins
to shake—her words
like refugees exposed to the night shiver,

freeze: silence
swallows us all . . .
. . . her words, drifting

casualities,
gather and huddle
in my throat.

San Francisco

POEM WITH A PHRASE OF ISHERWOOD

2010, Arizona

Cruelty is sensual and stirs you
Governor, your name echoing the sludge
beneath your cities’ streets. It spurs

the pleasure you take
whenever your mouth nears
a mic, defending your law . . . your wall.

Cruelty is sensual and stirs you
Governor, we’ve noticed your face
its contortions and delicate sneer

times you’re asked to cut
certain ribbons—visit a dusty place
you’d rather avoid, out of the heat.

Cruelty is sensual and stirs you
Governor, the vision of your state
something you treasure in secret

though we’ve c...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• I
• II
• III
• IV
• V
• Appendix
• Notes to some of the poems and the essay
• Publications Acknowledgments
• Acknowledgments
• Biographical sketches
• Rubén’s Friends