Selected Work by Gary Brower

THE MUSIC BOX

I

Keeping vigil at the hospital bed,
we see it happen--a comma followed by nothing,
a semi-coma by endless pause.
My father, breathless, becalmed.
In that instant, we turn from
the emotion of water
to airlessness.
My mother sees the end of the oxygen trail,
my daughter feels the pulseless paper arm,
nurses rush to bedside.
The issue of water returns.
His body is like a pet put to sleep
after biting its master
but we still want hope's heart to pump,
want to capture the final sigh,
search it for contraband words at the border,
extend it like rolled and kneaded air,
put it in his mouth like unleavened breath.
But we can neither push nor pull
the invisible ether of life.
In a nanosecond, the spark flies out.
He is carried away on his own exhalation,
holding us in his gasp.
In this ebb of all flows,
we try to shout down the wind
that has left the body
but cannot stop the pull of the moon
on the shadow of tides.
Our tears become an inland sea
where we can rescue the memory
of my father's reflection when needed,
shining in the smile of life
like a distant star brought near
that will not fade till our galaxy implodes
leaving a universe the size of a single breath
we cannot breathe.

II

Weeks later, my mother and I sort through
my father's tangible memories, intangible objects,
discover a wooden music box, carved owl on the front,
bought in Japan during return transit from the Korean War.
My mother says the box long ago lost its music
which he tried to coax out many times
before finally storing the voiceless memory
in catacombs of the past.
But as I open the box, reflecting in the mirror
inside the lid, it starts playing its one-song repertoire
as if a tiny amnesiac orchestra had suddenly awakened
to play the famous China Nights, shocking us into another era.
In our stark, sudden startle, we think
of this tinny tune as my father's voice
from the other side of the past.
We picture him walking into a Japanese souvenir shop,
circa 1951, where he finds his later ethereal voice
in the midst of hundreds of human and animal-shaped clocks,
all eyes back and forth in left-right timely tick-tock,
a disorienting vision of mass ocular movement,
while all music boxes tinkled their songs
in a distorted cacophony of notes.
He picks out the three-color wooden box,
leaves the vertigo of the shop,
opens the lid to see his eyes uncross
in the little mirror, hears Shinanoyoru*
which he whistles while he walks,
looking both ways, like an owl,
before crossing the street
into the military base at Camp Sasebo.

*Shinanoyoru=China Nights, famous song from the era of Japan's invasion of China.

El Sereno

I

Sand in the hourglass eyes of the dictator
which once seemed an endless desert,
was now trickling.
Everyone in Spain,
even stone gargoyles on
ancient cathedrals, knew
36 years of police-state rule
would soon end.

In this year before the dictator's death,
Franco became a parody of himself,
senile stage prop carted around by
Opus Dei technocrats
who ran the nation, pushing him forward
for balcony appearances
before the faithful of the fascist Falange,
while the people called him
The Mummy, his mouth open,
flies moving in and out,
like his cronies who moved
in and out of the Treasury
before the Fall.

Words were beginning
to slip between
the fingers of the
fascist fist:
political graffiti
painted at night,
banned street poetry,
underground slogans,
posters put up between rounds
of the sereno,
flyers handed out behind
the backs of the policia armada.

Illegal words of repressed languages,
prohibited in books, schools, newspapers,
found their stage on walls where they
performed their slogans as future melodrama.

In Galicia, street signs
in Spanish were repainted
in Galician Portuguese,
the name of the nationalist underground
scrawled everywhere:
O Povo Galego.

In catalonia,
catala' a la escola
was tatooed on the bodies
of buildings and car bumpers.

In the Basque country,
2 + 2=1 was everywhere,
which to euzkadi meant:
two French, two Spanish provinces
equaled one nation.

In the shadow of Franco's unraveling vampire empire,
as in old monster movies, the people were preparing
pitchforks and torches, the Writing on the Wall like
grafitti stakes in the heart of Nosferatu nightmare.

II

Angel: Like all poets you were a messenger,
your name from the Greek angelos with that meaning.
Do you remember?
We were returning one night
from the Club Oliver,
after a long talk
with director Carlos Saura
about his latest film,
Mi prima Angelica,
A satire wrapped
in a family comedy,
a symptom of loosening
censorship, showing how
a family handled
the fascist uncle
who insisted his broken arm
be set in a cast in Hitlerian salute.

Days later,
the cinema was bombed by
the Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey
fascio-terrorists funded by
the secret police, headed
by the infamous Blas PiNar.

But returning from the
Club Oliver late that night
we stopped for one last drink
at a cafe where a facing wall
flaunted the words
"Down with the dictator."

As we talked at table
a phalanx of men
suddenly barged through
the door, waiters rushing
to protest they were closing.
But the leader said:
"I'm Blas PiNar, and you'll
close when I tell you."
His bodyguard with bulging
shoulder-holstered pistols
beneath their jackets
made the waiters step back
in an almost-bow of fear,
offering tables and chairs
without a word.

Long-haired and bearded,
the only other customers,
we were in a large dining room
suddenly shrunk to the size of a matchbox
as they turned their gaze
on us
and you said quietly,
an angel of warning,
"I think it's time to go."

Out into the night,
we left money on the table,
Franco's counterfeit face on every coin
with the slogan: "Dictator by the grace of God."

As we walked away,
the brightly-lit, glass-box structure
of the cafe slowly receded
like a fading diorama
in the darkness.

We looked back
to see the waiters
doing their job
in a choreography of fear and hope,
the thugs like slowly crumbling gargoyles
on a medieval church.

When we arrived
at your building,
the gate locked at that hour,
we clapped for the sereno,
who answered by hitting
his baton on a wall.
When he arrived,
opened the gate,
we paid the tip
as he said:
"Let me know if you see
any subversives writing
illegal poetry
on the walls."

Gary Brower taught at the University of New Mexico, and is a specialist in Hispanic literature. His poetry (and translations) have appeared in many magazines, journals and broadsides, among them, Puerto Del Sol, Ann Arbor Review, Beatlick News, Sin Fronteras, and Central Avenue. He is one of the organizers of the Duende Poetry Series of Placitas, NM, where he lives. His poetry collection, The Book of Knots (2007, Destructible Heart Press) and Planting Trees in Terra Incognito, are available through Destructible Heart Press, Albuquerque or online at www.destructibleheart.com (April 08, June 09)

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