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El Sereno
(for poet Angel Gonzalez & a memory Madrid, 1974)
- 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 teaches 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)
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