GILBERTO WILFRED AND POR EDUARDO OWEN

I

(A today’s Owen)

Am reading the poems

Of two Owens

Who are no longer with us:

 

Gilberto and Wilfred

 

Masters of two very unlike languages

Proprietors of the encounters

Between parallels and meridians

In two distinctive parts of the world:

Mexico and Great Britain:

 

Like in my case

The Celts brought their genes

Into this land we all share

But the Aztecs and the Anglo-Saxons

Adopted them

Brought them up

Fed them their cultures

And their different colour milks

 

Gilberto

Among many other beautiful thoughts

On life love and death

Tells me in “Elogio”:

 

“Las palabras más ricas,

Menguante aurirrosado de la luna,

Se me van por el lago, verticales,

En una temblorosa exaltación

A colgarse de ti.

 

Que los poetas-

Que todo lo sueñan-

Y los amantes-

Que lo tienen todo-

Son aquí tus mendigos humillados.”

 

Wilfred

Taking a worn out pencil

From one of the top pockets

Of his World War I British Army jacket

Like the ones I use

To keep a record of my golf strokes

Adds on “Happiness”:

 

“Ever again to breathe pure happiness,

The happiness our mothers gave us, boys?

To smile at nothings, needing no caress?

Have we not laughed too often since with joys?

Have we not wrought too sick and sorrowful wrongs

For her hands pardoning? The sun may cleanse,

And time, and starlight. Life will sing sweet songs,

And gods will show us pleasures more than men’s.”

 

I

An Owen

By-product of the days

Of the “Greenhouse effect”

“Hybrid cars” and “Google”

Close my eyes tight

Open my heart wide

To let my spirit free

And join Gilberto and Wilfred in Heaven

For a long minute

To dream some new verses together

As if we were members

Of the same Celtic Clan...

 

(Owen

[Originally “Owain”]

Means “Well born”

In Welsh...)

©EDUARDO OWEN