ADSactly Poetry - A country that can be read between the lines II
A country that can be read between the lines II
Hello, dear readers.
From all genres, poetic, narrative and essays, the Venezuelan writers have raised their voices and have recorded in their work the phenomenon of migration that we suffer from, the corrupt and dictator government, social confrontation, hunger and disease, the division between brothers and friends; in short, the plague that is the Bolivarian Revolution.
That fragmentariness in the country, that division in which we have become, is found in the poem "Dos patrias" by the Venezuelan poet Arturo Gutiérrez Plaza, in his book Intensive care:
People are like that!
They listen,
rumored,
They hide behind the ferns.
Somebody passes by and says,
what they say.
They raise slogans,
they wave their wings,
birds of ill omen.
They are just whispers,
things that do not happen
No one knows anything behind my door.
From the same title reference is made to the idea of two countries, two countries in which apparently the same thing happens and rumor predominates. Rumor as a way of life, a weapon, a reinvention of reality. Apparently there are also in the two countries "slogans" and "harangues", slogans thrown in the air that serve to survive, words that are spilled so that they become true by use. The verses where we are told that "they hide behind the ferns" and "Nobody knows anything behind my door", make us think of the clandestine, the anonymity of the rumor, but also the risky thing that can mean knowing, talking .In Venezuela it is dangerous to comment, denounce, challenge:
There,
In the other country,
far,
you also live
they say
between the woodworm and the harangues
Here, there are only whispers,
False tremors,
things we do not hear,
that do not happen
Two homelands, two homelands I have:
Or are they both?
Then, with these verses, we discover that not only is the rumor but the creation and daily destruction of the memory, of the establishment of the misrepresentation. In the words of Alberto Barrera Tyszka (2015): "The quantity and speed of the news lead us to forget them. The country is a noisy limbo. " It is a permanent rumrum, a daily fiction. We no longer have a source of reliable news: everyone has the truth, everyone says a lie. The news is a stone that is thrown from each sidewalk.
At the end of the poem, we face certainty but also doubt: "Two homelands, two homelands have I: / Or are they both?". This poem, unlike the previous Yolanda Pantin, does not seek to explain the reason for the division of the country, but to speak from the conviction of that separation, of that other part in which the other and us have become; to testify that we suffer the same, that we suffer and lack the same. The problems Venezuela has are not the problems of a few, but of all Venezuelans.
The question in the end is neither doubt nor suspicion, it is certainty: the country is one, even if we are divided. We live as in a mirror: a group of people on one side and on the other; identical reflection of only one. It is worth rescuing here an idea about the mirror that another Venezuelan writer, Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez, makes in his novel Arena negra:
The mirror has the first image that is on this side, it has the second image that is the one on the other side, it has the third image that is on this side and that of the other when they come together. But all are true and none is true.
It is worth saying, and finally, that although it is true that the country is divided into two parts, those of us who are against the government and those who are in favor of it, the two parties are suffering the same calamities, except some important government figures. Imagine that Venezuela is a house where Venezuelans live.
Every deterioration in the house, every damage in the house, every crack, every problem we all live. When the house falls, we will not speak of chavistas and opponents, we will say that the Venezuelans were left homeless, without a country; they were left wandering, orphans.
I hope you have been interested in this topic. Remember that you can vote for @adsactly as a witness and join our server in discord. Until a next smile;)
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCE
https://letralia.com/firmas/gutierrezplazaarturo.htm
https://puentesdepapel56.blogspot.com/2018/03/arturo-gutierrez-plaza-cuidados.html
Written by: @nancybriti
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The poem by Arturo Gutiérrez Plaza that you present to us comes very well after the poem by Yolanda Pantin, because, in the face of the hatred that has divided us and turned us into antagonistic poles, there is the truth that we are a single people. All this chaos in Venezuela has had a very efficient component that has been the propaganda and the informative and emotional manipulation of the regime, and in the face of this it seems that the rumor and the easy disqualification have had more force than the well-founded opinion and the proposal. Thus we have been victims of intolerant and deceptive harassment, but also of a kind of self-inflicted decrease. Thank you for your very sustained and accurate post, @nancybriti. Greetings.
For Venezuelans, this part of history called the Bolivarian Revolution has become a nightmare, a robbery, the most terrible of agonies. There is no less pain and no less suffering, the burdens are just as tragic. The government makes a dance over the dead, believing that in each step sinks our hope, without realizing that in each step awakens the avenging blood of our ancestors. For a coming dawn, @josemalavem.
Dear @nancybriti, as always you give us a very well written post, with the words that poetry lends you.
On this occasion they bring our country to the center of your reflections. A wounded country, which has become a pain.
Dictatorships do that: they turn us into medical metaphors and dig deep into disease until the territories and their people are but one sore.
In our case, the wound is already so large and the tissue is so deteriorated that the center of the wound shows the bone. Most of them are there and on the edges of each other, each time thinner and more radicalized, polarized, each time more exhausted.
The cure is freedom, which the majority asks for, so that we can return to being a single healthy tissue, as requested, among others, by the powerful voice of Rafael Cadenas and as (almost all) poets have always asked for.
Thank you for digging into your country's pain (that is perceived) to give us the lucidity of thought. That also cures totalitarianism.
Thanks to @adsactly for publishing it.
Your comment is so beautiful and so tragic at the same time, @adncabrera! There's a truth the size of that sore you're talking about. The country is wounded, it has bled a lot, it has lost a lot. Divide and conquer, and that's what the government did! But now he doesn't know how to maintain the line, the division, when every day we look at ourselves in the mirror. A fragmented mirror that reflects the sad and tired faces of Venezuelans. Thank you for your pertinent and intelligent comments. Hugs for you.
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Greetings @adsactly.
Hopefully, at some point, wisdom will prevail over ideologiesI hope so!
Venezuela is the subject of poems, dramas, hate speech and love.
But in this situation of suspense, drama and pain that others have experienced, (as other countries have experienced this) we torment ourselves, we just have to wait for this "socialism" to go soon!