THE VISIT: Pablo Armando Fernandez and Lawrence Ferlinghetti

This text version of the site at www.think-ink.net/visit/ includes:
1. Notes by Nina Serrano about the visit.
2. Five Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
3. Five Poems by Pablo Armando Fernandez
4. A Poem by Nina Serrano

1. NOTES BY NINA SERRANO ABOUT THE VISIT:

[The photos that accompany the site were taken by Daniel del Solar between 
downpours on March 5, 2000.   del Solar used available natural light, snapping 
quickly and joining in the conversations.]
   
Visitor Pablo Armando Fernandez, one of Cuba's leading poets, and San 
Francisco's poet laureate, Lawrence Ferlinghetti posed in front of 
Ferlinghetti's shop and publishing headquarters, City Lights Bookstore. It is 
"the birthplace of beat poetry" in San Francisco's North Beach and also the 
setting for many literary celebrations and free speech demonstrations. 

The two poets, Ferlinghetti and Fernandez, first met in London about 35 years 
ago at an international poetry festival. Ferlinghetti warmly greeted his guest 
and presented Pablo, an avid book collector, with copies of his signed books. 
Pablo most enjoyed viewing the catalogue of Ferlinghetti's paintings at a recent 
one-man show. Over the decades the men shared poetic concerns at international 
events and in San Francisco, but Pablo was unaware that his friend, Larry, was 
also an accomplished painter. Having the photo shot at the historic bookstore 
fulfilled a long held wish for Pablo.
    
From City lights we went around the corner to the mural painted on the side of 
the City Lights Bookstore building, which sits on Jack Kerouac alley. In 1988 
Ferlinghetti spearheaded a successful movement to change 12 San Francisco street 
& alley names to honor great San Francisco writers.
 
The mural is a replica of a Mexican mural burned down by opponents of the 
indigenous people's rights movement in Chiapas. In protest, artists around the 
world pledged themselves to reproduce the mural everywhere.  Ferlinghetti 
offered the side his famed store for the San Francisco site. Mission district 
artists contributed the beautiful mural and incorporated the unique features of 
the wall into the original mural design.
 
At the nearby popular Café, "Steps of Rome" Ferlinghetti was greeted expansively 
by the owner, as, "Profesore".   Over refreshment and conversation, Ferlinghetti 
the poet, publisher and painter, read Pablo Armando Fernandez's new manuscript 
"In Due Season", a collection of poems Pablo's originally wrote in English. 
Although most of the Cuban poet's work is written in Spanish, over the decades 
he also wrote poems in English. Many were inspired by his strong feelings for 
English speaking friends. The poems composed in New York, London, California and 
Cuba between 1947 & 2000 will soon be published in Europe. 

In addition to "In Due season" Fernandez has another poetry collection, called 
"Learning to Die " coming out soon in a second edition. "Learning To Die" is a 
bilingual selection of Pablo's poems from his eleven earlier books written in 
Spanish, and translated into English by Australian translator, John Brotherton. 
The poems deal with the translator says, " the role of the poet in a 
revolutionary society, his role as outsider and observer as well as participant 
and his coming to terms with himself through the healing, life-affirming power 
of love."  
At age 14, Pablo, arrived in New York City from Cuba to go to school, where, he 
studied English literature and at age, 17 wrote his first lines.   By chance, he 
was taken to the home of famous writer Carson Mc Cullers, who recognized at once 
that these lines were poetry. "You are a poet," she told him after first serving 
him a potato salad whose illusive taste he has never forgotten. Pablo fled in 
tears. He felt misunderstood. His words, he insisted were prose. How could this 
important writer with a play on Broadway call his work," poetry"?  He felt that 
calling his work "poetry" was to disrespect it. Pablo went for comfort to his 
Cuban friend, Manila Hartman. 
"I've always told you, you were a poet, Pablo," she said.   Finally, she 
convinced him and he accepted his literary fate. Manila believed in his talents 
and kept his first poems for over fifty years. In Cuba today, he is simply known 
as "El Poeta".  The first chapter of "Learning to Die " is named for Manila who 
is a close friend and currently his Havana neighbor. 

At the triumph of the 1959 revolution, at 30 years of age, with his wife, Maruja 
Gonzalez, Pablo returned to Cuba.  He served as a diplomat in Europe and the 
Soviet Union for several years. Then, went on to receive his country's highest 
awards for his novel, "The Children Say Goodbye." There was a period of ten 
years, when his works fell out of favor and were not published in Cuba. During 
this time, the printers at the print shop of the Cuban Academy of Science, where 
he worked as a translator, printed his legendary, "Suite for Maruja".  This work 
was written partly at his wife's hospital bedside, when she suffered 
complications from the birth of their fourth child.  During the nineties, he 
published two more novels and served as editor of the Literary Journal at the 
Union of Cuban Writers (UNEAC).

While Ferlinghetti turned pages, enjoying "In Due Season" and Daniel snapped 
photos, Pablo and I continued the conversation we began in Havana in 1960, when 
revolution was only 18 months old.  We think of our 40-year exchange of letters, 
and our long talks as just one on-going communication.   Pablo mentioned his 
mother's Sephardic roots. Lawrence looked up from reading.  The remark triggered 
Lawrence's memory of his Sephardic Caribbean aunt, the telephone operator.   She 
would call him as a child in New York in the lilting accent of the islands and 
urge him to be a good boy.  With all this talk of the tropics, our café soiree 
ended with the hopes of continuing this cultural exchange in Cuba.  But will the 
US State department lift the Cuba travel ban in our lifetimes?
**************************************************************

2. POEMS BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI:

Baseball Canto
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Watching baseball
sitiing in the sun
eating popcorn
Rreading Ezra Pound

and wishing Juan Marichal
would hit a hole right through
the Ango-Saxon tradition
in the First Canto
and demolish the barbarian invaders

When the San Francisco Giants take the field
and everybody stands up to the National Anthem
with some Irish tenor's voice
piped over the loudspeakers
with all the players stuck dead in their places
and the white umpires like Irish cops
in their black suits and little black caps
presses over their hearts
standing straight and still
like some funeral of a blarney bartender
and all facing East
as if expecting some Great White Hope
or the Founding Fathers
to appear on the horizon
like 1066 or 1776 or all that

But Willie Mays appears instead 
in the bottom of the first
and a roar goes up
	as he clouts the first one into the sun
		and takes off
			like a footrunner from Thebes
	The ball is lost in the sun
		and maidens wail after him
			but he keeps running
				through the Anglo-Saxon epic
And Tito Fuentes comes up
	Looking like a bullfighter
in his tight pants and small pointed shoes
		
		    And the rightfield bleachers go mad
			With chicanos & blacks & Brooklyn beerdrinkers
				"Sweet Tito! Sock it to heem, Sweet Tito1"
		     And Sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket
			         and smacks one that doesn't come back at all
			and flees around the bases
		         like he's escaping from the United fruit Company
			as the Gringo dollar beats out the Pound
			       and Sweet Tito beats it out
			       like he's beating out usury
			       not to mention fascism and anti-semitism
		And Juan Marchial comes up
		    and the chicano bleachers go loco again
			as Juan belts the first fast ball
			       out of sight
				  and rounds first and keeps going
                         		and rounds second and rounds third
						and keeps going
					          and hits pay-dirt	 
			     to the roars of the grungy populace
		As some nut presses the backstage panic button
for the tape-recorded National anthem again
to save the situation
but he don't stop nobody this time
in their revolution round the loaded white bases
in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics
in the Territorio Libre of baseball
 
* * * * * *

The General Song Of Humanity
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

On the coast of Chile where Neruda lived
    it's well known that
       seabirds often steal
                     letters out of mailboxes
                       which they would like to scan
                                for various reasons
Shall I enumerate the reasons?
        they are quite clear 
                even given the silence of birds on the subject
    (except when they speak of it 
         among themselves
   between cries)

First of all
	they steal the letters because
	       they sense that the General Song
		              of the words of everyone
                     hidden in these letters
      must certainly bear the keys
             to the heart itself of humanity
                              which the birds themselves
                                   have never been able to fathom
               (in fact entertaining much doubt
	       that there actually are
				hearts in humans)
And then these birds have a further feeling
                 that their own general song
		might somehow be enriched
                           by these strange cries of humans
       (What a weird bird-brain idea
             that out twitterings might enlighten them)

But when they stole away
                       with neruda's own letters
               out of his mailbox at Isla Negra
          they were in fact stealing back their own Canto General 
    which he had originally gathered 
				 from them
	   with their omniveriious  & ecstaic
                                                    sweeping vision

But now that Neruda is dead
      no more such letters are written
          and they must play it by ear again-
                the high great song
                                in the heart of our blood & silence
							Cuernavaca, October 26,'75
 * * * * * *

I Am Waiting
	By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
Of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe 
for anarchy
and I am waiting for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the second coming
And I am waiting
For a religious revival
To sweep thru the state of Arizona
And I am waiting
For the grapes of wrath to stored
And I am waiting
For them to prove
That God is really American
And I am waiting
To see God on television
Piped into church altars
If they can find
The right channel
To tune it in on
And I am waiting 
for the last supper to be served again
and a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting 
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the great divide to be crossed
and I anxiously waiting
For the secret of eternal life to be discovered
By an obscure practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and TV rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am waiting for retribution
for what America did to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting for Aphrodite 
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

* * * * *

The Old Sailors
	By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

On the green riverbank
		age late fifties
I am beginning
		to remind myself
Of my great uncle Desir
		in the Virgin Islands
On a Saint Thomas back beach
he lived when I last saw him
in a small shack
		under the palms
Eighty years old
		straight as a Viking
	(where the Danes once landed)
he stood looking out
		over the flat sea
blue eyes or grey
salt upon his lashes
	We
were always sea wanderers
No salt here now
		by the great river
	in the high desert range
Old sailors stranded
the steelhead
they too lost without it
			leap up and die

* * * * *

Two Scavengers In A Truck,
Two Beautiful People In A Mercedes
	By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

At the stoplight waiting for the light
				Nine A.M. downtown San Francisco
	a bright garbage truck
		with two garbage men in red plastic blazers
 standing on the back stoop
			   one on each side hanging on
	   and looking down into 
an elegant open Mercedes
with an elegant couple in it
The man
In a hip three-piece linen suit
With shoulder-length blond hair & sunglasses
The young blond woman so casually coifed
with a short skirt and colored stocking
On his way to his architect's office
And the two scavengers up since Four A.M.
Grungy from their route
On the way home 
The older of the two with grey iron hair
And hunched back
Looking like some
Gargoyle Quasimodo
And the younger of the two
Also with sunglasses and long hair
About the same age as the Mercedes driver
And both scavengers gazing down
As from a great distance
At the cool couple
As if they were watching some odorless TV ad
In which everything is possible

And the very red light for an instant
Holding all four close together
As if anything at all were possible 
Between them
Across that great gulf
In the high seas
Of this democracy

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3. POEMS BY PABLO ARMANDO FERNANDEZ:



My Friend Has A Bridge
		(For Nina and Paul in Oakland)
  	By Pablo Armando Fernandez

My friend has a bridge
that brings and takes her (she is always returning)
the love of the loved one, to the lover.
This bridge is made of steel and rock and light.
	My friend has a bridge full of life and world,
a bridge made of struggle, of courage and work.
over pass the day and the night, pass the seasons
the people who work, and their sorrow and hope:
those who fought daily against hate and death.
	My friend is in the arms of her love
and someone sings till the day that dawns.
	The arms of my friend and her lover
their lips, their bellies, and their legs
intertwined can unite the old world
across the bridge
and make it new like the sun, life.

     (translated from the Spanish by Nina Serrano)

* * * * * *

The Other Adam
          By Pablo Armando Fernandez

Hemingway was the other Adam
That English-speaking man of Williams' poem
searching for Paradise on an island.
He bought a colonial retreat
with gardens that faced 
an old cemetery.

He was an Anglo-Saxon: each day he struggled
with the climate, his idol and friend,
the savage hurricane,
the sunburned flesh,

But he did not conquer
the restlessness that the
evening murmur
of tropical death
produces in men from the North,
a death that blows from the palm trees
and sprouts from sea shells.

In the hunt, as a fisherman,
He trained himself in the use of arms.

But he did not conquer the fragrance of flowers,
the death that awakens at midnight
to return to dust at midday along the roads.

Neither the safaris in the jungles of Africa,
nor the fishing in the gulf nor the autumn
sky of Cuban seas,
nor the sensuality of island women
who admired his virile squanderings,
could defeat the blush of shame
that the perennial lips of death
blow against men who arrive
from the North to conquer the islands.

His hard large legs
agile in action and always alert
failed to serve him,
so too his obstinate heart, his feverish head
that persisted in populating with
heroes of his race
the Paradise that rejected him.

Did his cold Anglo-Saxon gaze see
the native's resolve
to expel the conqueror from his shores?

He wished to renounce life in the tropics
and one day he returned from whence he came,
fleeing the evening murmur of death.
But she repeated her same steps,
she followed him quietly
to his birthplace in Idaho.

     (Translated from the Spanish by Elias Hruska July 1990)

* * * * * *


Parable
          By Pablo Armando Fernandez

My  mother wants me to be happy, wants 
me to be young and joyful;
a man who doesn't fear the passing of the years,
nor fears the tenderness or candor
of the child that I should be
when I go from her hand I hear her repeating to me
-so that it's not forgotten- those and other notions,
My mother doesn't want to be ashamed of me.

	My mother wants me not to lie, wants 
Me to be free and simple.
She wouldn't want to see me suffer
because fear and doubt
are faults borne by adults
and she wants me to be her child.

	Whoever sees us won't understand it
because -she doesn't want it said- we coincide in age,
although she gave life to me when she was as old
as I am today.

We could have been sister and brother, she a little older;
we could have been friends, her memory and mine
correspond to a time when we were both young.
(I was younger, but I remember seeing her sing happily
among her children; sharing our childhood)
	My mother wants to see me fight at all times
against pain and fear.
She would suffer if she knew that at my age,
hers then when she gave me life,
I am her old father and she my sweet daughter.

     Translated from the Spanish by Nina Serrano

* * * * * *

V (from Suite for Maruja)
		By Pablo Armando Fernandez

I hope you wake up.
My hands have tried, in vain,
to tear the wings of that dark bird
away from your eyelids,
to tear his claws from your throat,
and his rapacious beak from your forehead.
Could death be a night-bird?
I see it growing over your body, its feathers
still; I shall never reach its eyes,
even though my hands ring its neck
and grab its enormous wings.
I am about to call out to frighten it,
because it is also asleep.
I have never known such silence.
I am about to call out.
I shall never reach your mouth, even though all my body
loses, I know not how many times, its blood,
tugging, at that nameless beast.
I have my hands full of feathers and blood.
It seems that you do not feel the weight upon you.
I have never known such blackness.
Steps and voices are heard, someone opens the door.
I am afraid. I am about to call out.
The doctor and the nurse come in, they consult
on a matter which my ears cannot pick up.
They speak to you and you smile.
Zeinaida gathers your damp hair, kisses you.
You look like two little girls.
You float on a lake of snow
which undulates gently with your body.
The cowardly bird spies upon me through the window-pane:
his eyes are turned off, 
but he does not avert them from mine.
Zenieda arranges your pillows.
This girl brings the summer sun
(in GuidaXXX de Melena the barometer fell two degrees
celsius, the wind never trembled as on these nights, 
we have not seen the moon and it is January),
it is as if she were singing.
If ever I have heard the blessing of the day
in the air, if ever I have felt life burning, it is now.
But that odious bird is waiting for them to leave us alone
I discovered she has hatched her eggs, and soon
they will fill the room with their wings, beaks, and claws;
they will block up the door, and cover up the window.
We shall not be able to get out.
The doctor and Zeniada take their leave.
The room shines with whiteness, it is snowing;
the snow piles up, it will reach your bed.
I run, shivering; my arms and my mouth
long to be on fire.
Frosted, silent birds fall from the ceiling, 
they mingle and merge in a block of ice.
You seem to be asleep, white moon-bird.
I want to open the window, I want to make two gigantic spades of my hands
and tear their closed, fearful whiteness
from floors and walls.
One more hour and we shall be two ice cubes, or locked in an embrace, 
an iceberg the size of the room.
It is pointless calling out, we are frozen, 
although within us a steady flame is rising.
Asleep as you are, you will not be able to share my vigil,
but we shall arrange a meeting in your dream.
I shall say that I in love and a snow-woman awaits me,
that she meets me with flowers and snow songs,
that she is bedecked with necklaces of snow pearls, 
and she melts in my arms and becomes the water
that drips from my eyes.

What time is it? At eleven they change shift,
but the watch of my frozen pulse has stopped.
Outside without doubt there is life and warmth
and breathless lovers seek the green shade
of trees.
But my love is beautiful in her snowy season.
Love, do you perhaps dream of those birds that fly beneath the sun?

I hear voices and footsteps through the door.
The snow-birds begin to hide themselves away.
When Milagros comes in, my love sits up
on a white beach, and they talk of the coming morning
and of other mornings that await us,
sweaty, in a street full hubbub.  

I still doubt that death is a bird
but I know that life is always a girl.

National Hospital, 1970.

     Translated from the Spanish by John Brotherton

* * * * * *

XX Anniversary 
By Pablo Armando Fernandez
	On the farm there are, Abel
Cherries, mangoes and plums.
There are men, like then, working
in the chicken coups
(camouflage to hide the cars)
The farm is painted white
and on the porch are palm nuts;
old man Nunez talks with the workers
about you, while they wait.
What can be keeping you in the city?
Outside there are Mangoes on the lawn
and in the branches, cherries
and yellow and red plums.
There's nothing lacking here, Abel.
Everything begins to fulfill itself during the last twenty years!
	
Santiago was never as festive as now.
At the Rex, Lolo continues, punctual
to attend, to the guests in room 36
Mario Cabrera, in the kitchen picks up 
steak sandwiches (he doesn't know it)
that Elpidio will eat this evening
Have you shown Renato, the ruler
with all its positions, what do you think? Good?
Lolo tells his friends
how fascinated you are with raising chickens!
Everything begins to fulfill itself during the last twenty years!

	The visitors sign
the book. They come from all parts of the world.
There are large inscriptions in the Chinese characters;
There are others in occidental languages;
amid the branches of the mango orchard, the birds chirp and sing.
The visitors tour around the place
and hear the history that silently fell
uniforms and rifles, shoes and handkerchiefs.
Everything begins to fulfill itself during these last twenty years!
	
Are you dreaming? no. You are awake
laid out on the floor.
(Ramon Salmon enters and closes the door)
Elpidio and you chat.
Open is the farm to the visitors
and there are mangoes and cherries and plums
like lively colors on the lawn.
The Chinese Alfonso Joa (today is Saturday)
rolls a bunch of cigars between his hands
and smiles. Everything is as you wanted it; you're not dreaming.
You are awake drinking coffee brewed by Josefa.
She likes to hear you; "An educated young man, 
who charms when he speaks with those gentlemanly ways…"
Angel agrees, he likes to hear you speak
of your projects and he hopes that the farm
will grow to reach the slope of the hill.
Young gentleman, all Santiago is yours.
The farm and the city are open,
and you give them to the people
looking in the eyes of those who receive them
as another of your gestures of love;
During the last twenty years everything begins to fulfill itself!

     Translated from the Spanish by Nina Serrano 1980 USA




**************************************************************

4. POEM BY NINA SERRANO


Poets in San Francisco
               (A legend about Anais Nin and Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
by Nina Serrano

It feels good to write poems in San Francisco
But it would be better if someone 
wanted to read    listen   and talk about poems
in San Francisco.

There is a place where poets meet and love each other
Once I thought it was San Francisco 
but when I got there their coffee houses turned into dress stores.

I think the place where poets meet 
lies in an inner space between
The ribs   the lungs   and hurting loneliness.

A poet fills his bags with rose petals
and empties it on the head 
of another poet.
Her hair is full of petals.
There love poems rhymed and metered bloom
and in that moment of raining flowers
is the place I want to be.


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The material at www.think-ink.net/visit/ was posted by Diane Wang with
permission of the poets and photographer in August, 2000. Comments
can be sent to dwang@think-ink.net