Castaways from Mercury October 21, 2021
Naufragio means shipwreck. It is also a German brewpub in Barrio Guadalupe, near the corner of Calles Isabel de Catolica and Paniagua, and this is the site for tonight’s poetry reading. Like any shipwreck scene, we are faced with a varied crew of stranded castaways.
Gabriel is the organizer of this and other such events. He is a poet himself, although he comes from a family of agricultural landowners in Chiapas. Gabriel thinks about his choices, but he doubts his writerly habits would suit the farming lifestyle. Instead, he holds a government grant for fostering the spoken word, and he has been especially successful at exposing young Tzotzil-speaking poets to a wider audience. Many of these fresh voices come to the city for college, yet they carry with them rarified experiences of such hinterlands as San Juan Chamula and Palenque. Gabriel welcomes the diverse assembly with another toast to the arts. He excels at toasting.
Scott, from Berkeley, is one of the featured speakers tonight. Tall and aloof, with the air of a shaggy professor, he deflects questions about what brings him here, saying only that he has spent the better part of 40 years working in “developing countries,” most lately in Asia, and most particularly in Myanmar, although I do not dare ask him where he was during the military coup. He has also worked throughout South America, especially along the border regions, and he mentions “the diaspora” more than once. What do you do in those places? I ask.
“Mostly poetry.” Naturally. Poems for the dispossessed.
Tonight Scott plans to perform an original musical composition on steel-string guitar, while someone else reads his poem, the only English piece in the collection. However, as things get started, Scott complains about the sound quality. If he is searching for a more appropriate venue, I might suggest booking the cloisters at El Carmen convent. This gentleman has a decidedly academic air, as well as a facility with languages, which hints at foreign service, perhaps social science. But then something must have happened during all those years abroad, I suppose. Now he is learning how to play a wooden flute.
Gabriel takes the floor to describe his project, glass raised. He named his literary magazine Azogues, which is the plural form of elemental Mercury. Historically, we learn, it was also the name of a ship used to deliver quicksilver alloy to the Mexican silver mines. However, for the purposes of this literary launch, Azogues is best defined as the substance applied to a surface to produce a mirror. A giver of reflection. Salud, says the toastmaster.
Meanwhile, I take the opportunity to reflect on the menu. Patrick, the American owner of Naufragio, warns me about the sausages. Apparently, lovers of good German food are disappointed by his bratwursts, and the same goes for Polish-lovers and his kielbasa. Maybe I should avoid the meat entirely, the owner advises, and I do not require a second opinion. Patrick also warns me about the avocado tree over my head, but only after a hard fruit lands next to my foot.
Each of the expats from the States seems a bit lost. Andre, from Pennsylvania, is a young scholar with some serious existential issues. When he sees that I am part of tonight’s production, he comes over to me but says nothing at first, staring instead, standing as still as a gargoyle, forcing me to make the first move.
“Are you here tonight for the beer or the poetry?”
He tilts his head to consider the question, android-style, before replying, “No, I just like to hear English. I don’t hear that much lately.”
I am immediately alerted that this fellow is some kind of Doctor Doom. His eyes are sad and serious. He openly confesses to strangers that he is not sure he possesses a heart—a heart!—to which any sensible listener might wonder if homicide is in this man’s life history. Educated at the New School in Manhattan, then the Cuban Academy of Science in Havana, the youngster is prematurely world-weary, as if he has seen too much. He finds everything about this place bewildering and unsettling, speaking about his daily life in Chiapas like a Werner Herzog dirge. The accent is uncanny. How he learned to talk that way in Pennsylvania is beyond me. Perhaps an Amish exile.
Abraham Pérez Aragón, from Mexico City, closes the formal presentation. Long black hair flailing, his poetry is charged like a rallying cry to a crowd in the park from a soapbox—El Grito by Allen Ginsburg. He paces when he speaks, framing crucial words with his fingers at right angles, like he is holding a photograph. Then, to heighten the urgency, he takes a further risk, picking up my guitar and, without so much as checking to see if it is tuned, breaks into a medley of Silvio Rodriguez songs of the revolution, singing at the top of his lungs, scratching at the instrument like it is a burro’s jaw, summoning a primal rhythm. My strings will be stretched beyond recognition for days.