Veracruz and San Luis Potosí:
Landscapes Revisited

Images of prole de Tlaloc ("people of Tlaloc") and canción de Teponaztle ("song of Teponaztle") appear in "Lluvia" / "Rain,"

set in Jáltipan. Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain, and teponaztle , an indigenous musical instrument,^[16] give the poem a pre-Columbian flavor. La Chaneca appears in "Solario," a poem of nine vignettes. The fifth vignette describes the open plazas of Veracruz where the Tehuana women (from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, taking in parts of Veracruz and Oaxaca) meet to sell their goods. They call to their prospective buyers with "marimba voices." The marimba, a kind of xylophone indigenous to Veracruz, suggests pleasure and joy. It is also an indicator of Veracruz's African cultural roots, since the marimba was introduced to the New World by African slaves the Spanish imported into Mexico by way of the port of Veracruz. The eighth vignette tells of Jarocho, the generic name for the campesino of Veracruz, to whom, so the poet confesses, she never wrote a note of love. The sunlit houses of Jáltipan with their large, wide patios are full of musical sounds and noises: outside, the loud screams of parrots (la gritería de los loros ), the sounds of flute, marimba, and harp (el arpa ), the ringing of bells in the plaza; inside, the voice of Francisco Gabilondo Soler, the singing cricket who sang to children on the radio on Sunday afternoons.

The smells of flowers and the tastes of foods contribute to the tropical jungle setting: orange, mango, ceiba, and cashew trees, thin reeds (juncos delgados ) and cornfields (los maizales ). Afternoons of rain bring the aromas of "dulce de calabaza y atole caliente" ("squash cooked with sugar and hot atole ").^[17] In the seventh vignette, visual and gustatory sensations become mixed because the sensual delights of the cashew tree are so intense in this jungle that even the eyes "taste" the sweetness of its fruit:

La exquisita y sensual
esencia del marañón
cuando los ojos apenas
si saborean la delicia
de una primer mordida
que se ha dado mil veces
antes de darse entera.

The exquisite, sensual
essence of the marañón
when one's eyes barely
tasted the delight
of the first mouthful
given a thousand times
before the whole giving.

The synesthesia of eyes tasting is important because it foreshadows the dominance of the visual over the other senses. In the context of childhood, these lines suggest the small "bites" of life taken by a child (de una primer mordida ) without yet having to assume the responsibilities of adulthood (antes de darse entera ). In the context of sexuality they highlight the poet's method of coping with sexual desire. She has tasted the delicia a thousand times (mil veces ) but has never experienced it to its fullest (antes de darse entera ).

The opening lines of "Solario" imbue the secular landscape with a liturgical quality: orange trees put away their bridal gowns for morning; mango trees stretch like green cupolas of jungle cathedrals; crickets sing the ritual of their divine office:

SOLARIO
I
Anochecía

Ya los naranjos habían guardado
sus trajes de boda para mañana
los mangos como cúpulas verdes
de catedrales selváticas
solemnemente presidían
el oficio nocturno de los grillos.

Me senté junto al arroyo
y me lavé los pies enlodados
mientras La Chaneca desde
el fondo de la noche
me observaba cavilante,
sus largas trenzas de azabache
prendidas sobre el pecho
con la Cruz del Sur.

Seguí camino del olvido
y sorprendí al tecolote
en la ceiba dormido
con los ojos abiertos.

A quién buscas hoy?
El rayo en el poniente
me preguntó.
Busco un solario de amor.
Amor . . . El viento repitió.

SUNSCAPE
I
Night Was Falling

The orange trees had put away
their bridal gowns for morning.
Mango trees like the green cupolas
of jungle cathedrals
presided in solemnity
over the night ritual of crickets.

I sat down beside the creek
and washed the mud from my feet
while Chaneca watched
hesitant
from the depths of the night
her long, jet-black braids
pinned across her breast
with the Southern Cross.

I went on toward oblivion
and surprised an owl
sleeping wide-eyed
in the ceiba tree.

The last ray of the setting sun asked:
What are you searching for today?
I am looking for a place
filled with sunlight and love.
Love . . . echoed the wind.

The introduction of La Chaneca (ll. 10–15) contributes more secular magic to the scene. Presented as the constellation Canis Major, her braids are the lines connecting each star in the north with Sirius in the south. Like a shadow at night in the astral landscape, she watches as the speaker sits by the stream to wash her muddied feet. The poet, like La Chaneca, wanders at night. La Llorona, a figure reminiscent of Medea, was cursed to roam at night in search of the children she killed to prevent her Spanish husband from taking them away. When the sun's ray asks, "¿A quién buscas hoy?" ("What are you searching for today?"), the implication is that the woman's night wanderings in search of someone or something are a familiar sight. Like her symbolic, cultural ancestor, the poet too is restless, searching for something to complete her. The sun asks, "Whom do you search for?" but the poet's

answer reframes the question in terms of a place: un solario de amor ("a sunscape of love").

In several key places Corpi uses ellipses as linguistic devices to mark meaningful silences that cannot be filled with words. In this instance an ellipsis follows the word Amor , significant because love is simultaneously everything and nothing for the poet: everything, because it is what she most desires; nothing, because she can never obtain it. Here, as elsewhere, the ellipsis signals a point of extreme emotion. It creates the effect of suspension, as the echo of the wind's voice lingers before vanishing into the landscape.

In the third vignette of "Solario" the poet recalls Tirso, her family's water carrier (el aguador ), who taught her to swear when she was three years old. By repeating the curses in the company of others she delighted Tirso and his people but outraged her family who washed her mouth out with laundry soap.

III
Tirso se llamaba
el aguador.
Me enseñó a mal decir
cuando apenas tres años
angostos pero hondos
se abrían paso
entre el verde añejo
de las sabanas.

al oirme decir aquello
que era extraño
a mis labios
la mitad del mundo
lo celebró con risas
y la otra mitad
me podó la selva
de la lengua
con navaja de lejía.

III
Tirso
was the water-carrier's name.
He taught me to swear
when barely three years
(narrow but deep)
were opening their way

between the ancient greens
of the savannahs.

When I said those things
so strange to my lips
in company
half my hearers
laughed;
the other half
pruned the jungle
on my tongue
with the razor
of laundry soap.

In this episode the world divides into two social groups: one that enjoys the child's blasphemies and one that punishes her naive spontaneity. Tirso has contaminated the child by teaching her words that the family castigates her for uttering. We obtain an image of a proper, decent family that prohibits its little girl from cursing and swearing. The poetic consciousness pinpoints an early experience that introduces the counterpressures of expression and repression.

The fourth vignette, about the poet's grandmother, is significant precisely because there is no speech between poet and grandmother. Although the grandmother plays a key role in "Tres Mujeres," even uttering the words that constitute a central taboo broken by the granddaughter, she is, except for this passage, absent from Palabras de Mediodía .

IV
Voy mirando sus manos y su boca
tranquilos los ojos que me miran
como faroles al final de la vereda
de un bosque de mechones y sonrisas.

Mi abuela junto al fogón viejo
trenzándose el cabello.

IV
I watch her hands and mouth,
her eyes watching me, tranquil
as lamps at the end of the path
through a forest of hair and smiles

My grandmother, sitting beside the stove,
braiding her hair.

While the poet observes her grandmother's gestures, the two women seem to communicate by way of their eyes. The grandmother's action of braiding her hair introduces an important motif in Corpi's collection. Corpi's women characters are silent, without words. Like their creator, they are cultivators of the unsayable,^[18] communicating feelings with their eyes or by gestures. In this vignette the poetic consciousness attempts to "read" her grandmother's eyes or gestures, as if the grandmother by braiding her hair was "weaving" a message for the poet.

Corpi suggests a link between the actions of braiding and weaving in the second vignette. Her poetic consciousness desires to find the thread (un hilo ) or the strand of hair (un cabello ) which ties up all those small things heaped up inside herself from years ago, discarded as one might consign useless objects to the attic. Her poetic goal is to find this thread, this hair, and untie the knot of all those things piled up inside the "attic" of her spirit:

Hay un hilo, un cabello
quizá, de tan delgado
imperceptible que ata
las mil cosas pequeñas
que en alguna edad
del espíritu
quedaron arrumbadas
en el desván
de la conciencia.

A thread, a hair perhaps,
so thin as to be
imperceptible
ties together
a thousand things
left heaped
during some age of the spirit
in the attic
of the mind.

"Solario" builds up to a key statement in which Corpi links the image of the seas of Veracruz with a restlessness that may lead to freedom. She closes "Solario" with images of inquietude (las aguas inquietas ), bitterness (salada ), and rebellion (emancipación ), thus intimating that she retains something (Algo ) from a childhood experience which moves her to rebel and to search for a more open life.

IX
Algo del mar
se me quedó en las venas:
La salada emancipación
de las aguas inquietas.

IX
Something of the sea
stayed in my veins:
The salty freedom
of restless water.

The image of salt, recurring often in Corpi's poetry, suggests that her search for liberation will be neither sweet nor easy.

In "Solario Nocturno" Corpi articulates the images that describe the side of her that mourns, the melancholy and silent side. In this poem, in contrast with the Veracruz poems, Catholicism and its Lenten rites submerge Corpi's retrospective look at the region:

SOLARIO NOCTURNO
I
San Luis
con su alma de piedra
cincelada
por los cascos indómitos
del sol
tenía
la hipnotizante
melancolía
de un tambor de cuaresma
y el misterio enlutado
del violeta
bordado en el sayal
del corazón.

II
Buscaba el verde
entre las grietas
de las canteras
y sólo encontraba
el gris del futuro
enclaustrado
por los altos muros
coloniales.

III
Era la hora extendida
del oficio vespertino,
lisa, lisa, alisada,
monótona y ténebre,
con sus diálogos
letánicos y fríos.

Las torres caían
consecutivas,
las azucenas
se desplomaban
en cadena
sobre las cabezas
de los pobres
que seguían siendo
pobres a la salida.

Y yo me preguntaba
si éste era el misterio
que guardaba el cielo.

IV
El campesino hurgaba
la tierra
con sus manos
de cuero deslustrado
y ella dura y seca
lo burlaba de su amor.

V
Ahí conocí
por primera vez
el terrible pecado
del silencio.

NOCTURNAL SUNSCAPE
I
San Luis
with its soul of stone
chiseled
by the untamed hoofs
of the sun
possessed
the hypnotic
melancholy
of a Lenten drum

and the somber mystery
of violet
enbroidered on the sackcloth
of its heart.

II
I searched for green
in the cracks
of quarried hillsides
and found only
the gray of the future
enclosed
in high colonial
walls.

III
The hour of Vespers
was lengthening,
smooth, smooth, polished,
tenebrous, monotonous,
with the cold responses
of its litanies.

Towers fell
in sequence
lilies
dropped chains
of petals
on the heads
of the poor
who left
poor as they had come.

I wondered
if this was the mystery
guarded by heaven.

IV
The peasant dug
at the earth
with his scuffed
leather hands
and the earth, hard and cold,
gave him nothing for his love.

V
It was there
I first discovered
the terrible sin
of silence.

The San Luis landscape is dry, hard rock, with no greenery. The Lenten season, with its violet colors and its rituals of mourning, sacrifice, and self-effacement, pervades the atmosphere. San Luis, the saint, functions as metaphor for the external landscape, which is a reflection of the poet's inner state. A "mystery draped in mourning" (el misterio enlutado ) has been embroidered, not on the saint's cassock (el sayal ), but rather on the "cassock" of the saint's heart. The word enlutado , from en luto , literally means "in mourning." By extension it is "embroidered" in the heart of the landscape and by implication in the heart of the poetic self.

San Luis, a center of mining since the colonial era, does not offer the speaker the fertile, tropical lands of Veracruz. She searches for greenery in the spaces between the rocks on the hillsides but finds only the "gray of the future" (recall Justina of "Tres Mujeres"). The tedious litanies (diálogos ) of the long hour of Vespers go back and forth in a monotonous question-and-answer pattern. The land is silent, making no response to the laborer's efforts. In the closing statement, parallel to the one at the end of the Jáltipan poems, the poet, from a perspective of achieved knowledge, remembers learning the "terrible sin / of silence." Only the vague deictic Ahí ("there") pinpoints this experience. The deictic itself confirms a "silence" because it fails to specify where in exact terms. Corpi uses the adverb "there" again and again to refer to physical and spiritual places that have to do with emptiness and loss.