Julián Ríos, Larva: Midsummer Night's Babel, "Die Mutter," Trans. Richard Alan Francis, Suzanne Jill Levine, and the Author
Voluminous veiled Indian in a shimmering blue-gold sari, shaking a large cowbell around the puppet: Tan! Tan! Tricky trapping lover, such a wicked web he weaves. I suppose you saw me coming? And I'm sure you were merrily recalling your conquered Indians. The one with thick braids and tight jeans, the olive-skinned pharmacist in Paddington? The big dark one who gave you the time of day in the newspaper stand in Bayswater? The fallen apple of Brooke Green? All of the same strain. [1] Ay! Ay-yee! Yoga with me, come to my bed (hu! who? nothing at all?), bogus [2] boatman! turn, ford across, sink down without beating around your mature Magna Matron, what a bhang gang-up! [3] She'll flood you right out of your streambed. Get my drift? Believe in me, schemer, believe in the ring of my bell. Sing, lover, to the sound of my crazy ballad. Mad guru: Samsara is shamshare. Gai saber. Sic. Bho Bhoh! Not the gay cock anymore, something in your gullet? Upa, sir. Come in! Tout de go, à go-go, I have a vacancy for my vacuous friend. Let's return to the beginning, rude antagonist. In the beginning was the Vacuum... [4] Amen. Atman. Mute of mantra, and voice. Maya, yeah, peripatetic Mayeutic. I was muttering prayers with my disciples along that shady path in Holland Park and back there alone on a bench, you were writing with your little finger in the dirt... Doesn't Daddy Longlegs have any paper? Time of lean kine, [5] beggar? And with a branch you erase what you write (sanscretinizing?) and raise a cloud of dust... To cover yourself with dust? Brave, sadhu! [6] You stayed unmoving a minute. Pondering, poetaster? And you raised your head. Admiring my charms? C'mon you boob, stare at someone else. Want to see my marked face? and she unveiled, showing a face covered with black beauty marks. Look, profligate, look what you did to me. Or were you merely looking at my garments? The fringe of my neckline barely veiling my enchantments... I was scared and I'm always off-limits, prohibited, get it? I'll see you again. Coward! We'll meet again someday, you were thinking. And you recognized me a few days later on that poster while waiting for the bus on Hammersmith Road. London welcomes the Divine Mother. Fascinated by the perfectly round circle adorning my forehead? Till lack of decency drove you to add more dots. And still laconic, you finished by mutating my name. Vaca matta? Vaca loka? Vaca tapada! Sí señorito, veiled cow! I'll vaccinate you. I'll anoint you with my five... [7] Give it to him hard. Coward! You profaned my face, my name and my message. [8] All spotted, full of dots. Look at this one between my eyebrows, dot for tad! because it's the last thing you'll see. The old mole! Make a magic mountain of a molehill, man. A hilarious old story. Cowabunga! Go on, blind man, and she cowbelted him, take one below the belt!
---The Divine Mother?! Vac Tapadandah...
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[1] Already the final dissolution?:
Il disoluto (punito!) tributary of affluent women.
[2] Bogy. Bogy:
Row better, Volgar boatmen, beau gars! Boogie man, don't bogart that little man in the boat. Bogha boogie.
[3] Un Gange passe...:
Passa a guado! Gangelically. Acqua cheta... All the rivers run into the seal... Vale meglio passare sotto silenzio el río... Acqua in botta! A riverderci!
[4] In the beginning was the Vac...:
In the beginning was the Vacuum, and the Vacuum was with Vāc, and Vāc was God and Goddess. Vāc, the Word, was made flesh. The word created the world. And without this originary goddess, Vāc, we wouldn't have voice or vocative or devil's advocate...
[5] Sacred cows?:
Wise counsel: all of them are sacred, despite all the bum steers... Lean kine, fattened calves, all are couched in his vocowbulary, feeding his cow-and-bull stories.
[6] Sad sadhu...:
Always playing sadhumusickissed.
[7] Pancagavya?:
Sacrilege... Utter on, daffy ding-dung, spooner up some more bilk and mutter, a recurd of yearning for your dunga din... You'll be in the dungeon after the purification.
[8] LONDON WELCOMES THE DIVINE MOTHER:
Below, the full-moon face (between her eyebrows a dot that would soon multiply) about to pass on to a more virulent phase (Mariyamma, the goddess of smallpox?), completely dotted. Chicken pox?:
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And under the portrait, with a few alterations:
HER HOLINESS
VACA TAPADA
(Unspotted cow?!) It also announced that her sacred words would be free for everyone for one holy week in the Horticultural Hall, Westminster.
"Supernumary Note (with the hint: 'to dust the reader's jacket') from the Ubiquitous Commentator"
ReplyDeleteTo My Undercover Reader:
If "Midsummer Night's Babel" will be just one more book that you judge by its cover, let me quickly present, since there's no time or space to waste, a quintessential list of what such a nocturnal Babel embraces. Six hundred pages textually abused with lusty rations of illustrations. The larva---mask and ghost---of Don Juan at his own party in the imbroglio of a midsummer soulstice, as well as the happenstances and experditions through London of two harebrained characters who think they're characters and try to fill the shoes of their doubles, Babelle and Milalias, whom they created to prolong life in fiction---and vice versa. These two lovers in trance are troubled by a quixotic dream to fuse the lines of life and writing, venturing at risk through the rocky risque terristory of a bosky garden and the crookedest nooks and crannies of a rockabygone house on the banks of the Thames, through the thousand and one nights of one night. The wayward amblings of Don Juan and Sleeping Beauty---the women of his dreams---to-and-fro-bidden on this madsimmer night."