AL OTRO LADO DEL ESPEJO - José María Álvarez

leaps from Istanbul to the music of Lester Young. Perhaps the
best example comes from the poem «Tumba del maravilloso
(Lester Young)» which I will quote in its entirety:
You are the last thing Ahab heard Moons
at whose edge forests
and birds shine like
amethysts The solitude of the Queen You
are the rain on the mirrors
Veils of the sun
Plumes in the cold
The warrior who ignites his golden armer
on high walls
The decisive glass of night
that great empty boat
which opens its woman’s mouth and fills
dawn with ashes
The surrealistic qualities are of course obvious. Look at the
leaps: Ahab-moons-forests-amythests-the solitude of the
queen-rain on the mirror-veils of the sun-plumes in the coldthe
warrior-the glass of night as a great empty boat-a woman’s
mouth-dawn filled with ashes. Such associations are central to
the poems meaning, which has to do with various pleasures, in
this case primarily pleasures of sight and sound, which come
as close as anything can to canceling the power of the «realities»,
of a dawn filled with ashes, of inevitable death. The leaps are
of the imagination and of the senses-rapid shifts which deny,
however temporarily, the authority of darkness.
José María Alvarez is an great contemporary poet. More like
both Spanish and American poets of the twenties (when
surrealism was a dominant influence in Spanish poetry, and
the Waste Land probably the dominant image in American
poetry) than like many poets writing today, he manages,
through startling imagery and imaginative leaps, to please the
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AL OTRO LADO DEL ESPEJO. JOSÉ MARÍA ÁLVAREZ