Late Mornings on Sundays
About the book:
The beauty and sensuality of these texts—poems and equally poetic prose—stems not only from the words, but also from where they take us: the indescribable and sorrowful wonder of being alive. Time is nothing but a necessary illusion in these pages. Claudia Schvartz is a writer who chooses to write, and in doing so she exercises her freedom: an unruly love stirring an unruly fire. Her undeniable talent for portraying intimate scenes of our daily lives, saved thanks to love, patience and wisdom, really shines through in this understated, yet powerful collection.
Excerpt:
Late mornings on Sundays
Not always, but sometimes, after the ritual of mate
Cream cheese and quince jelly on whole wheat toast
or, even better, strawberry jam
And the quiet voices of two, coming and going
over the newspaper headlines
Political commentary and matters or words I dare not repeat
Restrained voices to avoid waking the pack of
daughters
And let the solid adult conversation of the lovers
linger
Banishment! The last one to arrive/and the picnic on the bed almost right up near the edge/there’s no room anymore/ the minimal space and the uncomfortable feeling of not being in the party \an inconvenience/ with sternness in the tone, comments are eluded/and the thread is lost//The yarn between the lines and the clear preference/underlined by an enigmatic smile/suddenly displace the sluggishness of being half awake/and the brief Sunday becomes narrow gray stubborn// Not all of us fit, that much is clear/
And then, once the alliance had been shattered
with the thunderous appearance of all the daughters,
the truce now broken into shrieking and ambushes,
the doorbell rang quietly in the late morning
and it was Uncle Maure coming in through the long hallway of childhood
Alliances are waged in the hide-and-seek hour/eluded secrets silently gnaw at the lattice/And the whispering world assumes ignites incites /Until the rage, volcanic, rocks the crumbles//This unexpected arrival is a relief/the colossal punishment of silence gets dissolved/the nose buried deeply in that book about Inkas and rebels/against the invaders from Spain/and yet the story does not soothe the pain of not being/but an enigma/invisible trough of impossible questions
No, the brothers don’t lock themselves up
Dad stays in bed, leaning against the fat feather pillows
Fat with feathers that, sometimes, he sends flying
against his daughters, when he has to defend the fort, but those are nocturnal battles
From its sunken vantage point, the big head spies and thinks
Maure has taken a seat on the edge of the bed, and both their voices join
quietly, and a strange music emerges
Stories, sayings and laughs, and whispered smiles in that inaccessible language
Maure’s skinny shoulders, the curve of his back
I feel sad if I watch him closely
He’s the one talking,
his voice barely-there as he whispers
And the other one asks and stays silent, and on his face a smile appears
thirty-seven
shrewd mysterious introspective, from the depths of the curve it ponders
And they lean forward again, and Maure also snickers under his breath
It’s his shoulders that quake
Free from all the burden they’ve born,
he laughs, and his laughter is muffled
But if I stare from the doorway
at the region between his shoulder-blades
my uncle turns back slowly and looks me
in the eye, smiling softly
As if saying I know you’re there, I know it’s you
the curious one
and I resist until you understand
Translated by Mercedes del Sol Acosta - Edited by Cecilia Della Croce