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Escucha
a este hombre, la manera que él se transforma el aire aturdido
Alrededor
de el.
Listen…
The
air of his mystique is teeming with legends.
El
aire de su mistica es electricado con leyendas.
The
thousand nights he has stood in his boots,
Twisting
his torso, stretching and squeezing the airbag
To
stupendous lengths — como un loco,
So
that the air is transmogrified through the miniature cosmos
Of
the Cosmic Accordion with his name on it…
Red
like the immense shattered heart he holds it to —
Like
the blood that rushes from one heart to another
Through
the miracle of love.
En
los manos de turquesa intermitente el accordion es una profecia…
Todos
estos años el ha estado jugando a la muerte,
Atreviendose
la muerte y el abismo,
eso
no es igual para el, con una mirada furiosa de su ojo singular
y
con una sonrisa de alegria immortal.
Bajo
su parche, qué visions imponderables?
On
a recent night, he gripped the accordion even as he fell
Toward
the imponderable darkness of his eye patch.
As
he walked slowly toward the timbales at the front of the stage,
The
women screamed from the back of the room.
He
gripped the drumsticks and raised his trembling hands.
He
bashed the sticks onto the drumheads in mad, defiant syncopations
As
if to stop all the hearts in the room. We lost our minds and
Screamed
without mercy. Walking backwards toward the center of the stage, he
Clipped
the base of the microphone stand with the heel of his boot,
And
started to fall.
He
didn’t reach out to catch his balance but gripped the accordion
In
mortal pirouette, like it was a rocket he would fly on.
His
son, on bass, caught him and held him up,
One
hand to his shoulder, while keeping the song intact. Father’s boot stomped And
anchored onto the stage,
His
torso twisted upward, and the Accordion he never let go of
Screamed
like a god awakened — before he stood upright and adjusted the straps
Wrapped
defiantly around his shoulders like a straightjacket, or a bandolier.
Recent
nights he stands eerily still on the stage like an idol, or statue,
Or
like some new Martyrdom incarnate. Many of us wondered if he was a
Demon
— the way he could play anything
On
any instrument and sing the phrase he’d play
On
the guitar or accordion an octave lower, the preternatural ability to hear
Everything
all at once, sound telepathy, sonic voodoo,
Sound
caught in the air at the speed of sound. The way he always pressed
Dissonance
to the point of madness and catastrophe…Fearlessness. Duende.
Playing
to the death, always to the death, which was never a match for him.
These
days, those blessed elect among us who still go to hear his
Belated
glorious testimony know that he plays with the passion of the Christ.
Second
to last song of the night, he presses out another outlawed chord
On
the buttons of his accordion with his arthritic hand, pulls the bag
So
that an anguished Doppler Banshee wail ensues, and then he puts his mouth
To
the microphone to issue a hoarse graveled cry from his own voice, a
Proclamation: “Por un amor me desvelo y vivo apasionado. Tengo un amor!”
The
ravaged dead rise up, burning in his voice,
Avenged
in the tortuous lament of their unrequited longings. And he sings
Them,
the voices of all the hearts stuffed violently into mouths bereft of words. And
he sings. We, who listen, the most human among us, weep, listening to him, Whom
we never thought mortal. Only a mortal human can feel such pain.
It
is the moment of transformation.
The
night is burning back to the cotton fields of Elsa, the place
Where
he was a boy.
A
glistening accordion sat waiting for him in some mysterious room.
As
a seven year-old-boy, he snuck over to it, held it in his small hands,
Mastered
it before he could stop to think what it was.
The
ancients in the room are taken back, and the middle-aged, and the young.
How
many times over the decades did they
Find
religion here? Listen to the coyote’s cry of lust and starvation
Under
the tumid moon. The swollen heart yearns to burst in
The
hot night. The desiccated cactus still bears
The
succulent hallucinations of its peyote.
The
moon is swollen with secrets and pregnancies. The moon is a giant heart
Yearning
over the scorched Nightscape of his half-blinded childhood. Child
Cyclops
with the ears of a god. He can only see five feet in front of him,
But
his ears span the cosmos.
Si
usted no quiere chillar ni
Llorar
cuando usted lo escucha entonces usted no lo entiendes.
The
knife blade that some stranger stuck in him,
Decades
ago in some dingy parking lot,
So
that he would live and rage after all the Kaleidoscopic Sounds
That
were searching inside him, and find the
Prehistory
of the Aztecs and the gypsy — the
Lament
of the Negro blues, the mariachi, the bebop hipster,
The
Pachuco
Sublime —
Wisdom
of the scorched cotton fields of Elsa. Wisdom of the banned
And
outlawed dissonances banned by the Spanish Inquisition — the air breaking Free
forever through the nights of tequila and shattered glass — the infinite soul
Permeating through his graveled, hoarse voice, and the flexed airbag of the
Accordion that exults like a universe newly dreamed…
An
inhalation, a wind through the sugared neon of this churchlike room — grace,
And the defiant persistence of life and joy that ruptures like water,
Shattering
through stone, through so much pain — the way he opens his mouth And says
“Yeah!”
More
alive than all the rest of us — because so much soul and life and
Mad
freedom and jazz and genius
Would
kill most other men. The vibration of fading air around him is chastened
And
stunned. We linger
And
bathe in it awhile, before we go back into miraculous, ordinary
Life.
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