(91) & (92)

*Aníbal Núñez. Definición de savia. 1991. 50 pp.

Clave de los tres reinos. 1986. 79 pp.

Someone who claims to be able to hear a spider weaving a web at the hora de la siesta--that's how quiet it is. Or the fibers of wicker basket so amorously intertwined that they forget that the same material could be used for flagellation: "las mimbres de la cesta entrelazadas / tan amorosamente que la mimbre / no sabe su uso de flagelo." I'm beginning to understand something of the poetry of Núñez. It is a beauty that renounces the name of beauty, refuses, ever, to take the easy path.

Many of his books were published posthumously. Born in 1944, he died in 1987.

If you think you don't understand a poet at all, write a brief summary of the little bit you do understand. Maybe a poem or two that you do more or less get. All of a sudden you have a toehold, a small region of a poet that you do understand after all. So it is with me and Aníbal Núñez, after reading four or five books of his.

There are two opposite ways of violating the sanctity of water (profanar el agua), according to this poet: one, having a river take away the sewage and detritus of a city. The other, trying to make water chemically pure. The same lesson could be applied to love, he suggests in the title.