Javier Taboada: Two Poems from �El Ni�o de Varas" (The Whipping Boy)

Translation from Spanish by Scott Ezell and the author

[editor�s note. In his new gathering, The Whipping Boy (El ni�o de varas), Javier Taboada fuses all his resources as a poet (investigative poetry, translations, total transcriptions, news excerpts, etc.), in the great tradition of his avant-garde & modernist predecessors, at once broadly international & markedly American (both north and south).  In the process he uses the procedures of extreme collage to create a narrative, brilliant & foreboding by turns, of the modern & ancient ways-of-the-scapegoat as an instrument of political, social, & religious overreach & cruelty.  His is a world, in short, in which present & past come together to stand as images of our own time & of the real dangers that we face & will continue to face as we try to move forward & evolve. (J.R.)]

1/ Pharmak�s event

 preparation

Choose 10 bums.

Feed them and keep them clean.

Place them at 10 points in the city.

Force them to beg for one year.

Collect the money

            put it in a common treasury.

settlement

Gather the 10 in case of these calamities:

a) fire

b) drought

c) famine

d) foreign attack

e) plague

selection and dress

Select the ugliest. Name him pharmak�s.

Dress him in special clothes.

Give him a backpack with cheese

            bread barley and dried figs.

Wreathe his head with garlands

            a headwrap or a conical cap.

Flog his testicles 7 times

            with fig tree branches.

Give masks to the other 9 and undress them. 

procession

The pharmak�s and the 9 will set off from a public square 

            directly to a river

            lake or stream.

                        no wells no ponds

If there is no water,

            go to a road or train tracks.

The 9 will escort the pharmak�s.

Spectators may line both sides of the path

                        and cast stones            curse    spit

                                    or beat the pharmak�s.

If they do (and as a sign of repentance)

            they should scratch their faces

                        or rip out their hair.

The 9 may beat and intimidate the spectators

                        without consequence

            while the procession lasts.

final

After crossing the city:

1. If there is a water flow

            the 9 will beat the pharmak�s

                        and try to drown him

2. If there is no water flow

            the 9 will beat the pharmak�s

            tie him to the first tree they find

                        and try to burn him

If the pharmak�s survives

                        he may never return to the city

If the pharmak�s survives and reaches another town

                        he�ll be greatly honored

                        and considered a god.

Give the common funds to his relatives.

Elect a new member for the following year.

2/ Pit of Bones, cranium 17

the perimortemfracture

entrance vector

                       or exit wound

the shape      a bat

            (rorschach�s fifth card)                      

            two blows

half an inch apart

from bregma / or fontanelle     each

            and both

                        at oblique angles:

                                                                                                

                                                the chopper�s

                                                     chop                                                         

          

           a beam             repeated

            high-energy concentration      the first maybe
                                                lower than the second
                                                            �(consider adrenaline)

an opening towards light

the thunder
                        and its four pebbles

the spirit dwells in the forehead
                                                            he knew it?

                        te cavero le budella

            he maybe said     or thought (in his tongue)
                                    looking for a glance
                                                between the curled fire

maybe he mumbled the name
            (and with it the cause of death)

maybe he rehearsed his moves

maybe he rehearsed    lying down     

                        his gestures
            and dreamed his tone of voice
                        his scream between each blow

maybe he considered an hour

the waning shadow

            of the second sun
the old sun bending on the mountains

maybe he planned a hoax

it�s certain he was right-handed

and pre-Neanderthal cranium 17
a young individual (male or female)

whose third molar attests
                                   to recent passage
                       into adulthood

and they were face to face                         

430 thousand years ago

                                                    "the earliest clear case of deliberate, lethal interpersonal aggression in the hominid fossil record�

^.                   

maybe he
                        dragged the body to the pit

maybe he misjudged the weight
                        and had to ask for help

and maybe
            maybe just that noise 

            its slight delay
                                                            (what is the speed of a body
                                                                        in free fall?)
                        made him feel something akin to joy

  

. . . . . . .

Some Notes on the Preceding

Pharmak�s event is a reconstruction of the �scapegoat� ritual (called pharmak�s, with its double meaning: illness and remedy) in ancient Greece. The old polis need of purge, lead us to a present in which a certain ethnic, religious or political group (always marginal) is thought to be a threat to the safety of the city.

Pit of Bones, cranium 17 is about the discovery of �the earliest case of lethal interpersonal violence� in the hominid fossil records. I�m trying to recreate/ elucidate the cause for that murder (its motivations, planning, corpse disposal), since there are no evident �ritual� tracks in the cranium. Maybe the murderer just wanted to get rid of someone annoying, or just different. And with that in mind, remark the deliberate nature of cruelty, violence and hate in us.

Javier Taboada (Mexico City, 1982). MA in Classics. Poet and translator. Among others, he has translated the full works of Alcaeus of Mytilene (Poemas y Fragmentos, 2010), Jerome Rothenberg�s Testigo & Milagros (A Further Witness & A Poem of Miracles, 2017), and Katherine Mansfield�s The Garden Party and other stories (upcoming, 2018). He is the author of Apothecary Poems (Poemas de Botica, 2014) and Nacencia (2017).