Mara Pastor, "Left"

I would advise you to read this poem by the prominent Puerto Rican poet Mara Pastor a few times, inhaling its ferocity. It deftly combines the immensity of tragedy with the sense untapped power lies within ourselves. That is not an unusual combination, but I have rarely seen it rendered by lines like these: "I climb the stairs, / I burn down the house, / I decide to fly, / I speak an unspeakable language." Each line refuses to stop moving, and the result is glorious chaos with a logic all its own. I don't remember climbing stairs and thinking I was flying, but I remember being young and imagining trees as helicopters because they took you above the ground. Also, I would suspect that flight is quite necessary if the house were burnt down. All of this has a childlike aspect, a foundational aspect: aspirations which underlie our idea of aspiration, a language we don't speak because it is unspeakable.

The poem has this electric, chaotic logic, but what are we to do with it? I suggest we mark two paths, neither of which is completely separate from the other. On the one hand, this poem can be read as illustrating the various natural disasters afflicting Puerto Rico, ones made worse by U.S. colonialism. On the other, it can be read as a storm welling up within ourselves, a natural flood of emotions and reactions to any tough situation, one with no clear exit. We should travel down both paths at the same time in order to better see where we are.

Left (from ANMLY)
Mara Pastor (Translated by Carina del Valle Schorske)

I climb the stairs,
I burn down the house,
I decide to fly,
I speak an unspeakable
language, palm leaves
snap, electric trunks
fall in a mute city,
the muteness is wise,
the voice makes us
animals, the animal
drowns in the water,
in all of us, the sea is
sometimes tsunami. 

Hearing "palm leaves / snap, electric trunks / fall" brings to mind pictures of flooded streets, downed trees and power lines, and the thought of someone in charge of it all who doesn't care. Of course, the problem for Puerto Rico as it faces the viciousness of climate change is far deeper than any one President or administration. U.S. colonialism is on full display in the very idea that people can be U.S. citizens but not vote in federal elections. One might relate this to the phrase "mute city," where words are not heard because of so little representation. That lack of representation makes Puerto Rico especially susceptible to power grid failures, as attempts to deliver power to all citizens of the island have been plagued by corruption and inefficiency. Citizens still have power outages in part because of the damage a hurricane unleashed over 6 years ago.

However, Pastor hits us with the line "the muteness is wise." She's said she speaks "an unspeakable / language" before, so we want to attend to her ideas closely. "[T]he voice makes us / animals," she warns, adding that "the animal / drowns in the water." I think I understand what she's driving at, but it is a complicated idea. We do teach people to speak up, to say something, to complain so a problem can be identified and action made possible. I confess that I believe things would go a lot better where I live now if people spoke up about what they confront daily. I know many are hiding poverty and hunger which we can commit resources to alleviate.

Am I wrong? In telling others to articulate their needs and concerns, am I creating a situation in which things might get worse? Obviously not–if we don't hear the needs of others, we don't hear anything at all. Still, the larger problem of U.S. Constitutionalism is that it hints that your voice will always be respected, always be heard, when that is plainly not true. And that leads some to trust far too deeply in institutions which take us for granted. What Pastor's verse highlights is the wisdom of muteness in some critical situations. There's a quiet strength, "the sea / is sometimes tsunami," which lies within us, one which has helped us and those like us endure. Too much talk undersells our own power. What if we understand what was "Left" as what remained, as the home which cannot be taken away?

Of course, it is more complicated than that, because the poem itself is not mute. It calls for silence for two juxtaposed situations, I believe. First, witness to the destruction unleashed by nature. Only a specific type of animal, us, can mark it, reciting nature's history. Second, our own destruction–"I burn down the house / I decide to fly"–perhaps heard more in reflection and imagination than the act itself. "[T]he voice makes us / animals," and maybe we must be content with being the "rational animal," only a type of animal and nothing more. That we can appreciate muteness for a moment testifies to greater powers we are fortunate to have within us. We, agents of chaos ourselves, see destruction. That would imply we know how to build.