SENSITIZE ©

Hi there:

I believe that at least Cathy and Lugh have read a prior version of this poem, for which I beg Cathy's revision & critique. The finished 'product' will open a freewebs' site and shall include her name as editor or whatever she chooses to be named as. Thank you.
Salvador

A lagoon at a Buenos Ayres' province farm

(Childhood remembrances)

Contrasting with the peaceful water surface
where one could see birds gliding upside down,
and near the edges totora reeds pointing their fingers up
while a tenuous breeze smoothly combs rush
like a green swinging hairdo in punk fashion,
there was this mixed up symphony of happy waterfowl:
shy coots, Pampas' spur-winged lapwings, wild ducks, teals
and the omnipresent black-headed seagulls.
My blue lagoon at a Buenos Ayres' livestock farm.

Hundreds of yards away, jet black Aberdeen Angus calves
fattened placidly to death in their beloved maize fields.

Alarm spreaded all along the banks, a sea of sounds...
Its crescendo followed syncronised with our slow pace
towards the mirror on the field's zapphire looking-glass;
plovers swiftly moved on their stilts out
while the other surface life dashed in.
Only the curious white herons didn't move away
they raised their heads and opened their eyes wide
guessing what was that centaurus-like figure coming.
They soon learned, when we arrived.

I slipped smoothly down the horse's back
and looked around for a clean grassy patch.
I sat on the green, on that fertile scenty ground
of this Buenos Aires' cattle farm where I was born,
and my chestnut horse bent his head down,
I caressed his forehead, his nostrils flapped,
his eyes sparkling out life and love
perhaps remembering other times we spent
together, days of gleeful quiet galloping nowhere
or freezing cold nights warming each other
under the clear blueblack dome full of blinking stars
sharing the innermost cores of our animal souls:
we were mates, the same age, his adultness knowledge
understanding, predicting, all my thoughts.

I can still recall the warm feeling of his silky hide
through the light linen of my riding pants
I took the reins off and left him loose,
he would stay there lazily munching and looking at me
with the corner of his eye, recognising my voice,
my breath, every beat of my heart...
The white clover in bloom scented the air.

Will ever anyone describe the Pampas
now that Henry Hudson is with us no more?

I used to stay quiet, nibbling an oxalis stem
feeling the vinegar plant's sour taste on my tongue,
imagining I was lost with no chance to go back
as I indeed was in the midst of daydreams.
As minutes clicked by, volatiles grew more confident;
slowly, mallards popped their heads out from the reeds
followed by coots and black-necked swans hooting to Spring
in this haven free from the occasional shotgun's bang
they seemed to know we were harmless...
there we stay dead quiet, my horse and me.

Or was it the other way round:
a chestnut horse and his dear human child?

In late Spring I loved to enter and dodge these waters,
tread half-naked through the algae soup
and the thickly knit floating grass leaves
scaring shoals of tiny fish and tadpoles darting away,
to look for the water birds' hidden nesting grounds,
dreaming about the exquisite dishes I'll cook with some eggs.
Not easy to find. Their ubiquitous nests
with ova disguised under patterns olive green and brown:
the gulls' are light bright green with black marks...
A seven-foot span Chaja discovers me from the heights
and darts down screaming to protect her spawn
of four or five half-a-pound each white eggs,
with crimson red yolk; but she arrived too late...

Neathly packed in my neckerchief I had already one.
And for a supper for two, one was enough.


© 2003-2004-2006 Salvador Oria aka Argie

PS: I know that British laws condemn tampering with wild species' nests & eggs, but 1) this never happened in British territory; 2) the point where fact and fiction divide is not explicit; 3) if it ever happened it was at least 55 years ago.

Buenos Ayres? Shouldn't that be Buenos Aires? I hardly dare suggest such a thing, but I've never seen the place written with a 'y'. Maybe it's a local spelling; I don't know. I would drop the apostrophe and consider using a capital P for Province, or alternately drop the word province altogether.

First stanza, line 2, instead of 'one could see', I would have put 'I could see'. Much more effective, and after all, you use 'My' blue lagoon at the end of the stanza, so why not keep it all properly in the first person?

Line 5, I would use a semi-colon rather than a comma after 'punk fashion'.

Line 7, I'm not sure about the capital P for Pampas. I wouldn't have used it. tricky one, though. Depends whether you want to describe a geographical feature (pampas) or a specific geographical place (Pampas). Drop the apostrophe anyway.

Line 8, black headed seagulls are usually just called black headed gulls, as it's a specific breed rather than generic 'seagulls'. However, 'seagulls' sounds better poetically, so you'll probably decide to keep it.

Last line, drop the apostrophe (and probably spell Ayres, Aires).

Second stanza, I misread 'fattened' as 'flattened', and spent several worried minutes wondering what had happened to the poor calves... Made sense once I realised my error. I like the originality of vision in this stanza.

Third stanza, line 1, 'spread', not 'spreaded'.

Line 2, 'synchronised', not syncronised'. I would add a comma after 'followed' to clarify how to read that line.

Line 3, presumably this should be 'sapphire', not 'zapphire', unless you know a word I don't.

Line 4, word order, this would make more sense as: 'plovers moved swiftly out on their stilts'. Presumably you liked 'out' at the end of the line because of the contrast with 'in' at the end of the next line, but the grammar's too convoluted that way in my view.

Line 8, 'centaur-like', not 'centaurus-like'. Again, the word order here is wrong. The way you've written it, the herons have guessed what you were before you arrived, but clearly they hadn't. You need something along the lines of: 'trying to guess what the approaching centaur-like figure was' but preferably put more poetically.

Stanza four, line 3, 'scented', not 'scenty'.

Line 4, you've actually used 'Aires' this time. You don't need the apostrophe. I think you don't need 'this' either; 'the' sounds better. I would put a full stop at the end of the line, and start the next with: 'My chestnut horse... etc'.

Line 11, you need 'blue-black', not 'blueblack'.

Line 13, 'adult', not 'adultness'.

Stanza five, line 1, a few superfluous words here. I would cut 'can', and change 'warm feeling' to 'warmth'. Tighter and more effective, in my view.

Line 3, 'let' him loose, not 'left'.

Line 5, probably 'from' the corner of his eye, rather than 'with'.

Stanza six, again, I'm not sure if you need a capital P for Pampas. I wouldn't use it.

Stanza seven, line 1, the English for 'oxalis' is 'wood sorrel'. You might prefer to use that. My Mum spent her childhood chewing that stuff too, before finding out years later that it's apparently poisonous.

Line 2 I would possibly re-order as: 'feeling the plant's sour vinegar taste on my tongue'.

Line 4 I would re-order as: 'as indeed I was in the midst of daydreams'.

Line 5, weird use of the word 'volatiles'. I checked, and its use to denote a creature capable of flying is obsolete, according to my dictionary. However, it's hard to think of an alternative. It's not a word I would ever use as a noun, but that doesn't mean to say you shouldn't, of course.

Line 7, I wouldn't use a capital for spring.

Last line, I would definitely use 'my horse and I', as grammatically, you and your horse are the subject of this sentence, ie, 'My horse and I stay dead quiet' is the sense of it, so therefore 'My horse and me' is wrong.

Stanza eight. Beautiful couplet.

Stanza nine, line 1, again, I wouldn't use a capital S for spring.

Line 4 is not grammatical. You could fix it by putting replacing 'darting away' with 'which darted away' and replacing the comma at the end of the line with a semi-colon.

Line 6, replace 'I'll' with 'I'd' to keep the tenses correct.

Line 10, you don't need a capital for chaja. I looked it up... the English is 'largest crested screamer', so I'd definitely stick with 'chaja' in this instance. (Found this rather nice picture too.)

Line 12 would be more clearly expressed as: 'of four of five half-pound white eggs,'.

Stanza ten, line 1, 'neatly', not 'neathly'. The end of the line would read more smoothly as: '...I already had one' rather than '...I had already one'.


This is a super, nostalgic poem. You capture the childhood experiences brilliantly. The structure of the poem is very strong, with the longer stanzas interspersed with the thoughtful couplets. My only criticism would be that it ends too abruptly.

I'm always a bit wary about correcting your grammar, because the errors in some way add to your distinctive voice. Spellings, I think, have to be correct, but grammar... you have a bit more leaway with grammar. If it's over corrected, it becomes sanitised and loses something. That's why I've left a lot of oddities of expression and punctuation well alone, and just picked up on the bits that I really think should be reconsidered.

Excellent poem, Argie. It was a pleasure to pick it to pieces

Dear Cathy,

Thank you for 'picking my work to pieces' I need it as oxygen to breath. Patsy (wife) wouldn't correct my originals because she holds that I write without actually paying attention. Hence, if one day I decide to put it all in a book to be offered to British printers I'll seek your help, for a sound percentage of the sales that is. Meanwhile and until that day, I shall not 'pay attention'.

Buenos Aires spelled with a 'y' is how it was spelled up to the last years of the 19th century, mainly by English travellers and media but also by Spanish speaking people. In ancient times the use of 'y' and 'i' in Spanish was indifferent. Even my own family name Oria was spelled with 'y' until the 18th century (Orya) and it appears in the 'y' fashion on my 15th century coat of arms and church birth certificates of those times. Our capital city was given its name by the founders using the old spelling. Write "Buenos Ayres" for a Google's search to limit it to those two words and you'll be surprised. I have a soft spot for old words and old spellings that I thought you've already discovered...

Only today I came here to check for critique. I have no time now to read it over but I printed it to work on my one-hour coach trip back home this evening. The Ayres issue captured my attention and I wanted to leave my thanks and a note about the 'y' before leaving.

Cheers,

Sal