Gaudeamus

José Kozer

1983

[…] In my confusion
I didn’t know how to answer my detractors, those
who brand me
a poseur because I pronounce the c in the Castilian manner or I say fellow instead of guy (I love)
miscegenations
(peruvianisms) (mexicanisms)
of diction and vocabulary: I am neither the one (nor the other) neither straight nor ambiguous,
barbarously
flat-nosed
and big-nosed Assyrian (beards) oblique (eyes) and I come from the other side
of the river: Cuban
and vain (a Jew) and tabernacle (shofar and taled) violin of the Aragon or first trumpet
of the Sonora Matancera: what
more could one have wished that not to be a migratory ibis (scorn) or a sporadic
heart
made for the scandal of whom at the nuptial hour, at the hour
of the feast
crosses the threshold and inhales a scent of potions (scent) of tropical fruits and dill:
well
that’s how it is, he
and I, cistern and limbo (myriads) the hands that climb the scales contaminate
thought
with ring-worm and scum (waters) imperturbable: nationless, quiet
future
and mirth of round casseroles (my hands) are my race that
dig into crepitation
of matter.

Translated by
Gustavo Pérez
Firmat
.

Credits

José Kozer, "Gaudeamus," from Life on the Hyphen. The Cuban-American Way, written and trans. Gustavo Pérez Firmat (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), pp. 165, 168. Reproduced by permission of the authors.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 10.

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Creator Bio

José Kozer

b. 1940
Cuban-born José Kozer, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Czechoslovakia, came to the United States in 1960. He is professor emeritus of Spanish and Latin American literature at Queens College of the City University of New York. A leading Latin American poet, several of his works have been published in bilingual editions. Kozer received the Julio Tovar Poetry Prize in 1974 and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Prize in 2013.

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