To the Boy Who Was Night by Rigoberto González

To the Boy Who Was Night is a collection of selected and new poems by Rigoberto González, a giant in contemporary poetry for good reason. These poems go back to González’s earliest collections. The strength of image in González’s work and the holding of breath through the lines are spellbinding. I couldn’t look away. It’s astonishing the strength of his voice even in his earliest works. Each poem seems new and imperative; each has a way of seeing that hasn’t been seen before, although it was always there. González commits to a metaphor or image and makes it real.

Much of the imagery is placed in the world of Mexican mythology and village life: the dead are alive and convene with living family, old gods forsake or interact with people, magical realism and bending of reality are deployed, some poems are partially or entirely in Spanish.

Let’s look at the beginning of the poem “Man at Desk”

There’s a man who sits at his desk this evening,

bearing witness to the end of days. The more ink

he uses, the less breath left in the world. He writes

the word bees and the buzzing stops, all hives

explode into dust, and no one remembers honey.

Not even the man who sits at his desk, looking

down at the word as if he had just invented it.

Bees, he mutters. The awkward sound sputters out

of his mouth and plummets because it lacks wings.

The man smudges the page. The word, singed

into illegibility. He tries to recall its circular shapes,

retrace its final journey, but it’s much too late

to bring back to the light what’s been erased . . .

The descriptions are exactly right to give the story roundness and depth, to make us feel it and be present in its absurdity, how it points to us losing the earth one word at a time. It’s perfect.

Buy here: https://fourwaybooks.com/site/to-the-boy-who-was-night/

From “Parable”

There’s a man who sits on the shore every morning,

staring at the sea. And the sea stares back, defiantly.

It won’t release its secrets. I’ll give you an answer

if I take what you’re offering me, says the sea.

When the man begins to weep, the sea yawns

with indifference. Tears are abundant here. As are

sinking ships and broken hearts and moons that drop

like shards of shattered windows. Prayers crumble,

brittle against the Caribbean wind. There’s nothing

in your skies or on your land I haven’t swallowed.

Or spat right back. . .