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Alvaro Cardona-Hine (1926-)
Selected Haiku

the snails
........ oh my God
they get erections of light
with those eyes of theirs

he won't go to sleep
unless we play him the tune
that keeps him awake

shoes so dear to me
they all but take a few steps
in my direction

from The gathering wave; forty-eight haiku with drawings. Denver, A. Swallow [1961], 43 p.

MADONNA

light
in the center of the melon

midsummer

TWELVE O’CLOCK

look
sophocles asleep
under my finger
nails

WITH THE SILENCE

to be
where roses bloom
by the sea

not far
from a life thrown away

HOW A PINE NEEDLE FALLS

when
because to fly
it must let the branch go
all day long
the light seems one with air

SEPTEMBER IN THE MOUNTAINS

when I was young
I thought I had
everything

and I did

now all I have is
my breath and
my breath is dancing
out of reach

HOMAGE TO BUSTER KEATON

the cigars are sunday

the cigars are
monday
tuesday
wednesday
thursday
friday and
saturday

the smoke is sunday

why is the smoke sunday?

origin 4 - community - sixth series - spring 2007, pp. 45-47.

 

Alvaro Cardona-Hine is a poet, painter, composer and translator. Born in 1926 in Costa Rica, he came to the United States in 1939. Since 1945 when he began writing poetry, he has written seventeen books, most recently a memoir, Thirteen Tangos For Stravinsky, (Sherman Asher Publishing, 1999) and Spring Has Come, translations of pre-Renaissance Spanish poetry (Alameda Press, 1999). Other book titles include The Gathering Wave, (Alan Swallow Publisher, 1961), Agapito ( Charles Scribners' Sons, 1969), and Four Poems About Sparrows (Eyelight Press, 1994). A History of Light (Sherman Asher Publishing, 1998) was named a Small Press Book Award Finalist for 1998.
http://www.cardonahinegallery.com/
http://www.eclectica.org/v10n1/glixman_cardona.html

Alvaro Cardona-Hine. Sucursal de Estrella: Poemarios Iniciales y Finales.
University of New Mexico Press, 2007, 205 p.
"Sucursal de Estrella" brings together poems written since 1954 in Spanish by Alvaro Cardona-Hine. Grouped into seven sections that embrace diverse forms and times, this multi-faceted work offers testimony of a return to his native tongue and the landscape of voices that constitute its memory. The pain of existence, a desperation before a world violated by man and, at the same time, a sense of humor, of the beauty of some past time, the love of creation, of a life shaped by an honesty of word and silence, these inspire, line after line, the texture of these poems.