When Great Prose Turns into Poetry: 'Toco tu boca' by Julio Cortázar

The Peel Street Poetry gatherings at the Social Room, as well as the Poetry Outloud nights at the Fringe, are very much part of a Wednesday evening routine I can hardly do without now. The fact that a group of people manages to find regular time to get together and read, recite and perform poetry in a city like Hong Kong, where everyone runs around, busy with long working hours, endless business meetings, appointments, lunches and dinners, is already in itself quite admirable. What impresses me most is the sense of community, of belonging, and the strong desire to share the same passion, elevating the spirit and enriching it through this noble form of literary art that is poetry.

I am always impressed by the quality of what is being performed at these gatherings. The majority of poems have been composed by the readers themselves, but others belong to famous or less famous authors. Some poems are read, others are recited, and others are spoken or performed. Every time – among the many stars of the galaxy – there are some that shine so bright that their light lingers and persist well beyond the darkest hours. I take them (the stars turned into poems) home with me, try to remember parts of them, and I ponder upon their meanings. If they had been written by some famous poets, I get lucky enough to be able to retrace them and read them again and again.

Last night, my attention was caught by a young lady from Madrid, who read in Spanish with great emphasis what seemed to be a poem but supposedly was not. It was not, I would say, only because not classified as such in terms of ‘form’, being part of a novel. But it was, in all due respects. The combination of words created a sensual music that, together with the vivid descriptions, draw us into an atmosphere of passionate love and intimacy. I searched on my phone for the prose-poem that sounded quite familiar, and finally, during the ‘open mic’ session, I read the English version of it, so that we could all connect with the Spanish one. It was part of something I read two years before, but never aloud, and now - while listening to their sounds - those words took a life on their own.

The piece of prose turned into poetry was ‘Toco tu boca’, ‘I touch your mouth’, Chapter 7 of the novel ‘Rayuela’ (‘Hopscotch’, in English) by Julio Cortázar. (If you’d like to get to know more, read my review here )

I am of the opinion that beauty should always be shared. Therefore – while thanking the Spanish young lady who went up on stage and reignited my memory of Rayuela giving us a moment of bliss – I complete this post with the original Spanish version of ‘Toco tu Boca’, followed by the English Translation ‘I touch your mouth’, and with the video of Cortazár’s own reading of this beautiful chapter.

Unexpected pleasant encounters, I call these special moments of reunion with written words that deserve remembrance.

I touch your mouth, with one finger I touch the border of your mouth, drawing it as if it came out of my hand, as if for the first time your mouth would half open, and it’s enough to close my eyes to undo it all and start over, I make the mouth I yearn reborn each time, the mouth my hand chooses and draws onto your face, a mouth chosen among all, chosen by me with sovereign liberty to draw it with my hand across your face, and by which any chance I do not seek to understand accurately matches with your mouth that smiles from under the one my hand draws onto you.

You look at me, you look at me from up close, closer each time and so we play cyclops, we look at each other closer each time and our eyes enlarge, come closer to each other, they overlap and the cyclops look at each other, breathing confused, the mouths find each other and struggle warmly, biting each other’s lips, merely leaning the tongue upon the teeth, playing in their premises where a heavy wind comes and goes with an old perfume and a silence. But then my hands seek to sink into your hair, to slowly caress the deepness of your hair while we kiss as if our mouths where full of flowers or fish, of lively movements, of dark fragrance. And if we bite the pain is sweet, and if we drown with a brief and terrible simultaneous breath gulp, that immediate death is beautiful. And there is one single saliva and one single taste of ripe fruit, and I feel you tremble against me like a moon in the water.