Janet,
Love your tango poem. Of course, being married to a Uruguayan, I've been told that the tango originated in Uruguay and that one of the greatest tango singers of all times, Gardel, was Uruguayan (not French or Argentinian, as others claim!). My own "tango poem" is really a song!
Tango norteño
(To be sung to the tune of “El choclo”)
How can a poet who grew up in Pennsylvania
think she can possibly pretend to entertainya
with tidy poetry that lacks Latino passion
in rhymes and rhythms that defy the latest fashion?
Ah, but this U.S. native knows the sorry stories
(despite the fact that she’s akin to Whigs and Tories)
sung in La Boca bars in dusky Buenos Aires
not just on Fridays, but all week long.
She sings of heartache, of love gone unrequited,
of destinies decided
by vagaries of chance.
She sings of jealousy, treachery and censure,
and I would venture she is partial to romance.
She sings of absence, of lovers long-departed,
and of the brokenhearted,
of friendships tried and true.
She sings of sinners who flaunt the Law of Moses,
and she supposes a confession’s overdue.
And so this gringa won’t skip the light fandango –
too much of guava, papaya, quince and mango;
because her sorrow can’t be sweetened by their juices,
she’ll keep their symbols for other uses.
Ay! Ay! El Choclo! Her hoot will not be muted;
she’ll sing her stories, unlike the owl, reputed
to have grown silent so a señorita’s lover
would not discover that his trust had gone to hell.
And though she favors the flavor of the Beatles,
she needs the tango, with all its pins and needles,
when she is craving to engrave the dark pulsation
lost in translation, like the birthplace of Gardel.
C.
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