Thaumaturgy—also known as the performance of miracles—involves applying occult principles to produce tangible results. Speaking with the voice of a modern-day oracle, Chilean poet and visual artist Enrique de Santiago offers moving messages that touch the heart of humanity, connecting us to the Earth’s ancestral power. The visual language of Santiago’s work links the architecture of bones with stellar patterns and geometric structures of movement. These creative poems will help the reader recall nature’s hidden wonders.
My friendship with Enrique de Santiago began in 2010, after being invited to participate in El Umbral Secreto, an international surrealism gathering. It is an honor for me to present his work in my web gallery.
-Mitchell Pluto
The eternal cycle that moves the souls
beneath the mountains
and the roots of fire
Hours
The extinguished soul of the tabernacle,
the hidden phrase that does not appear on my tombstone,
the pardons granted,
the glass half-empty
with its half-full smile,
the useless justifications,
each undeserved kiss,
with its hollow dream.
A long list of strange events
that ought not be written under my name.
Hidden Hours
I am weary of chasing after serenity,
after so many days of sun—
those days of old,
the lost ones,
days when I laid my head upon certainty,
though in the end, it was merely a mirage;
there was nothing epic in the streets,
only cobblestones and the same dampness,
for I believed in things beyond reality,
yet it was but a reflection mirroring the void—
much like now, with fearful eyes,
dreading another mistake,
so I walk with eyelids trapped,
unable to escape the memory,
perpetuating into the coming day
the cycle of emptiness—
an emptiness that cannot turn the wheel of life,
despite the claim that the world is round;
there is only more oxygen to prolong the agony, the gazes devoid of hope,
with no constellations favoring me,
only the interruption of the ceremony,
and the white light calling once more,
compelling me toward salvation—skeptics by day,
inert by night;
nothing remains the same,
only ailments,
air seeping into open sores,
or seeking its own salvation—
a clumsy, enslaved instrument,
foolish for writing, for
the pleasure of the treacherous, the cynics,
the covert ones, those who bring the stench down upon my flesh;
a hard, penitent life,
a fierce passage following withered faith,
a barren wasteland left by lies,
by betrayed words,
by the shattered sand
that will never draw near,
with no public squares to roam,
no scents,
only projected playthings,
cast into the soul’s deepest abyss. I rely on no one,
let no one rely on me;
just fix your gaze—
orderly and without delay—
for the hour will come to reveal myself:
in silence, without a word spoken,
you shall learn of my wounds,
of my unspeakable suffering,
for my spirit is cloaked in flesh—
clumsy, troublesome flesh,
flesh I seek to unleash from its dark delights,
yet I always end up brushing against my own fingers,
returning to the blank slate,
though I have already turned a weary ochre,
and I renounce this script of my life;
I want to descend into sleep,
drunk on molecules that compel me,
and which torment me deep down—
molecules that frighten me with what remains,
with what I do not deserve.
Night entered my life uninvited,
settling in without awaiting an answer;
it took my clothes,
my sheets, and smiled,
leaving a breath of dead smiles
and cadaverous breakfasts;
without further ado,
it simply installed itself within these walls,
sitting to watch me with stubborn persistence,
yet I no longer meet its gaze;
long ago, I left my senses inside my nightstand—
I use them no more,
I need them no more;
what the night brings is enough.
Loica, the Songbird Singing after a Solar Explosion
In the beginning, there was hydrogen—
fusions in the void, upon the chaos,
and light escaping immeasurable density,
an atomic dance in a corner of immensity,
forging clouds of helium,
with horoscopes gathering in their wombs—
incandescent—
a sea with its cosmic tides,
solar matrices,
primordial motherhood,
woman with her 1,080 designs,
who loves the early nebulae
when you gaze upon her—
with her analogous births,
her stars and comets
that govern your sweet destiny,
with your magnificent horizontality,
bearing her feminine ambrosias.
For in the beginning was your name,
before the galaxy sleeping within the orchid,
with the archaic promise of your lips
naming the secret that dwells in oblivion—
a secret slowly surfacing from your skin
like photons escaping the solar core,
a task spanning millennia
to reach the corona
and warm us in eight minutes;
for in the beginning, it was not light,
nor the will of the gods,
nor my own meager poetry—
unnoticed by the world,
traveling like a lightning bolt to return to the void
of a beginning where there was only the stifled voice of space.
This is my vocation:
to snatch, at times, a glimmer from the marvelous—
a poorly paid yet inevitable calling;
thus my bed fills with forest leaves,
and my roof is the stars
bathing the calendulas that embrace my walls—
my perfect prison,
the sweet fate of an ancient equation,
like these verses
traversed by your eyes—
which is, to me, a more than fair wage
throughout the days,
with their mornings
and their sunsets.
Enrique de Santiago has given his consent for the poems to be translated for a North American audience.
Enrique de Santiago, Born in Santiago, Chile (1961). Visual artist, poet, researcher, essayist, curator and cultural manager. He studied a Bachelor of Art at the University of Chile and at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Chile).
Support writers from South America
Mitchell Pluto 