CAN YOU SELL?

 
August 03, 2009 By: PGR NAIR Category: Poetry 
 Can You Sell?

Nicolas Guillen

Can you sell me the air that moves through your fingers,

and hits �your face and undoes your hair?

Maybe you could sell me five penny worth of wind,

or more, perhaps sell me a cyclone?

Perhaps there�s some clean air

That I could buy

air… that sweeps

into your garden blossom on blossom

into your garden for the birds

A ten-penny� measure of air.

�

�The air it turns and passes

with butterfly-like spins

No one owns it, no one.

Can you sell me sky?

the sky� at times blue,

the sky at times grey,

That portion of the sky

You think you bought with the trees

of your orchard, as one buys the roof of his house.

What about a dollar�s worth

of sky, two miles

of sky, a fragment, whatever you can spare

of your sky?

The sky is in the clouds

 The clouds pass distant overhead

No one owns them, no one

Can you sell me rain, the water

that gives you tears and wets your tongue?

What about a dollar�s worth of spring water,

or droplets from a pregnant cloud,

full and fluffy as a small lamb?

May be mountain rain-water,

or even water from gutters

left to dogs.

What about a league of sea, a lake perhaps,

A hundred dollars�� worth of lake?�

Water� falls and bubbles,

Water bubbles and passes.

 No one owns it, no one

Can you sell me earth, endless night

of origins, teeth

of dinosaurs, and the scattered lime

of distant �skeletons?

Can you sell me long since buried jungles, birds now extinct,

fish fossilized, or the sulphur

of volcanoes, a billion years

rising in spiral? Can you

sell me earth? Can you

sell me earth? Can you�

Your earth is mine.

All feet tread it

No one owns it, no one.

 �

The Caribbean poet Nicolas Guillen �was regarded as the national

poet of Cuba till his death in 1989. This poem is� a hymn to our
environment and mocks� the perpetrators of it by asking a serious
of elemental questions for which they have no answers.

The poet mocks at man�s greed. It voices his �personal conviction

that the roles of artist and activist should never become separate.
The poem�s central message is given in the form of its title
question, and is carried through a series of vivid images which lend
to it an air of both saddened beauty and poignant sarcasm. This
manner of delivery allows the question to stand as its own answer,
effectively merging Guillen�s cultural and socioeconomic concerns
with aesthetic power.

The poem�s first two lines exemplify this notion: “Can you sell me
the air that passes through your fingers/ and hits your face and
undoes your hair?” The question immediately establishes two things.
The reader is likely to first recognize that there is some economic
entity concerned with making a purchase. Secondly, the nature of the
purchase is readily recognized to be impossible and even absurd. The
simple beauty with which Guillen phrases this initial question, a
pattern that will essentially repeats itself throughout the poem,
emphasizes the very real desire of power driven entities to harness,
possess, and regulate something that is impossible to grasp,
something that passes through the fingers that would try to hold it.
The effect is carried further when an attempt is made at quantifying
and valuing the wind: “Maybe you could sell me five dollars� worth
of wind,/ or more, perhaps sell me a cyclone?” Again, the absurdity
of the question is accentuated when the nature of the wind is applied
to apt imageries. The poet describes “air… that sweeps/ into your
garden blossom on blossom/ into your garden for the birds.”
This first ten line stanza, utilized three more times in the poem�s
construction, is followed with a brief, three line stanza that seems to
act as punctuation for the questions that precede it. It is a new voice
separate from the questioner, and becomes the second role of the
poet. These few lines are given special indentation to show that they
will establish an answering statement that will pattern itself into the
rest of the poem. The answer is as such: “The air it turns and
passes/ with butterfly-like spins./ No one owns it, no one.”

This form of ten lines of questioning followed by three lines of

answer is the same for the poem�s remainder. The subject of the
questions proceeds from air to sky, then to water, then to land, with
the same answer essentially given every time. As for the clouds, “No
one owns them, no one.” And the water, “No one owns it, no one.”
And when it comes to the land, “All feet tread �it./ No one owns it,
no one.”

Also repeated is the attempt at quantifying theses various things. The

amount differs with every question. Guillen ranges the amount from
“Can you sell me a dollar�s worth/ of sky” to “a hundred dollars�
worth of lake”. The function of this is to relate the impossibility of
giving any static “going-rate” to the elements that comprise a free
and natural environment, thus they are arbitrary and without
substance. The poet also gives further satire to the notion of
purchasing these “possessions” by specifying certain quantities of
them. He ponders the cost of “two miles/ of sky, a fragment of your
sky”, or “one league of the sea, a lake perhaps”.

Guillen also accompanies each element with images that fortify their
depth, successfully relating their aesthetic value over any possible
monetary worth, each image becoming more poignant as the poem
develops to give an increasing sense of his message. He speaks of
water in the form of “a droplet from a pregnant cloud,/ full and fluffy
as a small lamb�… or water from gutters/ left� to the dogs”, and
land holding “the teeth/ of dinosaurs and the scattered lime/ of
distant skeletons… long since buried jungles, birds now extinct,/ fish
fossilized, the sulphur/ of volcanoes, a billion years/ rising in spiral”.
Guillen is able to accomplish with this poem a very passive revolt
against those governmental or perhaps corporate powers which
afflict his culture and region.

Ref: Man-Making Words: Selected Poems of Nicolas Guillen

(Paperback)