In 1956 Cardenal experienced a religious awakening, and in 1957 he became a disciple of Thomas Merton, entering a Trappist monastary in Gethsemani, Kentucky. On August 15, 1965, at the age of forty, he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in Managua, Nicaragua. Five years later, he spent three months in Cuba and experienced what he referred to as his “second conversion.” In 1972 he published En Cuba, a prose account of his trip to Cuba, as well as Canto Nacional, dedicated to the FSLN (The Sandanista National Liberation Front). In 1977 he was forced into exile into Costa Rica, from which he served as roving ambassador for Sandinistas. Following the Sandanista victory in July, 1979, Cardenal was appointed Minister of Culture of Nicaragua, a post he held until 1988.

Cardenal describes Cosmic Canticle as “the culmination of my life’s work of some thirty years”:

It deals with the entire cosmos. That’s why the poem is so long. It is principally written in scientific language. I attempt here to unify science and poetry; also poetry and politics, science and mysticism, and mysticism and revolution!

In an earlier statement, he told translator Jonathan Cohen,

I am now writing poetry of a cosmic character, which has elements of mysticism and politics, as well as deeply personal feelings about my life, but it is framed especially in cosmologic language about the problems posed by time and space, matter, the atom, the stars and human evolution.

Cosmic Cantlicle is a brilliantly wide-ranging poem whose open form allows the poet to assert an amazing number of disparate contexts in close, mutually-illuminating proximity. This is a passage from Cantiga 41, “The Canticle of Canticles”:

The passage moves us into a “cosmic soup” of explicit eroticism, science, and religion (the eroticism is obviously flavored by The Song of Songs). It names the earth with its flowers and butterflies, atoms, electrons, satellites, and galaxies--and it ends with a remarkable reference to the concluding lines of Dante’s Divina Commedia:

Al’alta fantasia qui mancò possa;
   ma già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle,
   sì come rota ch’ igualmente è mossa,
l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

Here power failed the high phantasy; but now my desire and will, like a wheel that spins with even motion, were revolved by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

                (John D. Sinclair, trans.)

Gravity and Love (“Attraction”)! One thinks, not only Pound but Whitman.

I saw Ernesto Cardenal in San Francisco on April 19, 2001 at the Women’s Building in the Mission District. The packed event was sponsored by New College of California, the San Francisco Poetry Center, and the Mission Cultural Center. I attended the event with Michael McClure and his wife, Amy Evans McClure.

At the age of seventy-five, Cardenal seemed healthy and extremely alive. He spoke in Spanish, though it was clear that he understood English. His words were translated by Alejandro Murguía. Murguía made much of the fact that this event was taking place in the Mission, with its tradition of Spanish: “We’re not going to go away.”

After the reading, I found this, from Booklist, on Amazon.com:

During the Sandinista years in Nicaragua, Cardenal, the minister for culture, wrote poetry and contemplated the universe. Several years later, Cardenal’s country is still wracked by strife, and he is still in the midst of contemplation. His Cosmic Canticle arrives like songs from the darkness, questioning who we are and where we came from and keeping the tradition of the long poem alive. From its first cantiga, “Big Bang,” in which Cardenal speculates upon our origins, to the here-and-now of later cantigas, he sees signs of hope: “This universe repeating itself after each Big Bang / to be better each time / until it becomes the perfect cosmos.” In the last cantiga, “Omega,” he calls out names and celebrates the relations of all humankind: “Love is the synthesis of the universe.” This is, then, a book of faith--faith in humanity and in a creator. As the work of an ordained priest, this comes as no surprise, although Cardenal’s continuing impulse to write such stunning poetry is ever a wonderful surprise.

I made these notes immediately after the reading:

Cardenal spoke of Cosmic Canticle as the culmination of thirty years’ work. He said it was an attempt to synthesize scientific language with poetic language, mysticism with revolution, etc. There were marvelous sudden leaps within individual poems from one context into another. The poem seemed the embodiment of a remarkable sense of freedom. A small man in a black beret, Cardenal himself seemed a symbol of joy--Santa Claus in a beret. He wore sandals, like a beatnik. He had a sweet, comforting, conspiratorial smile. I thought: If you ever wondered what happened to the Whitmanic “cosmic” tradition--here it is. A wonderful clarity of mind. Updating the Bible, he said we were “cosmic dust” and would return to “cosmic dust.” He said “water, sugar, apples and woman” were made of the same elements--this from a priest. He said, referring to the possibility of extraterrestrial life, “The extraterrestrials may have their own crucified man.” He said, “Hydrogen I shall be, but hydrogen in love.” He said he didn’t want the entire poem to be all goodness and harmony, so he had to include contrasting material: Richard Nixon, for instance. His poem about Nixon had Nixon saying simultaneous yes’s and no’s--a politician. He had a poem about visiting a Hollywood set and how there was nothing “behind” the buildings--making much of that. A producer told him that the director and the producer didn’t finally control the film: the film was controlled by the bank which financed it. McClure and I both felt he was taking relatively easy pot-shots at the USA--to the delight of his audience, nonetheless. He had a poem about a young man who joined the Sandanistas and was killed. The young man was amazingly foul-mouthed, constantly saying “I don’t give a fuck.” Cardenal said he tried to interest the young man in improving his mind, reading a bit, but to no avail. He said the young man couldn’t stand authority: Cardenal told him he wouldn’t last in the Sandanistas. Shortly before he died, the young man told him, “You could die any minute.” Cardenal saw the young man--called, among other things, a “womanizer”--as full of life: “The bastards killed me: I don’t give a fuck!”

There were young men from San Francisco who went to fight alongside the Sandanistas. Many died. Cardenal knew their names, told what happened to them. He kept calling them “gringos”--which Murguía (himself one of the young men) translated as “comrades” until it became clear that he could no longer do so: affectionately called “gringos”! Cardenal said that Cuba was the only country in the world where Socialism was still alive. He also spoke of  “a revolutionary Christianity,” which is perhaps the same as “liberation theology.” Both McClure and I were reminded a little of Teilhard de Chardin--and McClure of the “Canticle of the Sun” by Saint Francis. (One of Cardenal’s cantigas is titled “Canticle of the Sun.”) Someone in the audience (a woman) asked Cardenal how he could reconcile the fact of his priesthood and its celibacy with the obvious sensuality of his poetry. He admitted it was hard but said The Song of Songs was more sensual than his poetry--and went on to speak about a cosmic love, an “Amor” which was perhaps responsible, say, for the clinging together of particles. I tried to make a convincing drawing of him--and failed. I wrote,

I saw Ernesto Cardenal tonight
It was night
but I saw the sun.

On May 9, Michael McClure wrote a letter to Cardenal. The letter contained a poem Cardenal had inspired:

 

Dear Ernesto:

    You are a sun sprite, all whiteness and light--what an enormous pleasure to see you and hear you again. What a deep and flying poem of revolution, liberation theology, socialism, love, environment, microbiology, and astrophysics! Three days later I found COSMIC CANTICLE and am reading it. Thanks to you for being Ernesto Cardenal--we need you. And thanks to Alexandro for his strong and sensitive reading of the English.

    Enclosed is a poem you inspired.

    Love to you and yours.

 

I think that McClure’s letter expressed what everyone in that room felt: the extraordinary presence of spirit, the amazing aliveness of language. This is the poem McClure wrote. It is significantly titled “Souls”:

                SOULS for Ernesto Cardenal