Ernesto Cardenal at UWM Tonight

Tonight I went to a poetry reading with Ernesto Cardenal. He is an 83-year-old priest, renowned poet of Latin America and revolutionary. He was the former minister of culture in Sandinista, Nicaragua and now is persecuted by the present Sandinista government of Nicaragua. He studied for the priesthood under the auspices of Thomas Merton and has written over 35 poetry books, many translated into other languages. Tonight he mostly read from a book called “Cosmic Canticle”, a 500-page collection of canticles about the cosmic origins of the universe that he wrote over a 30 year period. It combines politicians, Latin American history, science and spirituality with the evolution of human understanding. His ability to interweave so many diverse sources, from science to mysticism, into one fascinated me. Afterward I purchased an English copy of this epic. I know the poetry will be lost in the translation to English but most of the integrating of diverse thoughts should remain.

Seeing all things as related and as one, as he does, has always fascinated me and is one of the reasons I am so drawn to growing power and urban gardening. During the question and answer period tonight he was asked what he thought of present Latin American leaders like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. He told the story about how he was in the front row of one of Chavez’s speeches when Chavez talked about Venezuelans being brothers and sisters to Americans, and Americans being brothers and sisters to Venezuelans. Chavez seeing him there asked him: ”Cardenal, what do you think about that?” He responded that he had never heard a politicians speak like that and was glad to hear it. There is something revolutionary happening in Latin America, perhaps not in Nicaragua currently, but in other Latin American countries like Venezuela and Bolivia. From my experience in Venezuela last April (see Risen In Venezuela) and tonight, there is a wave of a truly revolutionary and spiritual movement taking place that is unstoppable. The Cosmos, as a garden in spring, is growing and flourishing.

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