Casa de la Literatura Peruana, and Allen Ginsberg

I visited Casa de la Literatura Peruana last week for the first time. It's located in what used to be Lima's main railway station, Estación Desamparados and was opened in 2009 as a literary museum. It's quite magnificent and retains many original features of the old station, including trains passing by outside and a train which goes eight times a year on a tourist route of twelve hours to Huancayo. I wish I was fit enough to go, or that I'd known about it on my previous visits to this beautiful country.

I spent two hours there, which is about my time limit for being on my feet without a break, apart from a sit down from time to time, seats being scarce. I wish I could have spent more time there so I could read more of the displays, which are obviously in Spanish, and hence take longer for me to read, and discover more Peruvian poets.

There were not a lot of visitors there, apart from a large group of Peruvian school children being shown around by their teachers. The place is part of the Education Ministry, so it's good to know that future generations of Peru's young people will have this magnificent facility to enjoy and benefit from. Let's hope so anyway. I would take Pamela and co but it's a little difficult with Gareth and my slowness.

The next day the local paper El Comercio had an article about it, which seemed like a happy coincidence for me. I discovered that my old pal Allen Ginsberg had visited Peru in 1960 and spent some time here and of course wrote some poems. He met Martín Adán, an important Peruvian poet, outside Estación Desamparados, whilst he was here and they spent the day together. I didn't see anything about Ginsberg when I was there last week but maybe I missed it.

He wrote a poem for Adán called "To an Old Poet in Peru" ( A un viejo poet en el Peru). I was planning to quote the whole poem here but that might be too much so will give you a few lines only, and then you can search for it online.

And you saluted my eyes
With your anisetto voice
Mistakenly thinking I was genial
                          for a youth
(my rock and roll is the motion of an
                  angel flying in a modern city
your obscure shuffle is the motion
     of a seraphim that has lost its wings)
I kiss you on your fat cheek (once more tomorrow
Under the stupendous Desamparados clock)

I'm very pleased to have discovered this poem and to have stood under the stupendous Desamparados clock. He also wrote a poem called (I think) May 26, 1960 , which describes a visit to a turkish bath and which I will not quote here as it's quite explicit in a Ginsbergian way, and there may be children reading this in years to come, or others of a sensitive disposition. These poems were translated into Spanish by Antonio Cisneros. They were first published in USA in a collection called Reality Sandwiches.

Must go, I'm going to MALI.