Nuestro amor nació en mayo con los malinches en flor
cuando están en flor los malinches en Managua
Solo este mes dan flores, en los demás dan vainas
y el amor que se fue ya no volverá otra vez.
“Nuestro Amor” relates thematically to the poems that precede it, particularly “Yo no canto a la defensa de stalingrado”, “Recibe estas rosas costarricences Myriam” and “Todavia recuerdo”, the poet continues with the theme of love and contingency. As with the previous poem a single, fleeting moment in time is evoked and frozen within the flow of time. Love, as before, is a primarily contingent matter, doomed to end and disappear. This is in contrast to the temporality of nature which is circular. (It’s interesting to note that in Kristeva’s exploration of female subjectivity and time, circular and monumental temporality are intrinsically linked to one another, as repetition becomes a metonymic sign of eternity.) The first two lines establish the frozen moment in which love is born, set against the backdrop of the flowering malinche. As in “recibe estas rosas” a flower is used as a sign of both contingency and love. Instead of the rose, the European Renaissance sign of tempus fugit, however, we are given a flower that is native to Nicaragua, one which figures in Nicaraguan folklore and popular expression:
“But the trees most celebrated in song are the malinches. Malinche, flower of May, red with blood.
There is in that symbol a double ambiguity that makes its meanings multiple. La Malinche—Hernán Cortés’ woman/interpreter, who witnessed at the side of the conqueror the torture of Cuauhtemoc and the fall of the gods of Tenochtitlán—is, in her original land (Mexico), synonymous with La Chingada, the raped woman. Traitor or victim? And in Nicaragua the old military man Mascafierro repeats what he heard from his grandmother: “Marriage is like the malinche tree: one month of flowers and eleven of vainas.” The vaina of Malinche: bearer of seeds and life/ synthesis of all that is constraints and complaints.”
Contingency, along with betrayal and duplicity, is another defining element of malinche. Malinches are famous precisely because their flowering is brief, a splendor of red colour which lasts one month and is later sealed up in pods. Indeed contingency and betrayal are conceptually linked to one another, as a betrayer’s pledge of fidelity has its own time limit. In the poem, the love that flourishes, in spite of its beauty, is brief possibly due to a betrayal on the part of the beloved. The promise which flowered during that May ecstasy of bold red disappears as quickly as it appears. What is interesting about this poem is that the malinche’s own fugacity is more temporally stable than that of the beloved’s heart. The malinche may flower only once a year for 30 days, but it flowers every year during the same month for the same 30 days. The two middle lines of the poem echo this idea by describing the plant in the present tense “Cuando están en flor los malinches en Nicaragua” “Solo este mes dan flores, en los demás dan vainas”. By using the present tense here Cardenal describes not something that is occurring in one frozen instant in time, but something which is both in the poet’s immediate present (also seen in the use of the demonstrative “este”, instead of “ese”, suggesting that the malinches are also in flower as the poem is being written…literally “only this month do they sprout flowers” ) and which is a general condition and trait of the flower, something it tends to do. This is then contrasted to the love between the poet and the beloved which “se fue” “has gone” and will not return again “ya no volverá otra vez”.
I think there is also the possibility of once again carrying this reading into the question of the nation by the use of the malinche flower as a national symbol, though this may be an interpretive stretch. In “Recibe” we saw the roses as being given a nationalist designation, and this national designation containing with it a sort of backhanded slap against Somoza. The malinche-as-betrayer-as-contingent might also be another coded reference to Somoza. Part of the betrayal of La Malinche was, in Mexican folklore, her preference of the foreign over the native. Somoza is himself a type of Malinche, who sold himself and Nicaragua out to American interests. Somoza was literally the betrayer of Nicaragua when he ordered the assassination of Augusto Sandino. In another poem in Hora Cero Cardenal cites the supposed statement of FDR that “Somoza is a sonofabitch but he’s ours”. Similarly, the malinche, like the rosas costarricences are brief. Somoza’s regime will end.
As I read into Epigramas I’m starting to get the sense that temporality is one of the main avenues through which Cardenal brings together love and national concerns. His understanding of both might be summed up perfectly by the writer of Ecclesiastes “All is vanity and a chase after wind”. Love provides no sense of permanence or commitment for the poet. The beloved is often as untrustworthy and vain as Somoza himself. Love affects the poet on the intimate level, while the condition of the nation affects him publicly, both Somoza and the beloved have the ability to cause the poet suffering.
