Foreword to the Book ‘Vivencias y poemas’, by Doña Raquel Muñoz de Franco

There are some writings that, when read, produce in the heart the feeling that they were written with divine assistance. I cite as an example the profound biblical texts of the New and Old Testaments, so wonderful that a third of humanity ascribes divine authorship to them, for they consider that no person, not even an artist of the pen, could have been capable of writing them on his own. I also cite as an example the work of the Lebanese Khalil Gibran, in my understanding the greatest poet of all time, in whose work the voice of a higher Wisdom speaks through a simple man sensitive to beauty. The list of inspired writings includes works of all races, all times, all languages and all creeds. The common denominator in this matter is that in these works divine Inspiration is, without exception, the Wind that fills the sails and sets the writers’ creativity sailing. Thus, on reading these magnificent texts, poetic in form and prophetic in substance, one is certain that the divine Hand moved the human one as it held the pen, to bring the rest of humanity some important message or some transcendent teaching.

It was that feeling of reading a Revelation that many of the poems in this work produced in me, especially the poems centered on Nature and Ecology.

For those of us who love Doña Raquel, the whole book is magical and full of meaning. But without any doubt, from the perspective of a reader with no emotional ties to the author, the greatest merit of these writings is the impressive prophetic spirit of their ecological teachings and warnings, some of them written more than forty years ago! Throughout these poems dedicated to Nature, one finds countless wise warnings of great relevance today, such as those about the need to conserve Nature as a way to protect and sustain Life, about the balance of species, about not destroying the forests and reforesting the affected areas, and about Loving Nature as the ultimate and liberating philosophy.

This wealth of foresight gives the book a prophetic aura, leaving our reason two possible options: either the author possesses an extraordinary intuition that allowed her to anticipate by a third of a century the Ecological Revolution we are living through today, or some breath of divine Inspiration filled the sails of her creativity when she wrote the poems of this collection.

This book, besides gathering the author’s experiences and poems, the products of a hardworking and fruitful life, manages along the way to describe for us the gradual development of the Tonosí Valley, from when it was a paradise closed off by dense and dangerous jungles, to the present day, when roads cross it the length and breadth of its expanse. And it tells us how this development of the roads brought, at the same time, the economic progress of the villages, and the consequent destruction of the surrounding natural wealth.

The work is divided into three parts. The first part includes a Historical and Geographical Account of the Tonosí Valley, followed by a concise and very interesting summary of the activities carried out in Tonosí by the author, Doña Raquel Muñoz de Franco, and her husband, Dr. Joaquín Pablo Franco Sayas. It prepares the reader to understand the spirit and the reason of the poems in the second part of the book. The poems have been classified by theme into four groups, for the better thematic unfolding of the collection. The third and last part of the book comprises some appendices that give the work its final shape, presenting interesting information about the poems, the author and her surroundings.

It is curious that the author, though born in Chile, came to Love our Panamanian soil, to appreciate it and care for it, much more intensely than most Panamanians. Dazzled by the exuberance of the Tropics, she falls in love with our fauna and flora, and comes to feel fully Panamanian, as the following fragment of her poem reveals to us:

Thus, perceiving how the Earth is slowly dying, battered by man, she decides to become a protector of Nature, planting new forests and advising her contemporaries on how to conserve natural resources.

Enrique Grau tells us: “An artist’s work is a kind of diary; his whole life is reflected in it.” This is especially true in the case of Vivencias y Poemas (Experiences and Poems). Every important step, every stage of growth in the author’s life, is reflected in a poem. Her awakening to the nature of our country, her growing love for the Earth, her first granddaughter, her admiration for the pollera1, her recovery from a cancerous tumor, the tragic death of a loved one… in short, everything that influenced her way of thinking and living is reflected in these poems.

An analysis of the collection reveals some very interesting traits that deserve to be mentioned separately.

The most evident and striking of them is that the author deeply identifies the Creator with Creation, and tells us—very rightly—that God is present in the Nature that surrounds us, and that we will never find him in a temple if we do not first know how to see him in the splendor of the woods and jungles, in the sprouting of a seed, in a mother’s love for her child, and in Life itself. For this reason we perceive a certain resemblance between the philosophy set forth in this work and the Jain philosophy, which preaches respect for all forms of life, holding them to be as valuable as the life of man.

Even more interesting is the discovery that the poem ¡Dios está aquí! (God Is Here!), written in 1980, contains a proposition that agrees perfectly with the most recent Scientific Model that attempts to explain the origin of Life. I will take one verse of the poem as an example. The verse says:

Men of science have not yet managed to explain the origin of Life using the Evolutionary Model—for reasons whose exposition lies beyond the purpose of this foreword—, nor can they explain it with the Creationist Model. For this reason, some of them (among whom are executives of NASA) have proposed a new Scientific Model called the Model of Evolutionary Creationism, which proposes that Life on our planet arose through the will and action of God (a Higher Intelligent Energy), who has worked through the generation and intelligent evolution of living beings, from the beginnings of the Earth until today. This Method has begun to be publicly spread in this decade, which means that Doña Raquel Muñoz de Franco, by clearly setting out this idea in her poem, also anticipated this event, by more than a decade.

We can see that the scientific knowledge of the author of Vivencias y Poemas, far from hindering her poetry, helps her express it more clearly. This is shown by the following phrase, taken from the poem Vieja Tierra (Old Earth):

We see how the term saprophytes, used almost exclusively in the Biological lexicon, is set into the verse, enriching the wording and the color of the poem.

Another trait that stands out in the work is that Doña Raquel, who knows the work of the countryside deeply, extols the courage and the tenacity of the man who clears the forest to support his family, and at the same time pleads for the protection of these forests. And that is how it should be, for how can one blame the countryman for earning his daily bread in the only way he knows how? To instruct these men, the poems contain at the end a lesson that shows them how to make use of the Earth’s resources without exhausting them, giving back to it everything it gives us; for example, by planting new trees to replace those that are cut down.

The poems are not built with perfect rhyme and rhythm, because that is not their purpose. The purpose is to carry, through the writer’s voice, a song exalting the life that surrounds us, and a cry of pain for wounded Nature. It is the voice of the Earth asking for protection and respect.

Before readers enter upon the refreshing adventure of reading so fascinating a work, it will be useful for them to bear in mind the following indications about capital letters and the metaphorical meanings of some words.

The capital letters personify those things that have special force or significance in the poem, giving them an identity of their own, defined and humanized. This lends the poem a special magic, which reminds us a little of the mythology of the Roman, Greek and Scandinavian civilizations, which in the same way gave an individual personification to inanimate objects and natural phenomena, such as Lightning, the Mountain, Day and Night. Personally, I suggest that readers pay special attention to those words that appear capitalized in the poems, for they no doubt hide a deeper meaning.

Separately—but with the same intention—, apart from the capitals in personified words, there is a metaphorical meaning, or metaphorical link, between certain words and concepts that are not evident. I cite three examples, though there are a great many more that readers will find as they read the poems:

Hands come to represent a person’s way of life. Thus we can find a tender contrast between the poem Mis Manos (My Hands), in which the author describes head-on the turn that her encounter with the countryside and the tropics caused in her way of living; and the poem Las Manitas de mis Nietos (My Grandchildren’s Little Hands), in which she speculates about the future way of life of her little grandchildren, the hands representing a person’s occupation or particular talent.

Life comes to represent two things: first, it represents the biological phenomenon itself, in all its aspects (human, animal and plant), and in all its phases (birth, growth, reproduction and death); and second, it represents the mysterious and secret Essence that lies hidden behind the generation of the physical manifestations of the living phenomenon.

The Earth comes to represent at least four concepts: first, that of the feminine aspect of Nature (what Eastern philosophy knows as Yin, the Mother who grants and sustains life, fertilized by the Father Yang, he being the Sun or God himself); second, that of the arable soil that man makes fruitful with his effort and Love; third, that of the heavenly body we inhabit, thrown out of its natural balance by the destruction of Nature; and fourth, that of the last refuge of weary bodies, an eternal shelter, dark and quiet.

These comments and clarifications made, the reader is ready to savor this collection of Vivencias y Poemas to the full, appreciating it at its true worth. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.