From the wide doorway of Wony’s, Roy glances at the corner of San Martín Square and Belén Street, where cars speed by toward Paseo de la República at this lonely hour on a Sunday night. He decides to go into the chifa restaurant. Just then, Theo Arroyo appears and they sit down together at the first table.
“Check out what I’ve got here,” says Theo, smiling.
Roy, very surprised, picks up two or three handwritten notebooks by Luis Hernández. He can’t believe it.
“How did you get these?” he asks his friend from his daily bohemian life at Wony’s, looking at page after page of poems written in beautiful handwriting in liquid ink and colorful drawings in Faber-Castell markers.
“I just came from Lucho’s house. I go to see him every Sunday, we smoke a few joints, and when I leave, he gives me one, two, or three notebooks.
“Incredible,” says Roy, leafing through the notebooks again and again, where he can read verses grouped under various titles such as “The Avenue of Eternal Chlorine,” “The Lilac Sun,” and “The Non-Existent Beach,” scattered haphazardly among the pages filled with intense, allusive illustrations in vibrant colors.
“The Avenue of Eternal Chlorine” immediately reminds him of a night in Piura on the corner of Santa Isabel where the patas used to hang out. There he meets “Pollo” Vega and Balto León with a spray bottle of chlorine in their hands and asks them for a light. Roy then dips a handkerchief in the liquid and brings it to his nose, inhaling the psychoactive substance. Suddenly, everything spins around his head, and he has to hold on to a pole to keep from falling. He remains like this for a few seconds, perhaps a couple of minutes with all his senses seeming to explode or five thousand noises from a crazy factory, as his friends describe the impact of the chlorethyl on their adolescent sensibilities, eager to experience a radical vision of the surrounding reality by smelling that liquid substance. Plumm, back to normal.
The instant effect passed quickly. Roy imagines an afternoon in Piura with his feet up in a car racing down Grau Avenue or Sánchez Cerro: that’s the avenue of eternal color, pulling in that hallucinatory ether that breaks all the frames of his carrot-colored conception of life at that time. He thinks Hernández is a great poet: he knows how to capture the feelings of an entire generation and writes about it brilliantly.
Shortly afterwards, Armando Arteaga—a friend of mine since my first forays into Lima during the summer of 1974—lent him some thirty notebooks that Theo Arroyo had given him, that is, his collection of Luis Hernández’s notebooks, gifted by the poet on each of his Sunday visits. Roy is overjoyed; he now has a considerable number of notebooks to delight himself with on those cold winter nights in Lima, locked in his room at 724 Bellavista Avenue, in the Villacampa del Rímac neighborhood, where he is staying with his aunt Emma, his father’s sister. One day, while wandering around Cercado, he discovers the Cuchillería Bet knife shop on Jirón de la Unión and goes in just to see an old man with white hair at the counter: it is Lucho Hernández’s father, as he has learned from conversations with Lucho La Hoz. Thanks to La Hoz, a close friend of Hernández, Roy begins to learn many, many things about the life and work of the author of Charlie Melnik. This is a recurring theme in countless conversations since the first time Armando introduced him to La Hoz and Oscar Aragón on a cool February afternoon in 1974 after meeting at the Café Haití in Miraflores on their way to a party at Elsa Sánchez León’s apartment. Roy remembers that Armando told him that Elsa was the muse who inspired that beautiful poem by Enrique Verástegui, which reads in part: “You like poetry, but not as much as strawberry cake.”
Lucho La Hoz then tells him that he had been friends with Nico Yerovi since their school days at La Salle, where they published the poetry magazine Ensayos in their fifth year of high school, and that night at his house on Las Mimosas Street in Barranco, opposite the park of the same name (famous for a poem by Horazeriano Isaac Rupay that ends: “Remembering that I waited for you in the Parque de las Mimosas”), Lucho goes on to tell him (and shows him a mimeographed edition of his first book, El signo de los vientos), but the coolest thing is the story of the magazine Collage, with a group that used to meet at the Miraflores Bowling Alley in the late sixties: the brothers Igor, Fedor, Iván Larco, especially Iván, a great friend of his, and also Carlos Cornejo, a talented sculptor; all from Collage. He shows him four or five issues of the magazine, one of the silkscreen covers is very nice, although the body of the text was mimeographed. Roy was pleasantly surprised to see poems by Lucho Hernández and translations of Paul Celan by Lucho himself.
But even more exciting was when La Hoz began to tell him about the kind of hippie commune the group had set up in the Chanchamayo jungle, with Hernández at the helm. As he was a doctor, he treated the Campas’ children (their real name, Ashaninkas, was not yet known) and they gave him yucca and other things they ate. Lucho goes on to tell Roy that his youngest son Diego fell ill and so they decided to return to Lima. Circa 1970. Roy remembers some very good poems by La Hoz that appeared in Haraui and which, according to the credits, belong to a book by La Hoz in preparation entitled Diego, el loco. Roy realizes that it is about his son and also recalls the poem “Odalisca bien pensada,” which ends “and we will keep you in a matchbox.” He thinks then that it is a little marijuana or a joint, as it was customary to keep the herb in the days of his adolescence in Piura.
Suddenly, it is December 1976. There is a series of contemporary Peruvian poetry readings at the National Institute of Culture (INC) that Roy has attended on several occasions. He remembers one night with the old Arequipa poet Guillermo Mercado, dressed in a shiny navy blue suit and a michi tie, reciting all his poems from memory, standing before the audience. Not long after, Roy would read an excellent poem by his fellow Arequipeno Oswaldo Chanove in the magazine Ómnibus, which reads: “I saw you, Guillermito, in San Camilo / Guillermo Mercado will soon die” (which Guillermo Mercado, Jr., also a writer, author of the esoteric indigenous novel Yachay, and Roy’s friend in the bohemian nightlife of the Tívoli bar in La Colmena in 1977-78, did not like at all).
But on that night in late 1976, Roy read that Luis Hernández would be performing at the INC and passed the word on to his friends from Melibea, who were gathered at Edgar O’Hara’s house in San Antonio. Everyone was surprised because they knew something, but not much, about the author of Las Constelaciones. Roy urged them to attend the reading, so they all squeezed into his Fiat 600—the Chechento—some on top of others (including Kike Sánchez) and drove along the Zanjón to the Center to see Hernández read his poems.
When they arrive at the almost empty auditorium, that is, with the normal amount of audience for this type of event, they see Hernández sitting at the front, dressed entirely in white with a jersey T-shirt, almost red-haired, next to Jorge “Coco” Salazar, who has introduced him. The great Lucho is already reading his poems from a mimeographed copy of Nicolás Yerovi’s thesis at the Catholic University, which will be the basis for the edition of Vox horrísona by the Ames publishing house (owned by Omar Ames, a little older but still a literature student at San Marcos). This is Yerovi’s first compilation of Hernández’s scattered work in countless handwritten notebooks that, half-written, the poet gave away to anyone within reach in his neighborhood on August 6 in Jesús María or wherever he found someone, such as the policeman on the corner or a fellow talker in a bar.
The poet would turn the pages one by one, choosing which poems to offer to the amused audience, who would smile or laugh openly at Hernández’s clever and very funny ironies. From time to time, he would turn to his father, who was sitting in the front row. The entire audience remained mesmerized by the cadence and sensuality that Luchito brought to his reading: an unreal atmosphere surrounded the venue, filled with the rare elevation of poetry and the endearing personality of the great artist. When the recital ended, all of us from Melibea went out into the street as if suspended in the air, floating in the weightless space of a unique and unrepeatable experience. This was testified by Edgar O’Hara in an article he published under the title “Luis Hernández: La locura real” (Luis Hernández: Real Madness) in the cultural supplement of La Imagen dominical of the newspaper La Prensa. From then on, an intense devotion to the genius of Una impecable soledad was unleashed, not only in O’Hara but in all of Melibea’s friends who had been led by Roy to the INC (several of whom would soon form the group La Sagrada Familia) on that incomparable night at the beginning of summer in Lima, the sponge (as Lucho himself called it).
They are seated around the round dining table in Lucho La Hoz’s house in Barranco. The autumn night in Lima hangs over the salty air that rises from the sea along the cliffs. AUKI meeting: the second issue of the magazine is being prepared. Lucho hands out a mimeographed selection of poems by Luis Hernández, which are unanimously approved. They appear in AUKI #2 in July 1975. It is the first move to rescue Hernández’s poetry, which has been somewhat forgotten. Everyone is happy with it. Alex Zismán’s interview with him was recently published in the Lima newspaper Correo, attracting worldwide attention.
One night at the Wony, Roy gives Marco Martos a few texts by Hernández that he has chosen from the Cuadernos (at the request of his teacher and mentor at the time), and a couple of those poems appear in the sixth and final issue of Hipócrita lector in 1976. Roy recalls that La Hoz told him at the end of the summer of ’74 that Marco and Hildebrando Pérez showed up at Hernández’s house to ask him for poems for a Peruvian anthology they were preparing, entitled 33 poetas 33. From Vicente Azar to Enrique Verástegui, which never came out, but Hernández told La Hoz (and La Hoz told Roy) that Lucho took them ironically because he was surprised that they came to see him for that purpose after having forgotten and ignored him for quite some time. In other words, according to La Hoz, the author of “Orilla” did not like the visit.
Lucho tells Roy: Hernández wrote on the wall about César Calvo: Porcum est. Why? Roy asks him. Ah, because Calvo, without his permission, typed up the poems, organized the book, and sent it to the contest. He is referring to Las constelaciones, which came second in the 1965 Poeta Joven del Perú competition, causing a scandal as everyone thought it should have won, as should Juan Ojeda’s book Elogio de los navegantes (which received an honorable mention). Roy remembers a notebook of Hernández’s in which he wrote: “To Juan Ojeda, whom I never knew,” a dedication written after Ojeda’s suicide in November 1974.
La Hoz continues: It was incredible, sometimes we were with Lucho at his house on a wild binge, and eventually he would start reciting in German and we would listen to the Beatles, who had dazzled him because he was a classical music lover, but suddenly the phone would ring and Lucho would answer: it was a woman worried about her sick son. To the astonishment of everyone present, Lucho, with complete lucidity—even though he had been going crazy—and as if he were perfectly sane, would give her a prescription on the spot and that was it, he would return to his madness as if nothing had happened. “Real madness” is how Edgar O’Hara christened his article in La Prensa after witnessing Hernández’s unique reading at the INC in December 1976.
Alonso Ruíz Rosas was in Lima circa 1975 collecting material for a magazine called Mesa de Partes that he was planning in Arequipa when he was still in high school. He visited Antonio (Toño) Cisneros to ask him for some contributions. Suddenly, someone knocked on the door of the apartment on Roma Street in Miraflores. It was Lucho Hernández with his hair all messed up. He entered the living room, said hello, and then went out onto the small balcony overlooking the street. He sat down next to Alonso and Cisneros, who were chatting cordially. Toño introduced him, and Alonso took the opportunity to ask Hernández for a contribution to his new magazine. Lucho responds by taking a napkin from the table and writing: “70 times seven / I have forgiven you 70 times 7,” a biblical verse that is widely used here and there in handwritten notebooks. But Alonso knows nothing about this and simply says “Thank you” without really understanding what is happening. Suddenly, Lucho Hernández gets up and says goodbye hastily. Alonso asks Cisneros, “What is this? What do you think?”, showing him the napkin written by Lucho. Cisneros, without giving it much importance, replies, “Drunken improvisations.” Roy listens to Alonso’s story while they drink a couple of beers at Haití in Miraflores a couple of years later and remembers a conversation with Toño, who comments: “Look, if you want to see it that way: Lucho is Ribeyro, but I’m Vargas Llosa.”
Lucho La Hoz remembers chatting with Roy at the S.O.S. bar in La Herradura, where they often go. It was incredible, he says, no one noticed, we were gathered at someone’s house and then I saw Lucho, who, discreetly, took a hypodermic needle out of his pocket and surreptitiously injected himself in the arm under his shirt sleeve, calm as can be. I was left with my mouth open, nobody noticed, and Lucho continued talking, acting normal, sitting on the sofa in the living room; I figured he was doing it to try to calm the intense pain he was suffering in his back. Do you remember? he asks Roy: “I am a man wounded in the back / and because I am wounded, I know where I am going.” Then, in the summer of 1977, Roy visited Lucho in Las Mimosas de Barranco, as he always did at any time. “Lucho came to see me yesterday,” La Hoz told him. “Yes, he’s going to Buenos Aires for treatment at the clinic of Dr. Baldaraco, a specialist in physical pain of psychological origin.” “Asuuu,” Roy replies.
It was February, March, or maybe even April 1977, and they decided to go down to Barranquito, where La Hoz’s girlfriend Mariela was staying. They spent a quiet afternoon while the waves gently lapped at the ocean, which was more peaceful than usual. Roy remembers once at the Sambor on Benavides Avenue: La Hoz tells him a cool story about Hernández. One afternoon, more precisely at dusk, he convinces a group of friends to go to the cliffs of Barranco to contemplate the immensity of the sea. The genius of Vox Horrísona is cheerful, in a good mood, and begins to play beautiful melodies on his recorder; he plays harmonies with his “indigo clarity” (as he states in one of his most beautiful poems) that unexpectedly and sweetly move everyone. Suddenly, Hernández, ecstatic, in an indescribable trance, approaches the edge and throws his flute backwards into the waters that reign on the horizon of his perfect solitude, at that hour transformed by the crazy creativity of the great poet.
The news spreads throughout Lima. Luis Hernández has died; he has committed suicide in Buenos Aires. Roy goes in search of Lucho La Hoz and finds him leaving his house accompanied by his great friend Nicolás Yerovi. The three of them leave for La Herradura in Nico’s large black Dodge. They are greeted by S.O.S. with some cold beers. They are very upset. The calendar shows that it is a few days after October 3, 1977. La Hoz remembers something he knows: Hernández spent a whole day at a location in Hungary, right where Attila József had thrown himself onto the tracks of a train passing by at full speed. Total silence at the table. The sea in front of them is turning dark green. Someone quotes the poem “To a Suicide in a Swimming Pool”: “Don’t die anymore / listen to a symphony for band / You will love yourself again when you hear / Ten trombones / With their indigo clarity / In the night,” originally published by Mirko Lauer in the Sunday supplement of La Prensa in 1975.
The poetry collection compiled by Nico Yerovi will be out soon. It is titled Vox horrísona, and Dalmacia Ruíz Rosas, having coffee at Haití, says to Roy: “Like the Horrísonos from The Flintstones, the rock band.” They smile at the genius of the great Lucho. And La Hoz will comment to Roy a few days later: “That Lucho, he had to go back to Lima, they had discharged him, but he didn’t want to. I know he didn’t want to go back to a normal life. He wanted to continue living in his usual free and youthful madness.”
Both remember what Yerovi said: the train took him away and there was practically nothing left of him. Legend has it that after having a beer in a bar, he walked straight ahead, struggling in the night, toward a train coming at an impossible speed. He joined his life to his writing, thinks Roy as he wanders through a park in San Isidro, near Dasso, where there is a cactus and some verses by Hernández drawn on one of the landmarks bearing the park’s name. He sits on the grass for a moment and feels a tear run down his cheek. And then he repeats aloud: “The acts of the poet are lonely / like those of love and death.”
Banks of the Cooper River, southern New Jersey, May 2025.
