Posts filed under ‘Spanish’
Lord’s Prayer
Nicanor Parra
Our Father which art in heaven
Full of all manner of problems
With a wrinkled brow
(As if you were a common everyday man)
Think no more of us.
We understand that you suffer
Because you can’t put everything in order.
We know the Demon will not leave you alone
Tearing down everything you build.
He laughs at you
But we weep with you:
Don’t pay any attention to his devilish laughter.
Our Father who art where thou art
Surrounded by unfaithful Angels
Sincerely don’t suffer any more for us
You must take into account
That the gods are not infallible
And that we have come to forgive everything.
[translated from the Spanish by Miller Williams]
The original:
Padre neustro que estas en el cielo
Lleno de toda clase de problemas
Con el ceno fruncido
Como si fueras un hombre vulgar y corriente
No piense mas en nosotros.
Comprendemos que sufres
Porque no puedes arreglar las cosas.
Sabemos que el Demonio no te deja tranquilo
Desconstruyendo lo que tu construyes.
El se rie de ti
Pero nostros lloramos contigo.
Padre nuestro que estas donde estas
Rodeado de angeles desleales
Sinceramente
no sufras mas por nosotros
Tienes que darte cuenta
De que los dioses no son infalibles
Y que nosotros perdonamos todo.
This is Parra at his plain-spoken, subversive best. The tone of the poem is sympathetic, friendly, yet with these few simple lines Parra effectively turns the Lord’s Prayer inside out, reversing the relationship between man and God so that it is now the gods who suffer and prove fallible and man who must find in his heart the compassion to forgive them. If you’ve ever wanted to know what anti-poetry is, I can’t think of a better example than this.
[falstaff]
Los Heraldos Negros
Cesar Vallejo
Listen (to Cesar Ferreira read (in Spanish) and Eshelman read (in English))
Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes … ¡Yo no sé!
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
la resaca de todo lo sufrido
se empozara en el alma… Yo no sé!
Son pocos; pero son… Abren zanjas obscuras
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
Serán talvez los potros de bárbaros atilas;
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.
Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma,
de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.
Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones
de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.
Y el hombre… Pobre… pobre! Vuelve los ojos, como
cuando por sobre el hombro nos llama una palmada;
vuelve los ojos locos, y todo lo vivido
se empoza, como charco de culpa, en la mirada.
Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes… Yo no sé!
In English, as translated by Clayton Eshelman.
The Black Heralds
There are blows in life, so powerful . . . I don’t know!
Blows as from the hatred of God; as if, facing them,
the undertow of everything suffered
welled up in the soul . . . I don’t know!
They are few; but they are . . . They open dark trenches
in the fiercest face and in the strongest back.
Perhaps they are the colts of barbaric Attilas;
or the black heralds sent to us by Death.
They are the deep falls of the Christs of the soul,
of some adored faith blasphemed by Destiny.
Those bloodstained blows are the crackling of
bread burning up at the oven door.
And man . . . Poor . . . poor! He turns his eyes, as
when a slap on the shoulder summons us;
turns his crazed eyes, and everything lived
wells up, like a pool of guilt, in his look.
There are blows in life, so powerful . . . I don’t know!
Equivocal says,
Thought I would share this, certainly one of the most amazing poems
(and poetry recordings) I’ve heard in a while, by the great Peruvian
poet, Cesar Vallejo.
Not much that I can or ought to say in “analysis” of this piece,
except to say that it seems to rely especially on intonation (and
performance, I guess), such as in the famous first and last lines,
which come with such a force that the listener / reader has no choice
to accept them as something that the writer has actually lived. Raw.
Perhaps intonation can allow for a poem to be avant-garde, even
obscure and opaque, and shockingly immediate at the same time. It
helps to hear it out loud, of course. There’s only one other person I
can think of immediately who could pull something like this off, and
that is the singular Eugenio Montale, albeit in a different, intimate
way.
The poem is from Vallejo’s first book, and is from the Collected Poems
(2006) translated by the amazing Clayton Eshelman, whose translations
of Aime Cesaire haunted my teenage years, and who was the editor of
Sulfur, considered by some to be one of the best journals of
international literature ever. I like the way he reads his
translations, too. The whole of Eshelman’s Vallejo reading can be
found on the Penn Sound site ( http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/
), which is fast turning into the numero uno site for online recorded
poetry. (You’ll find that they have the COMPLETE recordings of
William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound, and that really is pretty hard
to beat.) Oh, and Efrain Kristal in APR has some very interesting
things say about this poem and about Vallejo and Eshelman at:
http://www.aprweb.org/issues/may05/vallejo.html
—
Do read Equivocal’s post on Performing Poetry.
[blackmamba]
I’m explaining a few things
Pablo Neruda
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I’ll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castille’s dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings —
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.
And you’ll ask: why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
(translated from the Spanish by Nathaniel Tarn)
The original in Spanish:
EXPLICO ALGUNAS COSAS
PREGUNTARÉIS: Y dónde están las lilas?
Y la metafísica cubierta de amapolas?
Y la lluvia que a menudo golpeaba
sus palabras llenándolas
de agujeros y pájaros?
Os voy a contar todo lo que me pasa.
Yo vivía en un barrio
de Madrid, con campanas,
con relojes, con árboles.
Desde allí se veía
el rostro seco de Castilla
como un océano de cuero.
Mi casa era llamada
la casa de las flores, porque por todas partes
estallaban geranios: era
una bella casa
con perros y chiquillos.
Raúl, te acuerdas?
Te acuerdas, Rafael?
Federico, te acuerdas
debajo de la tierra,
te acuerdas de mi casa con balcones en donde
la luz de junio ahogaba flores en tu boca?
Hermano, hermano!
Todo
eran grandes voces, sal de mercaderías,
aglomeraciones de pan palpitante,
mercados de mi barrio de Argüelles con su estatua
como un tintero pálido entre las merluzas:
el aceite llegaba a las cucharas,
un profundo latido
de pies y manos llenaba las calles,
metros, litros, esencia
aguda de la vida,
pescados hacinados,
contextura de techos con sol frío en el cual
la flecha se fatiga,
delirante marfil fino de las patatas,
tomates repetidos hasta el mar.
Y una mañana todo estaba ardiendo
y una mañana las hogueras
salían de la tierra
devorando seres,
y desde entonces fuego,
pólvora desde entonces,
y desde entonces sangre.
Bandidos con aviones y con moros,
bandidos con sortijas y duquesas,
bandidos con frailes negros bendiciendo
venían por el cielo a matar niños,
y por las calles la sangre de los niños
corría simplemente, como sangre de niños.
Chacales que el chacal rechazaría,
piedras que el cardo seco mordería escupiendo,
víboras que las víboras odiaran!
Frente a vosotros he visto la sangre
de España levantarse
para ahogaros en una sola ola
de orgullo y de cuchillos!
Generales
traidores:
mirad mi casa muerta,
mirad España rota:
pero de cada casa muerta sale metal ardiendo
en vez de flores,
pero de cada hueco de España
sale España,
pero de cada niño muerto sale un fusil con ojos,
pero de cada crimen nacen balas
que os hallarán un día el sitio
del corazón.
Preguntaréis por qué su poesía
no nos habla del sueño, de las hojas,
de los grandes volcanes de su país natal?
Venid a ver la sangre por las calles,
venid a ver
la sangre por las calles,
venid a ver la sangre
por las calles!
An old favourite. Who but Neruda could make indignation so lyrical? Could make anger and bitterness sing so exquisitely? I love the way this poem starts with a kind of gentle nostalgia, only to build into a frenzy of outrage. I love the ending – the unforgettable repetition of a single line that seems to go on and on even when the poem is over, like the judgement of history, echoing through time. I love the intense colour of the verses, the repeated images of blood and fire that seethe through the entire poem. But most of all (as always with Neruda) I love the phrase making – the sheer heartbreak of “and the blood of the children ran through the streets / without fuss, like children’s blood”. This is why war poetry is written – not because the poet has something to say, but because of all that cannot, must not, be left unsaid.
[falstaff]
Notes:
Spanish audio version from
Ars Poetica
Jorge Luis Borges
To gaze at the river made of time and water
And recall that time itself is another river,
To know we cease to be, just like the river,
And that our faces pass away, just like the water.
To feel that waking is another sleep
That dreams it does not sleep and that death,
Which our flesh dreads, is that very death
Of every night, which we call sleep.
To see in the day or in the year a symbol
of makind’s days and of his years,
To transform the ourtage of the years
Into a music, a rumor and a symbol,
To see in death a sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold, of such is Poetry
Immortal and a pauper. For Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.
At times in the afternoon a face
Looks at us from the depths of a mirror;
Art must be like that mirror
That reveals to us this face of ours.
They tell how Ulysses, glutted with wonders,
Wept with love to descry his Ithaca
Humble and green. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of wonders.
It is also like an endless river
That passes and remains, a mirror for one same
Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
And another, like an endless river.
from Dreamtigers, 1964. Tr. by Harold Morland.
En español (thanks Vasha!),
Arte Poética
Mirar el río hecho de tiempo y agua
y recordar que el tiempo es otro río,
saber que nos perdemos como el río
y que los rostros pasan como el agua.
Sentir que la vigilia es otro sueño
que sueña no soñar y que la muerte
que teme nuestra carne es esa muerte
de cada noche, que se llama sueño.
Ver en el día o en el año un símbolo
de los días del hombre y de sus años,
convertir el ultraje de los años
en una música, un rumor y un símbolo,
ver en la muerte el sueño, en el ocaso
un triste oro, tal es la poesía
que es inmortal y pobre. La poesía
vuelve como la aurora y el ocaso.
A veces en las tardes una cara
nos mira desde el fondo de un espejo;
el arte debe ser como ese espejo
que nos revela nuestra propia cara.
Cuentan que Ulises, harto de prodigios,
lloró de amor al divisar su Itaca
verde y humilde. El arte es esa Itaca
de verde eternidad, no de prodigios.
También es como el río interminable
que pasa y queda y es cristal de un mismo
Heráclito inconstante, que es el mismo
y es otro, como el río interminable.
This poem from Dreamtigers ( a translation, of his El Hacedor, that is, The Creator), weaves a pattern with many comparisons, many things, some transient or others eternal, things that pass and those that remain. His poem is not about just the Art of Poetry, it is about Art itself, an exploration of representations of one with the other – for instance, sleep represents death or is death just another form of sleep?
Dreamtigers is a beautiful collection of works by Borges, odd samples of his poetry, prose, sketches, stories and quotations. In not having a fixed purpose or a central unifying theme they create a better reflection of his life, than any one book could aspire to. As the introduction elaborates, “with no other purpose than to show what time accumulates in the bottom of a writer’s desk drawer”. :)
Ars Poetica on pō’ĭ-trē by Archibald MacLeish and Czeslaw Milosz.
[blackmamba]
Te Recuerdo Como Eras
Pablo Neruda
Te recuerdo como eras en el último otoño.
Eras la boina gris y el corazón en calma.
En tus ojos peleaban las llamas del crepúsculo.
Y las hojas caían en el agua de tu alma.
Apegada a mis brazos como una enredadera,
las hojas recoían tu voz lenta y en calma.
Hoguera de estupor en que mi sed ardía.
Dulce jacinto azul torcido sobre mi alma.
Siento viajar tus ojos y es distante el otoño:
boina gris, voz de páajaro y corazón de casa
hacia donde emigraban mis profundos anhelos
y caían mis besos alegres como brasas.
Cielo desde un navio. Campo desde los cerros.
Tu recuerdo es de luz, de humo, de estanque en calma!
Más allá de tus ojos ardían los crepúsculos.
Hojas secas de otoño giraban en tu alma.
I Remember You As You Were
I remember you as you were last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the tranquil heart.
In your eyes the flames of twilight quarreled.
And the leaves fell into the water of your soul.
Fastened to my arms as a clinging vine,
the leaves collected your slow and calm voice.
Bonfire of trance in which my thirst burned.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.
I feel your eyes travel and autumn is far away:
grey beret, voice of a bird and heart of a home
whither my deep longings emigrated
and my happy kisses fell like embers.
Sky from a ship. Field from the hills.
Your memory is of light, of smoke, of a tranquil pond!
Beyond your eyes the twilight’s were burning.
Dry autumn leaves were spinning in your soul.
Poema VI, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Poem VI, Twenty poems of love and a song of despair).
In translation, there is always a sense that you only get rare glimpses of the passionate intensity in Neruda’s verse. The cadence that último and corazón generate is hard to recreate with last and heart. That is void that reading a poem in a foreign language fills – recognizing a word here or a phrase there and trying to solve the poem like a puzzle in your head [1]. Listening to the poet read his work, even better.
Notes:
[1] “I know it sounds strange, but there’s something fascinating about poetry in a foreign language – listening to the pure rhythm of the words, unalloyed with meaning, spotting a familiar word here or there and trying to imagine the rest. It’s such fun, for instance, reading Neruda in the original. Or Paz. Or Rilke. ” – 2x3x7
[2] “In 1923 he sold all of his possessions to finance the publication of his first book, Crepusculario (“Twilight”). He published the volume under the pseudonym “Pablo Neruda” to avoid conflict with his family, who disapproved of his occupation. The following year, he found a publisher for Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (“Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair”). The book made a celebrity of Neruda, who gave up his studies at the age of twenty to devote himself to his craft…” more
[3] Poema XX on pō’ĭ-trē- 1 and 2.
[4] Thx! Cool Man Cool, for the link to this reading.
[blackmamba]
Fundación mítica de Buenos Aires
Jorge Luis Borges
¿Y fue por este río de sueñera y de barro
que las proas vinieron a fundarme la patria?
Irían a los tumbos los barquitos pintados
entre los camalotes de la corriente zaina.
Pensando bien la cosa, supondremos que el río
era azulejo entonces como oriundo del cielo
con su estrellita roja para marcar el sitio
en que ayunó Juan Díaz y los indios comieron.
Lo cierto es que mil hombres y otros mil arribaron
por un mar que tenía cinco lunas de anchura
y aún estaba poblado de sirenas y endriagos
y de piedras imanes que enloquecen la brújula.
Prendieron unos ranchos trémulos en la costa,
durmieron extrañados. Dicen que en el Riachuelo,
pero son embelecos fraguados en la Boca.
Fue una manzana entera y en mi barrio: en Palermo.
Una manzana entera pero en mitá del campo
expuesta a las auroras y lluvias y suestadas.
La manzana pareja que persiste en mi barrio:
Guatemala, Serrano, Paraguay, Gurruchaga.
Un almacén rosado como revés de naipe
brilló y en la trastienda conversaron un truco;
el almacén rosado floreció en un compadre,
ya patrón de la esquina, ya resentido y duro.
El primer organito salvaba el horizonte
con su achacoso porte, su habanera y su gringo.
El corralón seguro ya opinaba YRIGOYEN,
algún piano mandaba tangos de Saborido.
Una cigarrería sahumó como una rosa
el desierto. La tarde se había ahondado en ayeres,
los hombres compartieron un pasado ilusorio.
Sólo faltó una cosa: la vereda de enfrente.
A mí se me hace cuento que empezó Buenos Aires:
La juzgo tan eterna como el agua y el aire.
English Translation (by Alastair Reid):
The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires
And was it along this torpid muddy river
that the prows came to found my native city?
The little painted boats must have suffered the steep surf
among the root-clumps of the horse-brown current.
Pondering well, let us suppose that the river
was blue then like an extension of the sky,
with a small red star inset to mark the spot
where Juan Diaz* fasted and the Indians dined.
But for sure a thousand men and other thousands
arrived across a sea that was five moons wide,
still infested with mermaids and sea serpents
and magnetic boulders that sent the compass wild.
On the coast they put up a few ramshackle huts
and slept uneasily. This, they claim, in the Riachuelo,
but that is a story dreamed up in Boca.
It was really a city block in my district – Palermo**.
A whole square block, but set down in open country,
attended by dawns and rains and hard southeasters,
identical to that block which still stands in my neighbourhood:
Guatemala – Serrano – Paraguay – Gurruchaga.
A general store pink as the back of a playing card
shone bright; in the back there was poker talk.
The corner bar flowered into life as a local bully,
already cock of his walk, resentful, tough.
The first barrel organ teetered over the horizon
with its clumsy progress, its habaneras, its wop.
The cart-shed wall was unanimous for YRIGOYEN***.
Some piano was banging out tangos by Saborido.
A cigar store perfumed the desert like a rose.
The afternoon had established its yesterdays,
and men took on together an illusory past.
Only one thing was missing – the street had no other side.
Hard to believe Buenos Aires had any beginning.
I feel it to be as eternal as air and water.
What better way to begin a series of poems by writers (arguably) better known for their prose than with a poem about foundations, about beginnings?
Borges has always struck me as one of those writers in whose work the line between poetry and prose blurs. On the one hand, his best short stories have an intensity and a vision that is authentically poetic, on the other hand, some of his finest poems read like stories that have been stripped of all but the most essential details, so that the narrative, stripped to its essence, achieves the purity of verse.
Today’s poem is like that. There isn’t anything too dramatically stunning about Borges’ description, no one line or metaphor that reaches out to grab you by the throat, and yet in these eight and a half quatrains Borges captures the essence of a city’s beginnings, the excitement and risk of all our pioneer journeys, the incredible sense of possibility that walked the streets in those early days. The founding is mythical not only because it is factually inaccurate, combining as it does different stages in the city’s history, but because in Borges’ magical hands, the images of those early days have been transformed into the stuff of legend. This is magic realism applied to poetry, and the way in which this imagined and dreamlike history comes to seem so incredibly authentic is trademark Borges.
Nor is the poem quite as simple as it appears. What seems like a random collection of images is, I suspect, the product of careful and painstaking selection, and notice how cleverly the different scenes flow into each other – the pink of the store “as the back of a playing card” melting effortlessly into the poker game. It is no accident that these few short lines create a picture so vivid, evoke an atmosphere so charged. This is why Borges is the Master craftsman that he is.
Notes on the poem (taken from Borges’ Selected Poems):
*Juan Diaz de Solis was an explorer who rowed into the River Plate in 1516 and was promptly devoured by Indians.
** Palermo is a district in the city of Buenos Aires, originally the Italian quarter, where Borges spent his childhood.
*** Irigoyen was the twice-elected president of Argentina and victim of a military coup in 1930
Other links:
Audio excerpts from Borges’s lectures at Harvard on The Craft of Verse
A lovely post and interesting discussion (even if I do say so myself) on Borges over at Middle Stage (see comments)
Finally, my thanks to Black Mamba for digging up this recording and providing the link to the Borges lectures. I’m not quite sure why I’m the one posting this piece, but well, there it is.
[falstaff]
The Dancer
Gabriela Mistral
The dancer now is dancing
the dance of losing it all.
Whatever she had, she lets it go,
fathers and brothers, gardens and fields,
the sound of her river, the roads,
her fireside tale, her face,
her name, and the games of her childhood,
as if she were letting everything fall
from her back, her breast, her soul.
On the edge of night and winter
laughing, she dances total poverty.
It’s the world she’s winnowing away,
the loving, hating, smiling, killing world,
earth crushed to a bloody vintage,
night with its sleepless excesses,
and the ache of homelessness.
Without name or creed or people, stripped
of everything and of herself, she gives from the core
beautiful, pure, with flying feet.
Shaken like a tree and in the eye
of the tornado, she bears witness.
She isn’t dancing the flight of the albatross,
salt-spattered, sport of the waves,
nor the lift and bow
of reed-beds in the wind,
nor the wind that fills the sail,
nor the smile of the high grass.
She isn’t called by her baptismal name.
She loosed herself from caste and flesh,
buried the beat of her blood
and the ballad of her adolescence.
Without knowing it we throw our lives
over her like a poisonous red garment.
And so she dances while vipers
crawl on her, biting, quick and free,
and let her drop like a tattered wreath,
the banner of a defeated army.
Sleepwalking, turned into what she hates,
she dances on, not knowing she is changed,
her gestures scattering and gathering,
gasping out our gasping breaths,
cutting the air that brings her no relief,
alone, a whirlwind, foul and pure.
We, we are the gasping of her breast,
her bloodless pallor, the wild cry
she sends from west to east,
the red fever of her veins,
the loss of the God of her childhood.
(translated from the Spanish by Ursula K. Guin)
“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance / How can we know the dancer from the dance”
– W.B. Yeats, ‘Among School Children’
Poems about dancers fascinate me. My favourite is probably Rilke’s Spanish Dancer, but this Mistral poem, recently discovered, is quite beautiful too. I love the way Mistral manages to convey both the grace of the dancer’s movements and the physical strain of the dance. This is a poem about the struggle of flesh trying to take form, and it’s mesmerising the way Mistral manages to weave the spirit of an entire people into this frail, shifting shape. Every time I read this poem, I am reminded of Stravinsky, because what Mistral is describing here is more than just a dance, it is a rite of spring, a sacrifice of limbs turned to fire. Spinning like a dervish Mistral’s dancer is so many things at once – adolescent, artist, feminist – a living, swirling whirlwind of a woman trying to survive “the red fever of her veins”.
[falstaff]
For more on Mistral – a link to the Nobel Prize site.
And the poem in the original Spanish:
La Bailarina
La bailarina ahor est danzando
la danza del perder cuanto tenia.
Deja caer todo lo que ella habia,
padres y hermanos, huertos y campinas,
el rumo de su rio, los caminos,
el cuento de su hogar, su propio rostro
y su nombre, y los juegos de su infancia
como quien deja todo le que tuvo
caer de cuello, de seno y de alma.
En el filo del dia y el solsticio
baila riendo su cabal despojo.
Lo que avientan sus brazos es el mundo
que ama y detesta, que sonrie y mata,
la tierra puesta a vendimia de sangre,
la noche de los hartos que no duermen
y la dentera del que no ha posada.
Sin nombre, raza ni credo, desnuda
de todo y de si misma, da su entrega,
hermosa y pura, de pies voladores.
Sacudida como arbol y en el centro
de la tornado, vuelta testimonio.
No esta danzando el vuelo de albatroses
salpicados de sal y juegos de olas;
tampoco el alzamiento y la derrota
de los canaverales fustigados.
Tampoco el viento agitador de velas,
ni la sonrisa de las altas hierbas.
El nombre no le den de su bautismo.
Se solto de su casta y de su carne
sumio la canturia de su sangre
y la balada de su adolescencia.
Sin saberlo le echamos nuestras vidas
como una roja vest envenenada
y baila asi mordida de serpientes
que alacritas y libres la repechan,
y la dejan caer en estandarte
vencido o en guirnalda hecha pedazos.
Sonambula, mudada en lo que odia,
sigue danzando sin saberse ajena
sus muecas aventando y recogiendo
jadeadora de nuestro jadeo,
cortando el aire que no la refresca
unica y torbellino, vil y pura.
Somos nosotros su jadeado pecho,
su palidez exangue, el loco grito
tirado hacia el poniente y el levante
la roja calentura de sus venas,
el olvido del Dios de sus infancias.
Saddest Poem – II
Pablo Neruda (Tr. By W.S. Merwin)
Rivera has recorded W.S. Merwin’s translation of the Saddest Poem. His original recording can be found here.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
[blackmamba]
Saddest Poem
Pablo Neruda
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.”
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don’t have her. To feel that I’ve lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That’s all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.
As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
Someone else’s. She will be someone else’s. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.
Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.
Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
(Rivera reads the poem)
[blackmamba]
pō\'ĭ-trē 
Recent Comments