topics: |  poetry | spanish | bilingual

Benares

False and impenetrable
like a garden traced on a mirror,
the imagined city
which my eyes have never seen
interweaves distances
and repeats its unreachable houses.
The sudden sun
shatters the complex obscurity
of temples, dunghills, prisons, patios
and will scale walls
and blaze on to a sacred river.
Panting
the city which a foliage of stars oppressed
pours over the horizon
and in the morning
full of steps and of sleep
light is opening the streets like branches.
At the same time dawn breaks
on all shutters looking east
and the voice of a muezzin
from its high tower
saddens the air of the day
and announces to the city of many gods
the solitude of God.
(And to think that while I play with doubtful images
the city I sing persists
in a predestined place of the world,
with its precise topography
peopled like a dream,
with hospitals and barracks
and slow avenues of poplars
and men with rotten lips
who feel the cold in their teeth.

The streets (Las Calles)

				tr. Stephen Kessler
						            
My soul is in the streets                                 Las calles de Buenos Aires
of Buenos Aires.					    ya son mi entraña.
Not the greedy streets				    No las ávidas calles,
jostling with crowds and traffic,			    incómodas de turba y de ajetreo,
but the neighborhood streets where nothing is happening,  sino las calles desganadas del barrio,
almost invisible by force of habit,			    casi invisibles de habituales,
rendered eternal in the dim light of sunset,		    enternecidas de penumbra y de ocaso
and the ones even farther out,			    y aquellas más afuera
empty of comforting trees,				    ajenas de árboles piadosos
where austere little houses scarcely venture,		    donde austeras casitas apenas se aventuran,
overwhelmed by deathless distances,			    abrumadas por inmortales distancias,
losing themselves in the deep expanse			    a perderse en la honda visión
of sky and plains.					    de cielo y de llanura.
For the solitary one they are a promise		    Son para el solitario una promesa
because thousands of singular souls inhabit them,	    porque millares de almas singulares las pueblan,
unique before God and in time				    únicas ante Dios y en el tiempo
and no doubt precious.				    y sin duda preciosas.
To the West, the North, and the South			    Hacia el Oeste, el Norte y el Sur
unfold the streets–and they too are my country;	    se han desplegado–y son también la patria–las calles:
within these lines I trace				    ojalá en versos que trazo
may their flags fly.					    estén esas banderas.

Things 277

		tr. Stephen Kessler

My cane, my pocket change, this ring of keys,
The obedient lock, the belated notes
The few days left to me will not find time
To read, the deck of cards, the tabletop,
A book, and crushed in its pages the withered
Violet, monument to an afternoon.
The mirror in the west where a red sunrise
Blazes its illusion. How many things,
Files, doorsills, atlases, wine glasses, nails,
Serve us like slaves who never say a word,
Blind and so mysteriously reserved.
They will endure beyond our vanishing;
And they will never know that we have gone.

original: Las cosas

El bastón, las monedas, el llavero,
la dócil cerradura, las tardías
notas que no leerán los pocos días
que me quedan, los naipes y el tablero,
un libro y en sus páginas la ajada
violeta, monumento de una tarde
sin duda inolvidable y ya olvidada,
el rojo espejo occidental en que arde
una ilusoria aurora. ¡Cuántas cosas,
láminas, umbrales, atlas, copas, clavos,
nos sirven como tácitos esclavos,
ciegas y extrañamente sigilosas!
Durarán más allá de nuestro olvido;
no sabrán nunca que nos hemos ido.