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《论“杜恩德”的理论与游戏》On the Theory and Practice of “Duende”

19 Monday Jan 2026

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Chinese translation, English translation, 论“杜恩德”的理论与游戏, Federico Garcia Lorca, on the theory and practice of Duende

费德里科·加西亚·洛卡 著

Federico Garcia Lorca

第一部分 | Part I
女士们,先生们:自1918年我进入马德里学生公寓起,直至1928年完成哲学与文学学业离开为止,在那间精致的大厅里——西班牙旧贵族为涤荡自身那沾染法国海滩气息的轻佻而常聚之处——我听了近千场讲座。 Ladies and gentlemen: From the year 1918, when I entered the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, until 1928, when I finished my studies in Philosophy and Letters, I have listened to about a thousand lectures in that refined hall where the old Spanish aristocracy gathered to wash away the frivolity of French beaches.

渴望空气与阳光的我,厌倦得如此之深,以至于每次离席时,都仿佛身披一层细灰,几欲化作呛人的胡椒。不。我绝不让那可怕的“无聊之虻”飞入此厅——它用一根细若游丝的睡意之线,串起所有人的头颅,更往听众的眼里,刺入簇簇针尖。 Hungry for air and sun, I was so profoundly bored that upon leaving, I felt covered in a fine ash, almost turning into irritating pepper. No. I will not let that terrible “fly of boredom” enter this room—that fly which strings all heads together on a thin thread of sleep and pricks the eyes of the listeners with clusters of needles.

因此,我将以一种朴素的方式,用我诗性声音中并无木质光泽、没有毒芹的曲折,也没有忽然变成讽刺之刀的羊群的语调,试着给诸位讲一堂关于痛苦的西班牙之隐秘精神的简单课程。 Therefore, in a simple manner, with a register in my poetic voice that has no wooden luster, no twists of hemlock, and no tone of a flock that suddenly turns into a knife of irony, I will try to give you a simple lesson on the hidden spirit of suffering Spain.

生活在这张牛皮般展开、介于胡卡尔河、瓜达莱特河、西尔河或皮苏埃尔加河之间的土地上的人们(我不愿提及那条水波如狮鬃般摇动的拉普拉塔河),时常会听到这样一句话:“这东西很有杜恩德。”安达卢西亚人民中的伟大艺术家曼努埃尔·托雷斯曾对一位歌者说:“你有嗓音,你懂曲式,可你永远不会成功,因为你没有杜恩德。” Those who live on this land spread out like a bull’s hide, between the Júcar, the Guadalete, the Sil, or the Pisuerga rivers (I do not wish to mention the Plata, its waters rippling like a lion’s mane), often hear the phrase: “This has much duende.” Manuel Torre, a great artist of the Andalusian people, once said to a singer: “You have a voice, you know the styles, but you will never succeed, because you have no duende.”

在整个安达卢西亚——哈恩的岩石与加的斯的海螺之间——人们不断谈论杜恩德,并凭借敏锐的本能在它一出现时便将其识别。杰出的歌者埃尔·莱布里哈诺,《德布拉》的创造者曾说:“那些我带着杜恩德歌唱的日子,没有人能胜过我。”老吉普赛舞者拉·马莱娜在听到布拉伊洛夫斯基演奏巴赫的一段时惊呼:“哦嘞!这有杜恩德!”可她听格鲁克、勃拉姆斯和达里乌斯·米约时却感到厌烦。而我所见过血液中蕴含最大文化的人——曼努埃尔·托雷斯——在聆听法雅的《赫内拉利费夜曲》时,说出了这句壮丽的话:“凡是拥有黑色声音的东西,便有杜恩德。”没有比这更大的真理了。 Throughout Andalusia—between the rocks of Jaén and the seashells of Cádiz—people speak constantly of the duende and recognize it with instinctive precision as soon as it appears. The magnificent singer El Lebrijano, creator of the Debla, used to say: “On the days when I sing with duende, no one can touch me.” The old Gypsy dancer La Malena once exclaimed, upon hearing Brailowsky play a passage of Bach: “Olé! That has duende!” yet she found Gluck, Brahms, and Darius Milhaud tiresome. And Manuel Torre—the man with the greatest culture in his blood that I have ever known—said a magnificent phrase while listening to Falla’s Nocturno del Generalife: “All that has black sounds has duende.” There is no greater truth than this.

这些“黑色声音”正是神秘本身,是扎根于我们都熟知、却又一无知的淤泥之中的根系——正是从那里,艺术中最本质的东西来到我们这里。西班牙的民间之人说“黑色声音”,而他与歌德不谋而合:歌德在谈到帕格尼尼时这样定义杜恩德:“一种人人感受得到,却没有任何哲学家能够解释的神秘力量。” These “black sounds” are the mystery itself, the roots that fasten into the mire that we all know, and all ignore, but from which comes the very substance of art. The common man in Spain speaks of “black sounds,” and in this, he agrees with Goethe, who defined the duende when he spoke of Paganini: “A mysterious power that everyone feels and no philosopher can explain.”

因此,杜恩德是力,而非行;是搏斗,而非思辨。我曾听一位老吉他大师言道:“杜恩德不在喉咙;杜恩德自脚底攀升。”换言之,它与才能无关,关乎的是真正活着的姿态——是血液,是古老至髓的文化,是进行时的创造。 So, the duende is a power, not a work; it is a struggle, not a thought. I have heard an old guitar master say: “The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up from the soles of the feet.” That is to say, it is not a matter of ability, but of real, living form; of blood; of a culture ancient to the marrow; of creative action in the moment.

这种“人人感受得到,却没有任何哲学家能够解释的神秘力量”,归根结底,是山岭的精神;是同一个杜恩德,曾紧紧抱住尼采的心。尼采曾在里亚托桥的外在形式中,或在比才的音乐里寻找它,却未能找到——而他并不知道,自己追逐的杜恩德,早已从神秘的希腊人那里,跳跃到了加的斯的舞者身上,或银里奥那首西吉里亚中被割喉般的狄俄尼索斯之呼喊里。 This “mysterious power that everyone feels and no philosopher can explain” is, in the end, the spirit of the earth; the same duende that once gripped the heart of Nietzsche. Nietzsche looked for it in the outer forms of the Rialto Bridge or in the music of Bizet, but failed to find it—not knowing that the duende he chased had already leaped from the mysterious Greeks to the dancers of Cádiz or the Dionysian cry, like a slit throat, in Silverio’s Siguiriya.

因此,我不愿任何人将我所说的杜恩德,与神学中怀疑的恶魔混为一谈——那个路德在纽伦堡出于酒神般的冲动向其掷出墨水瓶的存在;也不要把它与天主教中那种愚钝而具有破坏性的魔鬼混为一谈——它会化身为母狗潜入修道院;也不要与塞万提斯《嫉妒的戏剧与安达卢西亚的森林》中,那个带着会说话猴子的通译混为一谈。 Therefore, I do not want anyone to confuse the duende I speak of with the theological demon of doubt—that being at whom Luther, in Nuremberg, threw an inkwell out of a Dionysian impulse; nor with the blunt, destructive devil of Catholicism who enters convents disguised as a bitch; nor with the interpreter with the talking monkey in Cervantes’ The Jealous Cavalier and the Andalusian Forests.

不。我所说的杜恩德,阴暗而战栗,是苏格拉底那位最欢快的守护灵的后裔——那位由大理石与盐构成的存在,在苏格拉底饮下毒芹的那一天,曾愤怒地抓挠他;也是笛卡尔那位忧郁的小妖精的后裔——它像一颗青杏仁般微小,厌倦了圆与线条,沿着运河走出,只为听水手醉酒的歌唱。 No. The duende I speak of, dark and quivering, is a descendant of Socrates’ most cheerful daemon—that being of marble and salt who scratched him in anger the day he drank the hemlock; and a descendant of Descartes’ melancholy imp—tiny as a green almond, who grew tired of circles and lines and walked out along the canals just to hear the drunken singing of sailors.

诚如尼采所言,每个人、每位艺术家,在通往自身完善之塔的每一级阶梯上,其代价皆是与一位杜恩德的搏斗——而非与天使(世人常如此说),亦非与缪斯。此一区分,关乎作品的根本。 As Nietzsche said, every man, every artist, on every step of the ladder of his perfection, pays the price of a struggle with a duende—not with an Angel (as is often said), nor with a Muse. This distinction is fundamental to the work.

天使指引并赐予,如圣拉斐尔;防卫并回避,如圣米迦勒;预示并告知,如圣加百列。天使令人目眩,却飞翔在人类头顶之上,位于高处,倾洒恩典;人在毫不费力的情况下,完成他的作品、他的情感或他的舞蹈。大马士革之路上的天使,或从亚西西阳台缝隙中进入的那一位,或追随恩里克·苏松脚步的那一位,发号施令——而人无法反抗其光芒,因为它在被预定者的空气中拍击着钢铁般的翅膀。 The Angel guides and endows, like St. Raphael; defends and avoids, like St. Michael; announces and informs, like St. Gabriel. The Angel dazzles, but flies over the heads of men, high above, pouring out grace; the man, without effort, completes his work, his emotion, or his dance. The Angel on the road to Damascus, or the one who entered through the cracks of the balcony in Assisi, or the one who followed in the footsteps of Heinrich Suso, commands—and man cannot resist its light, because it beats its iron wings in the air of the predestined.

缪斯则是口述,有时轻轻吹拂。她的力量相对有限,因为她早已遥远,也如此疲惫(我曾两次见过她),以至于我不得不给她安上一颗半大理石的心。受缪斯支配的诗人听见声音,却不知道来自何处;那是激励他们的缪斯,有时甚至会把他们吞噬。正如阿波利奈尔的例子——这位伟大的诗人,被那位神圣而天使般的卢梭为他描绘的可怕缪斯所摧毁。缪斯唤醒智性,带来柱廊般的风景与虚假的桂冠滋味;而智性往往是诗歌的敌人,因为它过度模仿,因为它把诗人抬举到锋利的高度,使他忘记自己随时可能被蚂蚁吃掉,或被一只巨大的砒霜蝗虫砸中头颅——对此,小沙龙里单眼镜中的缪斯,或淡漆玫瑰中的缪斯,皆无能为力。 The Muse dictates and sometimes whispers. Her power is relatively limited because she is already distant and so weary (I have seen her twice) that I had to give her a half-marble heart. The poet governed by the Muse hears voices but does not know where they come from; it is the Muse who inspires them, and sometimes even consumes them. Such was the case with Apollinaire—the great poet destroyed by the terrible Muse depicted for him by the divine and angelic Rousseau. The Muse awakens the intellect, bringing colonnaded landscapes and the taste of false laurels; but the intellect is often the enemy of poetry because it imitates too much, because it lifts the poet to sharp heights where he forgets he could be eaten by ants at any moment or struck on the head by a giant arsenic locust—against which the Muse with a monocle in the little salon, or the Muse of the pale-varnished rose, is powerless.

天使与缪斯,来自外部:天使赐予光,缪斯赋予形(赫西俄德曾受教于她们)。那金色的面包,或衣袍的褶皱——诗人在月桂林中,领受规训。 The Angel and the Muse come from without: the Angel gives light, and the Muse gives form (Hesiod was taught by them). The golden bread, or the folds of the tunic—the poet receives the discipline in the laurel grove.

而杜恩德,必须从血液最深处的暗房中,将它唤醒。并拒绝天使,踢开缪斯,摆脱对十八世纪诗歌散发的紫罗兰芬芳的恐惧,摆脱那架玻璃中熟睡、因局限而生病的缪斯望远镜的束缚。真正的斗争是与杜恩德的斗争。 But the duende must be awakened in the remotest mansions of the blood. And one must reject the Angel, kick out the Muse, and lose the fear of the violet scent exhaled by eighteenth-century poetry, and free oneself from the telescope of the Muse sleeping in glass, sick with limitations. The real struggle is with the duende.

第二部分 | Part II
世人皆知寻觅上帝之路,从苦行僧的蛮野之法,到神秘主义者的精微之途。可以如圣特蕾莎般筑塔高攀,亦可如圣胡安·德·拉·克鲁斯般三径并寻。纵使我们终须以赛亚之声呼喊:“你真是自隐的上帝啊”,但归根结底,上帝赐予寻觅者的,不过是最初那一丛燃烧的荆棘。 Everyone knows the path to find God, from the wild ways of the ascetic to the subtle paths of the mystic. One can climb like St. Teresa or seek through the three paths like St. John of the Cross. Although we must eventually cry out with the voice of Isaiah, “Truly You are a God who hides Yourself,” in the end, God grants the seeker nothing more than the first burning bush.

然而,寻觅杜恩德,既无地图,亦无教程。唯一确知的是,它能如玻璃般灼烧血液,使人精疲力竭;它拒绝一切习得的、甜美的几何学,击碎所有既定曲式。正是它,让戈雅——那位在灰色、银色与英式油画粉彩中游刃有余的大师——以膝与拳泼洒出恐怖如沥青的墨黑;让辛托·维尔达格尔神父在比利牛斯的严寒中赤身裸体;让豪尔赫·曼里克在奥卡尼亚的荒原上静候死神;让兰波纤弱的躯体套上滑稽戏子的绿衣;让洛特雷蒙伯爵的眼睛,在清晨的林荫大道上,如死鱼般凝滞。 However, for the search for the duende, there is neither map nor discipline. One only knows that it burns the blood like powdered glass, that it exhausts, that it rejects all learned, sweet geometry, and breaks all established forms. It was the duende that drove Goya—the master who moved with ease through greys, silvers, and the pastels of English oil painting—to splash on terrifying blacks of bitumen with his knees and fists; that left Father Jacinto Verdaguer naked in the cold of the Pyrenees; that made Jorge Manrique wait for death on the moors of Ocaña; that clad Rimbaud’s frail body in the green coat of a circus performer; and fixed the eyes of the Comte de Lautréamont like dead fish on the morning boulevards.

安达卢西亚的伟大学者——无论是吉普赛人还是弗拉门戈艺人——都深谙此理:歌唱、舞蹈或演奏,若无杜恩德,则真情永不可及。他们或许能蒙骗观众,伪造出杜恩德在场的幻象(一如那些每日欺瞒我们的作家、画匠或文学裁缝),但只要观者稍加留意,不为其冷漠所蔽,便能戳穿伪装,令那粗鄙的赝品仓皇遁逃。 The great scholars of Andalusia—whether Gypsies or Flamenco artists—know this well: singing, dancing, or playing without duende means the truth is forever out of reach. They might deceive the audience, forging an illusion of duende (like the writers, painters, or literary tailors who deceive us daily), but if the observer pays close attention and is not blinded by indifference, they will pierce the disguise and watch that vulgar forgery flee in haste.

有一回,安达卢西亚歌手帕斯托拉·帕翁,人称“梳子少女”,那位阴郁而伟大的西班牙天才,其想象力堪与戈雅或“拉法埃尔·埃尔·加利奥”比肩,在加的斯一家小酒馆里献唱。她将声音如黑影、如熔锡、如覆苔般把玩,任其缠绕发间,浸入甘菊,或迷失于远方幽暗的灌木丛。然而,一切皆是徒劳——满座寂然。 Once, the Andalusian singer Pastora Pavón, “The Girl with the Combs”—that dark and great Spanish genius whose imagination rivaled Goya or “Rafael el Gallo”—was singing in a little tavern in Cádiz. She played with her voice like a shadow, like molten tin, like moss, letting it coil in her hair, soak into chamomile, or lose itself in far-off, dark thickets. However, all was in vain; the house was silent.

席间有伊格纳西奥·埃斯佩莱塔,俊美如罗马石雕。曾有人问他:“你怎么不工作?”他报以阿尔甘托尼奥式的微笑,答道:“我如何能工作?我可是加的斯人。”还有那热烈的贵族埃洛伊萨,塞维利亚的烟花女子,索莱达·巴尔加斯的直系后裔,年方三十便拒绝了罗斯柴尔德的求婚,只因“血统不合”。还有佛罗里达家族,世人皆以为他们是屠夫,实则是传承千载的祭司,至今仍向革律翁献祭公牛。角落里端坐着威严的牧牛人巴勃罗·穆鲁贝,浑身散发着克里特岛面具般的气息。帕斯托拉·帕翁在一片死寂中唱完了。唯有一个小个子男人——那种会突然从白兰地酒瓶里蹦出来的舞者——低声讥讽道:“巴黎万岁!”那语气仿佛在说:“技巧、形式、技艺,我们毫不在乎。我们在乎的,是别的东西。” In the audience was Ignacio Espeleta, beautiful as a Roman statue. Someone once asked him, “Why don’t you work?” He gave an Argantonio-like smile and replied, “How can I work? I am from Cádiz.” There was also the fiery aristocrat Eloísa, the Sevillian courtesan, a direct descendant of Soledad Vargas, who at thirty refused Rothschild’s proposal because “the blood didn’t match.” There were the Florida family, whom the world took for butchers, but who were actually priests of a thousand-year tradition, still sacrificing bulls to Geryon. In the corner sat the majestic cattleman Pablo Murube, exhaling the air of a Cretan mask. Pastora Pavón finished in a dead silence. Only one small man—the kind of dancer who would suddenly pop out of a brandy bottle—muttered sarcastically: “Long live Paris!” His tone implied: “Technique, form, skill—we don’t care. We care for something else.”

于是,“梳子少女”如疯似狂地站起身,身躯扭曲如中世纪的哭丧妇人,猛灌下一口火焰般的烈酒,坐下重唱——这次,无声、无息、亦无色,只余喉咙灼烧,但……杜恩德降临了。她扼杀了歌曲的全部架构,只为给那愤怒炽烈的杜恩德让路。杜恩德如沙尘暴般席卷,听众的衣衫几欲随节奏撕裂,仿佛置身安的列斯黑人祭仪,众舞者正环绕圣芭芭拉神像疯狂舞动。 Then “The Girl with the Combs” rose like a madwoman, her body twisted like a medieval mourner, downed a glass of fire-like brandy, and sat down to sing again—this time without voice, without breath, without color, with a burning throat, but… the duende arrived. She killed the entire scaffolding of the song to make way for a furious and flaming duende. The duende swept through like a sandstorm, and the audience’s clothes nearly tore with the rhythm, as if in an Antillean Negro rite, with dancers circling the statue of Saint Barbara in madness.

《梳子少女》必须撕裂自己的声音,因为她知道听众是挑剔之人,他们不求形式,而求形式的骨髓——以紧凑的身体承载纯粹的音乐,使其悬于空中。她必须舍弃能力与安全;也就是驱逐缪斯,自我孤立,让杜恩德降临,与之全力搏斗。她唱出了怎样的歌声!声音不再嬉戏,而是因痛苦与真诚而涌出的血流,从双脚伸展开,像十指之掌,却又充满风暴,如同胡安·德·胡尼的基督雕像。 “The Girl with the Combs” had to tear her own voice because she knew the audience was demanding; they did not seek form, but the marrow of form—pure music carried in a tight body, suspended in the air. She had to abandon ability and safety; that is, to exile the Muse, isolate herself, and let the duende descend and fight with all its might. What singing she produced! The voice no longer played, but became a flow of blood surging from pain and sincerity, stretching from her feet like a ten-fingered palm, yet full of storms, like the Christ of Juan de Juni.

杜恩德的到来总意味着所有旧形式的彻底革命,带来前所未有的新鲜感,如初生的玫瑰般奇迹般的质感,几乎引发宗教般的热情。在阿拉伯音乐、舞蹈、歌曲或挽歌中,杜恩德到来时常以“阿拉,阿拉!”、“上帝,上帝!”的高呼回应,几乎等同于斗牛场的“奥莱!”;在整个西班牙南部,杜恩德出现后,真诚的“上帝万岁!”随之而起——深沉、有人情味、温柔的呼喊,通过五感与杜恩德的震动,使舞者的声音与身体脱离尘世,如十七世纪罕见诗人佩德罗·索托·德·罗哈斯在七座花园间所达成的纯净,如胡安·卡利马克通过颤抖的哭泣音阶所达成的纯净。 The arrival of the duende always means a radical revolution of all old forms, bringing a sense of freshness unknown until then, with the quality of a miracle like a newly created rose, producing an almost religious enthusiasm. In Arabic music, dance, song, or lament, the arrival of the duende is often answered with cries of “Allah, Allah!”, “God, God!”, almost equivalent to the “Olé!” of the bullring; throughout southern Spain, after the duende appears, a sincere “Viva Dios!” arises—a deep, human, tender cry, which through the five senses and the vibration of the duende, detaches the dancer’s voice and body from the earth, reaching the purity achieved by the rare seventeenth-century poet Pedro Soto de Rojas among seven gardens, or Juan de Kalimako through a trembling scale of weeping.

自然,当这种超脱实现时,每个人都能感受到它的效果:有经验者看到形式战胜贫乏材料,无知者感受真实情感的“不可言说”。多年前,在赫雷斯·德拉弗龙特拉的舞蹈比赛中,一位八十岁的老妇击败腰肢如水的美丽女子,仅因举起双臂、昂首、踏脚一击;而在天使与缪斯汇聚之场——美貌与微笑交错——那位临死的杜恩德拖着锈刀般的翅膀赢得了比赛。 Naturally, when this detachment is achieved, everyone feels its effect: the experienced see form triumph over poor material; the ignorant feel the “ineffable” of real emotion. Years ago, in a dance competition in Jerez de la Frontera, an eighty-year-old woman defeated beautiful women with waists like water, simply by raising her arms, lifting her head, and striking the floor with one stomp; in a field where Angels and Muses gathered—beauty and smiles intertwining—that dying duende dragging its wings like rusty knives won the prize.

所有艺术都有杜恩德,但它最能施展的,当然是音乐、舞蹈与口语诗歌,因为这些需要活体来表达,形式不断诞生与消亡,并在当下的瞬间升起轮廓。 All arts have duende, but it has the most room in music, dance, and spoken poetry, for these require a living body to express them—forms that are born and die continually, and raise their contours in the precise present.

杜恩德常从音乐家传给演奏者,有时在演奏者或诗人缺席时,演奏者的杜恩德创造出新的奇迹,其外表仅保留原始形式。如被杜恩德附体的艾莱奥诺拉·杜塞,她寻求失败的作品以创造成功;或歌德所述的帕格尼尼,让平凡旋律发出深沉之声;又如我曾见到一名圣玛利亚港的女孩唱跳意大利可怕的曲子《O Mari!》,节奏、停顿、意图,使粗陋意大利曲子化作金色蛇形光环。实质上,她们发现了前所未有的新元素,将鲜血与技艺注入空洞身体。 The duende often passes from the musician to the performer; sometimes in the absence of the performer or poet, the performer’s duende creates new wonders where only the original form remains in appearance. Such as Eleonora Duse possessed by the duende, who sought out failing works to create successes; or Paganini as described by Goethe, making deep sounds from trivial melodies; or a girl I once saw in El Puerto de Santa María singing and dancing the terrible Italian tune “O Mari!”, where rhythm, pause, and intent transformed the crude song into a golden serpent-like halo. In essence, they discovered new elements never seen before, injecting blood and skill into empty bodies.

所有艺术,甚至国家,都有杜恩德、天使与缪斯的能力。正如德国(有例外)有缪斯,意大利常伴天使,西班牙自古则由杜恩德驱动——音乐与舞蹈的千年之国,凌晨榨取柠檬的国度,也是死亡之国,向死亡敞开的国度。 All arts, even nations, have the capacity for duende, Angel, and Muse. Just as Germany (with exceptions) has the Muse and Italy is often accompanied by the Angel, Spain since antiquity has been driven by the duende—a millennial country of music and dance, a country that squeezes lemons at dawn, and also a country of death, a country open to death.

在世界各地,死亡都是终点——帷幕落下。而在西班牙,帷幕升起。许多人活在墙内,直至死亡被晒于阳光下。西班牙的死者,比任何地方更鲜活:其轮廓如剃刀般锋利。西班牙人熟悉死亡及其静观的幽默。从克韦多的《骷髅之梦》,到瓦尔德斯·莱亚尔的《腐烂主教》,再到十七世纪马贝拉的产死之女,吟道: In all other countries, death is an end—the curtain falls. In Spain, the curtain rises. Many live within walls until death is brought out into the sun. The dead in Spain are more alive than anywhere else: their silhouettes are sharp as razors. The Spaniard is familiar with death and with its contemplative humor. From Quevedo’s Dream of the Skulls, to Valdés Leal’s Rotting Bishops, to the seventeenth-century woman of Marbella who died in childbirth, singing:

血从我腹中 覆盖马背 你马的蹄 喷射焦油之火…… The blood from my womb covers the horse’s back and the hooves of your horse strike sparks of tar and fire…

再到萨拉曼卡青年死于公牛,呼喊: Or the young man from Salamanca, killed by a bull, who cries:

朋友们,我要死了; 朋友们,我病得很重。 三条手帕在内 这条算第四…… Friends, I am dying; Friends, I am very ill. I have three handkerchiefs inside and this one makes the fourth…

西班牙有盐花围栏,供观死者的民众远眺,或以耶利米的粗犷诗句,或以香柏点缀抒情一侧;这是一个将最重要的事物赋予死亡终极价值的国家。西班牙的刀刃与车轮、牧羊人锋利胡须、剥光的月亮、苍蝇、湿漉橱柜、废墟、镶蕾丝的圣像、石灰、屋檐与瞭望台的锐线——都蕴含微小的死亡草木、暗示与可觉察的声音,唤起警觉的精神,使我们以死寂之气忆起自己的过渡。西班牙所有与山岭相关的艺术——满是蓟与坚石——非偶然;普莱贝里奥的哀歌或何塞·马里亚·德·巴尔迪维索的舞蹈非孤例;西班牙民谣独特之处亦非偶然: Spain has walls of saltpetre for the crowds who gaze at death, either with the rugged verses of Jeremiah or with cedar decorating the lyrical side; it is a country where the most important thing of all has an ultimate value in death. The Spanish blade and wheel, the shepherd’s sharp beard, the stripped moon, the flies, damp cabinets, ruins, lace-trimmed icons, lime, and the sharp lines of eaves and watchtowers—all contain the tiny plants and minerals of death, hints and perceivable sounds that evoke an alert spirit, reminding us of our passage with a breath of silence. It is no accident that all Spanish art related to the mountains—full of thistles and hard stone—exists; the laments of Pleberio or the dances of José María de Valdivieso are no isolated cases; nor is the uniqueness of the Spanish ballad an accident:

若你是我美丽的朋友, 为什么不看我呢? 我看你的眼睛 给了阴影 If you are my beautiful friend, why do you not look at me? The eyes with which I looked at you I have given to the shadows.

若你是我美丽的朋友, 为什么不吻我呢? 我吻你的嘴唇 给了山脉 If you are my beautiful friend, why do you not kiss me? The lips with which I kissed you I have given to the mountains.

若你是我美丽的朋友, 为什么不拥抱我呢? 我拥抱你的双臂 用虫子覆盖 If you are my beautiful friend, why do you not embrace me? The arms with which I embraced you are covered with worms.

在我诗歌初启之时,这样的歌声也常响起: In the beginning of my poetry, such songs often sounded:

在园中,我将死去 在玫瑰丛,他们将我杀毙 我去寻找我的母亲, 在园中遇见死亡 我去采摘我的母亲, 在园中遇见死亡 在园中,我将死去 在玫瑰丛,他们将我杀毙 In the garden, I shall die In the rosebush, they will kill me. I went to look for my mother, In the garden I found death. I went to gather my mother, In the rosebush I found death. In the garden, I shall die In the rosebush, they will kill me.

第三部分 | Part III
从苏尔瓦兰笔下月光般冰冷的头颅,到格列柯那黄闪黄乳脂的色调;从西贡萨神父的叙述,到戈雅的鸿篇巨制;从埃斯科里亚尔修道院的后殿壁画与彩塑,到奥苏纳公爵府的地穴、梅迪纳-德里奥塞科贝纳文特教堂的吉他陪葬——这一切,连同圣安德烈斯朝圣中列队行进的死者、阿斯图里亚斯妇女在十一月寒夜手持火把吟唱的亡灵歌谣、马略卡与托莱多大教堂的西碧拉歌舞、阴郁的“托尔托萨的‘雷科尔特’舞”,以及无数耶稣受难日的仪式——当然,还有斗牛这崇高的节日——共同构成了西班牙式死亡的民间凯旋。这世上,唯有墨西哥堪与我的祖国在此意境上比肩。 From the moonlight-cold heads of Zurbarán to the yellow-flash-and-custard tones of El Greco; from the narratives of Father Sigüenza to the colossal works of Goya; from the frescoes and sculptures in the apse of El Escorial to the crypt of the Dukes of Osuna, and the guitar-burials in the Benavente church in Medina de Rioseco—all of this, along with the marching dead of the San Andrés pilgrimage, the ghost-songs of Asturian women on November nights with torches, the Sibyl dances in the cathedrals of Mallorca and Toledo, the gloomy “Record” dance of Tortosa, and the endless ceremonies of Good Friday—and of course, the bullfight, that sublime festival—all constitute the popular triumph of Spanish death. In this world, only Mexico can rival my homeland in this sentiment.

当死亡逼近,缪斯会阖上门扉、抬高基座,或挪动骨灰瓮,用她蜡制的手书写墓志铭;但转瞬之间,她又会撕裂那顶在两缕微风间犹疑不决的沉默桂冠。在颂歌颓圮的拱顶下,她以丧葬般的精确,聚拢十五世纪意大利画师笔下的花朵,并呼唤卢克莱修那护卫安宁的雄鸡,以驱散不期而至的暗影。 When death approaches, the Muse closes her doors, raises her pedestal, or moves the urn, writing epitaphs with her waxen hand; but in an instant, she tears that crown of silence that wavers between two breezes. Under the crumbling vaults of the ode, she gathers the flowers of fifteenth-century Italian painters with funeral precision and calls upon the Lucretian rooster who guards the peace to disperse the unexpected shadows.

当死亡逼近,天使会缓缓盘旋,用冰泪与水仙编织哀歌——我们曾见这哀歌在济慈的指间颤抖,在比利亚桑迪诺、埃雷拉、贝克尔与胡安·拉蒙·希梅内斯的笔下颤抖。然而,倘若天使那柔嫩的粉足上,沾了一粒最细小的沙尘,那将是何等骇人的景象! When death approaches, the Angel circles slowly, weaving laments from ice-tears and narcissus—laments we have seen trembling between the fingers of Keats, and in the pens of Villasandino, Herrera, Bécquer, and Juan Ramón Jiménez. However, what a terrifying sight it would be if a single grain of the smallest dust were to touch the Angel’s soft, pink foot!

而杜恩德,倘若不见死亡的可能性,不知它将徘徊于自家厅堂,不确信自己将撼动我们每个人与生俱来、永难抚慰的生命之枝,它便绝不会降临。 But the duende does not come at all unless he sees that death is possible, unless he knows that death can surround the house, and is certain that he will shake those branches of life that we all carry, which have no solace.

杜恩德偏爱危险的边缘,它以其理念、声响或动作,与创造者正面交锋。天使与缪斯携着小提琴或节拍器逃之夭夭,而杜恩德却造成创伤;正是在这永不愈合的伤口的痛楚中,孕育了人类作品中最奇异、最具创造性的部分。 The duende loves the edge of things, the wound, and he draws close to places where forms fuse in a yearning beyond visible expression. The Angel and the Muse flee with their violins or metronomes, while the duende causes a wound; and it is in the pain of this never-healing wound that the strangest and most creative parts of human work are born.

诗的魔力,在于它常被杜恩德附体,从而能以幽暗之水为所有凝视它的人施洗。因为杜恩德在场,去爱与理解变得轻易,同时也必然被爱与被理解。而这番为了表达与交流而进行的搏斗,在诗歌中,有时甚至具有致命的性质。 The magic of poetry lies in its being possessed by the duende, so that it can baptize all who look upon it with dark water. Because the duende is present, it becomes easy to love and understand, and necessarily to be loved and understood. And this struggle to express and communicate, in poetry, sometimes even takes on a fatal character.

回想那位最富弗拉门戈气质、最具杜恩德的圣特蕾莎——她之所以弗拉门戈,并非因为驯服狂牛并完成三次华丽的动作(她确实做到了),也不是为了在“可怜的胡安”面前炫耀美貌,亦非为给教皇公使一记耳光,而是因为她是少数几个被杜恩德(而非天使——天使从不攻击)以利箭穿透之人,欲杀她以夺回最后的秘密——那微妙桥梁,连通五感与活肉、活云、活海般的中心,连接超越时间的自由之爱。 Think of St. Teresa—the most Flamenco and most possessed by the duende. She was Flamenco not because she tamed wild bulls and completed three brilliant passes (which she did), nor to show off her beauty before “poor Juan,” nor to slap the papal legate, but because she was one of the few whom the duende (not the Angel—the Angel never attacks) pierced with a sharp arrow, wishing to kill her to reclaim the final secret—that subtle bridge connecting the five senses with the center of living flesh, living clouds, and living seas, connecting the free love that transcends time.

这位勇敢无畏的杜恩德征服者,与费利佩二世正好相反——后者渴望在神学中寻找缪斯与天使,却被冷烈杜恩德囚禁于埃斯科里亚尔的作品中,在那里几何与梦境相邻,而杜恩德戴上缪斯面具,成为伟大国王的永恒惩罚。 This brave and fearless conqueror of the duende was the exact opposite of Philip II—who sought the Muse and the Angel in theology but was imprisoned by the cold, fierce duende in the works of El Escorial, where geometry and dreams reside side by side, and the duende wore the mask of the Muse to become the eternal punishment of the great king.

我们已说过,杜恩德喜爱边缘、伤口,并靠近那些形式融入超越可见表达的渴望之地。在西班牙(如同东方那些以舞蹈为宗教表达的民族),杜恩德在加的斯舞者的身体上有无限领域——马尔提亚尔赞美过的胸脯,尤维纳利斯赞美过的歌者胸膛;在斗牛的礼仪中,杜恩德同样存在——真实的宗教戏剧,正如弥撒中崇拜并献祭神明。仿佛古典世界的全部杜恩德汇聚于此完美的节日——它体现了一个民族的文化与敏感,发掘人类最深的愤怒、胆汁与哭泣。无论是西班牙舞蹈还是斗牛,参与者从未寻求乐趣;杜恩德负责通过戏剧使之受苦,借由活的形式,并为脱离现实铺设阶梯。 We have said that the duende loves the edge, the wound, and draws near to those places where forms dissolve into the longing for expression beyond the visible. In Spain (as with those Oriental peoples whose dance is a religious expression), the duende has an infinite realm on the bodies of the dancers of Cádiz—the breasts praised by Martial, the chests of singers praised by Juvenal; in the ritual of the bullfight, the duende is also present—a true religious drama, like the worship and sacrifice of a god in the Mass. It is as if all the duende of the classical world gathered at this perfect festival—representing a people’s culture and sensitivity, unearthing man’s deepest rage, bile, and weeping. In neither Spanish dance nor the bullfight do the participants seek pleasure; the duende is in charge of making them suffer through the drama, using living forms, and providing the ladder for an escape from reality.

杜恩德作用于舞者的身体,如空气作用于沙地。它能神奇地将少女化作月亮的瘫痪之身,或让破败的老者满面红晕,在酒馆乞讨,发出港口夜色的气息;它时时作用于手臂,孕育所有时代舞蹈的母体。但它绝不重复——这一点非常值得强调。杜恩德如风暴中的海浪般,不会重复其形式。 The duende acts upon the dancer’s body as wind acts upon sand. It can magically transform a young girl into the paralyzed body of the moon, or give a flush of red to an old, broken man begging in a tavern, exhaling the scent of the harbor night; it acts constantly on the arms, giving birth to the matrix of all dances of all ages. But it never repeats—this point is well worth emphasizing. The duende, like waves in a storm, never repeats its forms.

在斗牛场,它获得最令人印象深刻的音调——因为它必须一面与可能毁灭它的死亡搏斗,一面与几何、尺度——节日的基本准则——搏斗。公牛有其轨道,斗牛士有其轨道;轨道之间,存在危险之点——可怕游戏的顶点。可用缪斯掌控红布、天使掌控彩旗,也许成为“好斗牛士”,但在斗篷舞、清晰无伤的公牛面前,以及最后致命一刻,需要杜恩德的助力,才能击中艺术真理的中心。在广场以鲁莽震慑观众的斗牛士,其实不算斗牛——他只是站在任何人都可触及的可笑平面上,拿生命作赌注。而被杜恩德咬中的斗牛士,奏出毕达哥拉斯式乐章,使人忘记他不断将心抛向牛角。 In the bullring, it acquires its most impressive tones—because it must struggle on one side with the death that could destroy it, and on the other with geometry and measure—the fundamental rules of the festival. The bull has its orbit, the matador has his; between these orbits exists the point of danger—the apex of the terrible game. One can control the muleta with the Muse or the banderillas with the Angel, and perhaps become a “good matador,” but in the cape-dance, before a clear and uninjured bull, and in the final fatal moment, the help of the duende is needed to strike the center of artistic truth. The matador who shocks the crowd with recklessness is not truly bullfighting—he is merely standing on a ridiculous plane accessible to anyone, gambling with his life. But the matador bitten by the duende performs a Pythagorean movement, making one forget that he is constantly throwing his heart against the bull’s horns.

拉加蒂霍与其罗马杜恩德,何塞利托与其犹太杜恩德,贝尔蒙特与其巴洛克杜恩德,卡甘乔与其吉普赛杜恩德——他们从斗牛场暮色中,向诗人、画家与音乐家传授西班牙传统的四大路径。 Lagartijo with his Roman duende, Joselito with his Jewish duende, Belmonte with his Baroque duende, Cagancho with his Gypsy duende—from the twilight of the bullring, they teach poets, painters, and musicians the four great paths of Spanish tradition.

西班牙是唯一一个将死亡作为国民表演的国家——死亡吹响春天的长号,其艺术永远受敏锐杜恩德主导,这赋予了其差异与创造力。 Spain is the only country where death is a national spectacle—where death blows the trumpets of spring—and its art is forever governed by a sharp duende that gives it its distinctiveness and its creative quality.

那个首次以血填充雕塑中圣徒面颊的杜恩德,与让圣胡安·德拉克鲁斯呻吟,或燃烧洛佩宗教十四行诗中裸体仙女的杜恩德,是同一个。那个在萨阿贡高塔建塔,或在卡拉塔尤德、特鲁埃尔搬热砖的杜恩德,是同一个打破格雷科云彩、踢翻奎维多执法者与戈雅幻兽的杜恩德。雨时,它让委拉斯开兹神秘附体,潜藏于灰色王权之下;雪时,它让埃雷拉裸身示人,证明寒冷无法杀人;火焰中,它将贝鲁格特卷入烈焰,促使其为雕塑发明新空间。 That duende who first filled the cheeks of saints in sculptures with blood is the same one who made St. John of the Cross moan, or burned the naked nymphs in Lope’s religious sonnets. That duende who built the towers in Sahagún or moved hot bricks in Calatayud and Teruel is the same one who broke El Greco’s clouds, kicked over Quevedo’s magistrates, and Goya’s chimeras. In rain, it possess Velázquez mysteriously, hiding under the grey of royalty; in snow, it leaves Herrera naked to prove that cold cannot kill; in fire, it pulls Berruguete into the flames, urging him to invent new space for sculpture.

当贡戈拉的缪斯与加尔西拉索·德·拉·维加的天使遇到圣胡安·德拉克鲁斯的杜恩德,桂冠必须让路,当 鹿受伤 自山岗探头 When Góngora’s Muse and Garcilaso de la Vega’s Angel meet the duende of St. John of the Cross, the laurel must give way when: The wounded deer peeks from the hill.

冈萨洛·德·贝尔塞奥的缪斯与希塔牧区神父的天使也必须退开,为豪尔赫·曼里克让路,当他死伤临贝尔蒙特城堡门口。格雷戈里奥·埃尔南德斯的缪斯与何塞·德·莫拉的天使也必须避开,为梅纳的杜恩德之泪与马丁内斯·蒙塔涅斯的亚述公牛头杜恩德让路。正如加泰罗尼亚忧郁缪斯与加利西亚湿透天使,也必须以慈爱惊讶之眼凝视卡斯蒂利亚杜恩德——远离温热面包与甜美牛奶,遵循被扫净天空与干旱山岭的规则。 The Muse of Gonzalo de Berceo and the Angel of the Archpriest of Hita must also step aside for Jorge Manrique when he lies wounded at the gates of Belmonte castle. The Muse of Gregorio Hernández and the Angel of José de Mora must avoid the tears of Mena’s duende and the Assyrian bull-head duende of Martínez Montañés. Just as the melancholy Muse of Catalonia and the soaked Angel of Galicia must gaze with loving, surprised eyes at the Castilian duende—away from warm bread and sweet milk, following the rules of swept skies and dry mountains.

克维多的杜恩德与塞万提斯的杜恩德——一方以绿色磷光海葵装饰,一方以鲁伊德拉石膏花点缀——共同为西班牙杜恩德祭坛加冕。每种艺术自然有其专属杜恩德,但皆根源于同一点——曼努埃尔·托雷斯的“黑色声音”,最后物质、共同基础、不可控而颤栗的木、音、布与词。这些黑色声音背后,温柔地蛰伏着火山、蚂蚁、微风与银河紧束腰间的浩夜。 The duende of Quevedo and the duende of Cervantes—one adorned with green phosphorescent anemones, the other with Ruidera plaster flowers—together crown the altar of the Spanish duende. Every art naturally has its own duende, but all root in the same point—Manuel Torre’s “black sounds,” the final substance, the common ground, the uncontrollable and shivering wood, sound, cloth, and word. Behind these black sounds, volcanoes, ants, breezes, and the vast night with the Milky Way tightened around its waist, sleep tenderly.

女士们,先生们:我已竖起三道拱门,用笨拙的手将缪斯、天使与杜恩德置于其中。缪斯静止不动;她可穿小褶的长袍,或如庞培所绘的四面鼻子牛眼,毕加索的挚友所画。天使可挥动安东内洛·德·梅西纳的发丝,披里皮的长袍,小提琴来自马索利诺或卢梭。 Ladies and gentlemen: I have raised three arches and with a clumsy hand I have placed within them the Muse, the Angel, and the duende. The Muse remains motionless; she can wear a tunic with small folds, or a four-sided nose and ox-eyes like those painted by Pompey or by Picasso’s close friend. The Angel can wave the hair of Antonello da Messina, wear the tunic of Lippi, and the violin comes from Masolino or Rousseau.

杜恩德……杜恩德在何处?从空拱门透入的,是一股思维之风,它执着吹拂死者头顶,寻找未知的风景与音调——带着孩童口水、碾碎青草与水母薄纱的气息,预示新生事物不断的洗礼。 The duende… where is the duende? Through the empty archway comes a wind of the spirit, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents—a wind with the scent of a child’s saliva, of crushed grass, and jellyfish veils, announcing the constant baptism of newly created things.

translating lorca

14 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, Potawatomi, Spanish, Translation

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difficult translating, eshkebok, Federico Garcia Lorca, original spanish, poem, Poetry, Potawatomi, Romance Sonambulo

“VERDE, QUE TE QUIERO, VERDE.”
“Skebgezo, gmenwénmen, skebgezo.”
“Green, I want you, green.”

Potawatomi is an oral language meaning that it has only been until (relatively) recently that a dictionary using English has been made available to people like me who just want to learn the language because it sounds beautiful. To complicate things there are both Southern and Northern dialects that have their own vocabulary. I live in the north but my on-line language classes are from a southern band (Citizen Nation) who, logically, use southern terms. Today I am struggling over how to say green in Potawatomi in the context of the first line of Federico Garcia Lorca’s poem, Romance Sonambulo. “Verde, que te quiero, verde.” In Potawatomi the world is broken up into things that are animate (all that which is living, all which is spiritual, etc.) and inanimate (man-made things, etc.) The green that Lorca addresses (verde) embodies both hopeful and thwarted desire. I’ve always seen it as something otherworldly and alive. Animate green. One Potawatomi word-list I found on-line from Wisconsin says that green is, “eshkebok.” I liked that, since I could rhyme it with sleepwalk which plays nicely with the title of Lorca’s poem (Ballad of the Sleepwalker). However a different word list (this one from Oklahoma) says that green is, “skebgezo.” Perhaps it’s that regional difference I don’t really understand yet? Perhaps one is animate and the other not? I don’t know. The frustration of learning by oneself is that there is no one to correct my errors as I go along. Que te quiero (how I want you) is easier since I could find the actual phrase in Potawatomi in several sources. It is: “gmenwénmen.” I’m not at a place in my studies where I can keep translating the poem but one day I will. One day I will translate all of Lorca’s work and a brand new world will open up, just like that. I am endlessly excited to see a new world.

infernal fountain

01 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by babylon crashing in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet, Spanish, Translation

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a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom, erotic poetry, infernal fountain, it's all erotic poetry in the end, Me haces mojada, sonnet, Spanish translation

The street kids all laughed at the noise we made,
hurried over at the first lop-bam-boom,

first toe-curling wail. Infidel who prayed
to false female gods, your mom declared. Womb

talk by a man? Tsk, she spat. She’s correct,
but it’s more than just talk. Window open,

slick with kisses, afternoon sweat, respect
for bald lust, for the infernal fountain

of your cunt. Call my promised land Lilith
and your clit. Your mom freaks at, “¡me haces

mojada!” At your skirt pulled up, midriff
exposed. At what I call prayer that gushes

sublime between her adored First Daughter
and the infidel who knows no better.

NOTE:
“Me haces mojada,” translates from Spanish as, “you make me wet.”

pizarnik’s ‘extracción de la piedra de locura’

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, Prose, Spanish, Translation

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Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracción de la piedra de locura, i love this so much, poem, Poetry, Spanish translation

-1-

CANTORA NOCTURNA
Joe, macht die Musik von damals macht…

La que murió de su vestido azul está cantando. Canta imbuida de muerte al sol de su ebriedad. Adentro de su canción hay un vestido azul, hay un caballo blanco, hay un corazón verde tatuado con los ecos de los latidos de su corazón muerto. Expuesta a todas las perdiciones, ella canta junto a una niña extraviada que es ella: su amuleto de la buena suerte. Y a pesar de la niebla verde en los labios y del frío gris en los ojos, su voz corroe la distancia que se abre entre la sed y la mano que busca el vaso. Ella canta.

a Olga Orozco

NIGHT SINGER
Joe, make the music of those days …

The one who died of her blue dress is singing. She sings imbued with death, sings to the sun of her drunkenness. Inside her song there is a blue dress, there is a white horse, there is a green heart tattooed with the echoes of the beats of her dead heart. Exposed to all that’s doomed, she sings along with a lost girl that is herself: her amulet of good luck. And despite the green mist on her lips and the cold gray in her eyes, her voice eats away at the distance that opens between thirst and the hand that seeks the glass. She sings.

for Olga Orozco

][][

VÉRTIGOS O CONTEMPLACIÓN DE ALGO QUE TERMINA

Esta lila se deshoja.
Desde sí misma cae
y oculta su antigua sombra.
He de morir de cosas así.

VERTIGO, OR CONTEMPLATION OF SOMETHING THAT ENDES

This lilac is leafless.
It falls from itself
and hides its old shadow.
I must die by things like that.

][][

LINTERNA SORDA

Los ausentes soplan y la noche es densa. La noche tiene el color de los párpados del muerto.
Toda la noche hago la noche. Toda la noche escribo. Palabra por palabra yo escribo la noche.

BULL’S EYE LANTERN

The absent ones sigh and the night is thick. The night’s color is that of the eyelids of the dead.
I make the night all night long. All night I write. Word by word I’m writing the night.

][][

PRIVILEGIO

I
Ya he perdido el nombre que me llamaba,
su rostro rueda por mí
como el sonido del agua en la noche,
del agua cayendo en el agua.
Y es su sonrisa la última sobreviviente,
no mi memoria.

II
El más hermoso
en la noche de los que se van,
oh deseado,
es sin fin tu no volver,
sombra tú hasta el día de los días.

PRIVILEGE

I
I’ve already lost the name that I was called,
her face circles around me
like the sound of water at night,
of the water falling into water.
And her smile is the last thing I lose,
not my memory.

II
The most beautiful of
the night are those who leave,
you who I wanted,
it is endless your not returning,
you’re a shadow until the day of the days.

][][

CONTEMPLACIÓN

Murieron las formas despavoridas y no hubo más un afuera y un adentro. Nadie estaba escuchando el lugar porque el lugar no existía.
Con el propósito de escuchar están escuchando el lugar. Adentro de tu máscara relampaguea la noche. Te atraviesan con graznidos. Te martillean con pájaros negros. Colores enemigos se unen en la tragedia.

CONTEMPLATION

The terrified shapes died and there was no longer an outside and an inside. Nobody was listening to that place because it did not exist.
In order to listen they are listening to that place. Inside your night-mask come flashes of lightning. They cross you, cackling. They hammer you with black birds. Enemy colors come together in tragedy.

][][

NUIT DE COUER

Otoño en el azul de un muro: sé amparo de las pequeñas muertas.
Cada noche, en la duración de un grito, viene una sombra nueva. A solas danza la misteriosa autónoma. Comparto su miedo de animal muy joven en la primera noche de las cacerías.

THE HEART’S NIGHT

Autumn in the blue of a wall: be a shelter for the little dead girls.
Every night, in the duration of a scream, a new shadow arises. It’s autonomous and mysterious and dances alone. I share the fear of a very young animal going out on the first night of its hunt.

][][

CUENTO DE INVIERNO

La luz del viento entre los pinos ¿comprendo estos signos de tristeza incandescente?
Un ahorcado se balancea en el árbol marcado con la cruz lila.
Hasta que logró deslizarse fuera de mi sueño y entrar a mi cuarto, por la ventana, en complicidad con el viento de medianoche.

WINTER’S TALE

The light of the wind among the pines. Do I understand these signs of incandescent sadness?
A hanged man swings in the tree marked with a lilac cross.
Until he managed to slip out of my dream and enter my room, through the window, in complicity with the midnight wind.

][][

EN LA OTRA MADRUGADA

Veo crecer hasta mis ojos figuras de silencio y desesperadas. Escucho grises, densas voces en el antiguo lugar del corazón.

IN THE OTHER DAWN

I see figures of silence and despair coming up to my eye-level. I hear gray, thick voices calling from the empty place of my heart.

][][

DESFUNDACIÓN

Alguien quiso abrir alguna puerta. Duelen sus manos aferradas a su prisión de huesos de mal agüero.
Toda la noche ha forcejeado con su nueva sombra. Llovió adentro de la madrugada y martillaban con lloronas.
La infancia implora desde mis noches de cripta.
La música emite colores ingenuos.
Grises pájaros en el amanecer son a la ventana cerrada lo que a mis males mi poema.

NO FOUNDATION

Someone wanted to open a door. They hurt their hands clinging to their prison of bones from bad omens.
All night she struggled with her new shadow. It rained in the dawn and was pummeled with weeping women.
Childhood pleads from my night’s crypt.
The music blooms in naive colors.
Dawn’s gray birds are to the closed window what this poem is to my pain.

][][

FIGURAS Y SILENCIOS

Manos crispadas me confinan al exilio.
Ayúdame a no pedir ayuda.
Me quieren anochecer, me van a morir.
Ayúdame a no pedir ayuda.

FIGURES AND SILENCES

Twitching hands confine me to exile.
Help me not to ask for help.
They want me my dusk, they’re see I’ll die.
Help me not to ask for help.

][][

FRAGMENTOS PARA DOMINAR EL SILENCIO

I
Las fuerzas del lenguaje son las damas solitarias, desoladas, que cantan a través de mi voz que escucho a lo lejos. Y lejos, en la negra arena, yace una niña densa de música ancestral. ¿Dónde la verdadera muerte? He querido iluminarme a la luz de mi falta de luz. Los ramos se mueren en la memoria. La yacente anida en mí con su máscara de loba. La que no pudo más e imploró llamas y ardimos.

II
Cuando a la casa del lenguaje se le vuela el tejado y las palabras no guarecen, yo hablo.
Las damas de rojo se extraviaron dentro de sus máscaras aunque regresarían para sollozar entre flores.
No es muda la muerte. Escucho el canto de los enlutados sellar las hendiduras del silencio. Escucho tu dulcísimo canto florecer mi silencio gris.

III
La muerte ha restituido al silencio su prestigio hechizante. Y yo no diré mi poema y yo he de decirlo. Aún si el poema (aquí, ahora) no tiene sentido, no tiene destino.

FRAGMENTS TO MASTER THE SILENCE

I
The powers of language are the lonely, desolate ladies who sing through my voice that I hear from afar. And from far away, in black sand, lies a heavy girl full of ancestral music. Where real death? I wanted to enlighten myself in the light about my lack of light. The bouquets of memory are dying. The girl in the sand nests in me with her wolf mask. The one that could not stand it anymore and implored flames, the one we burned.

II
When the roof is flung off the house of language and words do not shine, I speak.
The ladies in red are lost in their masks but they would return to sob in the flowers.
Death is not mute. I hear the mourners’ song sealing the cracks of silence. I hear your sweet song bloom into my gray silence.

III
Death has restored to silence haunting its own prestigiousness. And I will not say my poem and I will have to say it. Even if the poem (here, now) has no meaning, has no destiny.

][][

SORTILEGIOS

Y las damas vestidas de rojo para mi dolor y con mi dolor insumidas en soplo, agazapadas como fetos de escorpiones en el lado más interno de mi nuca, las madres de rojo que me aspiran el único calor que me doy con mi corazón que apenas pudo nunca latir, a mi que siempre tuve que aprender sola cómo se hace para beber y comer y respirar y a mí que nadie me enseñó a llorar y nadie me enseñará ni siquiera las grandes damas adheridas a la entretela de mi respiración con babas rojizas y velos flotantes de sangre, mi sangre, la mía sola, la que yo me procuré y ahora vienen a beber de mí luego de haber matado al rey que flota en el río y mueve los ojos y sonríe pero está muerto y cuando alguien está muerto, muerto está por más que sonría y las grandes, las trágicas damas de rojo han matado al que se va río abajo y yo me quedo como rehén en perpetua posesión.

SORCERY

And the ladies dressed in red for my pain and with my pain consumed my breath, crouching like fetuses of scorpions on the hollow of my neck, the mothers in red who sucked the only heat in my barely beating heart, I always had to learn only how to drink and eat and breathe, I was never taught to cry and no one will teach me even the great ladies attached to the interlace of my breathing with reddish drool and floating veils of blood, my blood, mine alone, which I procured and now they come to drink after killing the king who floats in the river and moves his eyes and smiles but is dead and when someone is dead she is dead, regardless of all your smiles, and the tragic ladies in red have killed the one who floats downstream and I remain as a hostage in perpetual possession.

][][

-2-

UN SUEÑO DONDE EL SILENCIO ES DE ORO

El perro del invierno dentellea mi sonrisa. Fue en el puente. Yo estaba desnuda y llevaba un sombrero con flores y arrastraba mi cadáver también desnudo y con un sombrero de hojas secas.
He tenido muchos amores – dije – pero el más hermoso fue mi amor por los espejos.

A DREAM WHERE SILENCE IS GOLDEN

The winter dog opens my smile. On the bridge I was naked and wore a hat with flowers and dragged my naked corpse wearing a hat of dried leaves.
I’ve had many loves – I said – but the most beautiful one was my love for mirrors.

][][

TÊTE DE JEUNE FILLE (ODILON REDON)

de música la lluvia
de silencio los años
que pasan una noche
mi cuerpo nunca más
podrá recordarse.

a André Pieyre de Mandiargues

TÊTE DE JEUNE FILLE (ODILON REDON)

music like rain
of silence the years
who spend a night
my body will never again
remember.

for André Pieyre de Mandiargues

][][

RESCATE

Y es siempre el jardín de lilas del otro lado des río. Si el alma pregunta si queda lejos se le responderá: del otro lado del río, no éste sino aquél.

a Octavio Paz

RESCUE

And it’s always the garden of lilacs on the other side of the river. If the soul asks you if it is far away, you should answer: on the other side of the river, not this one but that one.

for Octavio Paz

][][

ESCRITO EN EL ESCORIAL

te llamo
igual que antaño la amiga al amigo
en pequeñas canciones
miedosas del alba

WRITTEN IN THE ESCORIAL [1]

I’ll call you
just like yesterday friend to friend
in little songs
fearful of the dawn

][][

EL SOL, EL POEMA

Barcos sobre el agua natal.
Agua negra, animal de olvido. Agua lila, única vigilia.
El misterio soleado de las voces en el parque. Oh tan antiguo.

THE SUN, THE POEM

Boats on natal water.
Black water, animal of forgetfulness. Lilac water, the only vigil.
The sun-baked mystery of the voices in the park. O how old this is.

][][

ESTAR

Vigilas desde este cuarto
donde la sombra temible es la tuya.

No hay silencio aquí
sino frases que evitas oír.

Signos en los muros
narran la bella lejanía.

(Haz que no muera
sin volver a verte)

TO BE

You watch from this room
where the fearsome shadow is yours.

There is no silence here
only phrases that you avoid hearing.

Signs on the walls
they tell of the beautiful distance.

(Don’t let me die
without seeing you again)

][][

LAS PROMESAS DE LA MÚSICA

Detrás de un muro blanco la variedad del arco iris. La muñeca en su jaula está haciendo el otoño. Es el despertar de las ofrendas. Un jardín recién creado, un llanto detrás de la música. Y que suene siempre, así nadie asistirá al movimiento del nacimiento, a la mímica de las ofrendas, al discurso de aquella que soy anudada a esta silenciosa que también soy. Y que de mí no quede más que la alegría de quien pidió entrar y le fue concedido. Es la música, es la muerte, lo que yo quise decir en noches variadas como los colores del bosque.

THE PROMISES OF MUSIC

Behind a white wall are the variations of the rainbow. The doll in her cage is crafting autumn. It is the start of the sacrifices. A new garden, a wail behind the music. And let it always sound, so that none will attend to the movement of birth, the imitation of the offerings, the speech of the woman that I am bound to, this silent thing that is also me. And see that nothing remains of me but the joy of those who were asked to enter and were granted. It’s music, it’s death, what I wanted to say on nights varied like the colors of the forest.

][][

INMINENCIA

Y el muelle gris y las casas rojas. Y no es aún la soledad Y los ojos ven un cuadrado negro con un círculo de música lila en su centro Y el jardín de las delicias sólo existe fuera de los jardines Y la soledad es no poder decirla Y el muelle gris y las casas rojas.

IMMINENCE

And the gray dock and the red houses. And it is not even loneliness And the eyes see a black square with a circle of lilac music in its center And the garden of delights only exists outside the gardens And loneliness is not being able to say it And the gray dock and the red houses.

][][

CONTINUIDAD

No nombrar las cosas por sus nombres. Las cosas tiene bordes dentados, vegetación lujuriosa. Pero quién habla en la habitación llena de ojos. Quién dentellea con una boca de papel. Nombres que vienen, sombras con máscaras. Cúrame del vacío – dije. (La luz se amaba en mi oscuridad. Supe que no había cuando me encontré diciendo: soy yo.) Cúrame – dije.

CONTINUITY

Do not name things by their names. Things have jagged edges, lush vegetation. But who shall speak in the room full of eyes? Who starts with a paper mouth? Names that come, shadows with masks. Cure me with emptiness, I said. (The light was loved in my darkness. I knew there was nothing when I found myself saying: it’s me.) Cure me, I said.

][][

ADIOSES DEL VERANO

Suave rumor de la maleza creciendo. Sonidos de lo que destruye el viento. Llegan a mí como si yo fuera el corazón de lo que existe. Quisiera estar muerta y entrar yo también en un corazón ajeno.

SUMMER FAREWELLS

Gentle rumor of growing weed. Sounds of what the wind destroys. They come to me as if I were the heart of all that exists. I would like to be dead and also enter into someone else’s heart.

][][

COMO AGUA SOBRE UNA PIEDRA

a quien retorna en busca de su antiguo buscar
la noche se le cierra como agua sobre una piedra
como aire sobre un pájaro
como se cierran dos cuerpos al amarse

LIKE WATER UPON A STONE

to the one who returns searching for her old search
the night closes like water upon a stone
like air around a bird
or like two bodies clasping on to each other in love

][][

EN UN OTOÑO ANTIGUO

¿Cómo se llama el nombre?
Un color como un ataúd, una transparencia que no atravesarás.
¿Y cómo es posible no saber tanto?

a Marie-Jeanne Noirot

IN A FAR-FLUNG AUTUMN

What is the name of the name?
A color like a coffin, a transparency that you will not go through.
And how is it possible not to know so much?

for Marie-Jeanne Noirot

][][

-3-

CAMINOS DEL ESPEJO

I
Y sobre todo mirar con inocencia. Como si no pasara nada, lo cual es cierto.

II
Pero a ti quiero mirarte hasta que tu rostro se aleje de mi miedo como un pájaro del borde filoso de la noche.

III
Como una niña de tiza rosada en un muro muy vieja súbitamente borrada por la lluvia.

IV
Como cuando se abre una flor y revela el corazón que no tiene.

V
Todos los gestos de mi cuerpo y de mi voz para hacer de mí la ofrenda, el ramo que abandona el viento en el umbral.

VI
Cubre la memoria de tu cara con la máscara de la que serás y asusta a la niña que fuiste.

VII
La noche de los dos se dispersó con la niebla. Es la estación de los alimentos fríos.

VIII
Y la sed, mi memoria es de la sed, yo abajo, en el fondo, en el pozo, yo bebía, yo recuerdo.

IX
Caer como un animal herido en el lugar que iba a ser de revelaciones.

X
Como quien no quiere la cosa. Ninguna cosa. Boca cosida. Párpados cosidos. Me olvidé. Adentro el viento. Todo cerrado y el viento adentro.

XI
Al negro sol del silencio las palabras se doraban.

XII
Pero el silencio es cierto. Por eso escribo. Estoy sola y escribo. No, no estoy sola. Hay alguien aquí que tiembla.

XIII
Aún si digo sol y luna y estrella me refiero a cosas que me suceden.
¿Y qué deseaba yo?
Deseaba un silencio perfecto.
Por eso hablo.

XIV
La noche tiene la forma de un grito de lobo.

XV
Delicia de perderse en la imagen presentida. Yo me levanté de mi cadáver, yo fui en busca de quien soy. Peregrina de mí, he ido hacia la que duerme en un país al viento.

XVI
Algo caía en el silencio. Mi última palabra fue yo pero me refería al alba luminosa.

XVII
Mi caída sin fin a mi caída sin fin en donde nadie me aguardó pues al mirar quien me aguardaba no vi otra cosa que a mí misma.

XVIII
Flores amarillas constelan un círculo de tela azul. El agua tiembla llena de viento.

XIX
Deslumbramiento del día, pájaros amarillos en la mañana. Una mano desata tinieblas, una mano arrastra la cabellera de una ahogada que no cesa de pasar por el espejo. Volver a la memoria del cuerpo, he de volver a mis huesos en duelo, he de comprender lo que dice mi voz.

ROUTES OF THE MIRROR

I
And, above all, look innocently. Like nothing happened, which is true.

II
But I want to look at you until your face fades away from my fear, like a bird on the sharp edge of the night.

III
Like a girl in pink chalk on a very old wall suddenly erased by the rain.

IV
Like when a flower opens and revealing the heart that it does not have.

V
All the gestures of my body and my voice to make of me the offering, the bouquet left by the wind on the threshold.

VI
Cover the memory of your face with the mask that you will become and scare the girl that you were.

VII
The night for them dispersed with the fog. It is the season of cold foods.

VIII
And thirst, my memory is of thirst, deep down in me, in the well, I drank, I remember.

IX
Fall like a wounded animal in the place that was going to be safe for revelations.

X
Like someone who does not want a thing. Not a thing. Mouth sewn shut. Eyelids stitched closed. I forgot myself. Inside the wind. It all closed and the wind inside.

XI
To the black sun of silence the words were golden.

XII
But the silence is true. That’s why I write. I’m alone and I write. No, I’m not alone. There is someone here who trembles.

XIII
Even if I say sun and moon and star, I mean things that happen to me.
And what did I want?
I wanted perfect silence.
That’s why I speak.

XIV
The night has the shape of a wolf’s cry.

XV
You sense the delight of getting lost in the image. I rose up from my corpse, I went in search of who I am. The female pilgrim of me, I have gone to the one that sleeps in a country of the wind.

XVI
Falling endless into my endless fall where no one waited for me, where I looked to see who was looking for me and saw no one but myself.

XVII
Something fell into silence. My last word was «I» but I was referring to the luminous dawn.

XVIII
Yellow flower constellations draw a circle of blue earth. The water trembles full of wind.

XIX
Dazzle of day break, yellow birds in the morning. A hand releases darkness, a hand drags the hair of a drowned woman who crosses endlessly through the mirror. Back to the memory of the body, I have to return to my bones in mourning, I have to understand what my voice says.

][][

-4-

EXTRACCIÓN DE LA PIEDRA DE LOCURA
Elles, les ámes (…), sont malades et elles souffrent et nul ne leur
porte-reméde; elles sont blessées et brisées et nul ne les panse.
Ruysbroeck

La luz mala se ha avecinado y nada es cierto. Y si pienso en todo lo que leí acerca del espíritu… Cerré los ojos, vi cuerpos luminosos que giraban en la niebla, en el lugar de las ambiguas vecindades. No temas, nada te sobrevendrá, ya no hay violadores de tumbas. El silencio, el silencio siempre, las monedas de oro del sueño.

Hablo como en mí se habla. No mi voz obstinada en parecer una voz humana sino la otra que atestigua que no he cesado de morar en el bosque.

Si vieras a la que sin ti duerme en un jardín en ruinas en la memoria. Allí yo, ebria de mil muertes, hablo de mí conmigo sólo por saber si es verdad que estoy debajo de la hierba. No sé los nombres. ¿A quién le dirás que no sabes? Te deseas otra. La otra que eres se desea otra. ¿Qué pasa en la verde alameda? Pasa que no es verde y ni siquiera hay una alameda. Y ahora juegas a ser esclava para ocultar tu corona ¿otorgada por quién? ¿quién te ha ungido? ¿quién te ha consagrado? El invisible pueblo de la memoria más vieja. Perdida por propio designio, has renunciado a tu reino por las cenizas. Quien te hace doler te recuerda antiguos homenajes. No obstante, lloras funestamente y evocas tu locura y hasta quisieras extraerla de ti como si fuese una piedra a ella, tu solo privilegio. En un muro blanco dibujas las alegorías del reposo, y es siempre una reina loca que yace bajo la luna sobre la triste hierba del viejo jardín. Pero no hables de los jardines, no hables de la luna no hables de la rosa, no hables del mar. Habla de lo que sabes. Habla de lo que vibra en tu médula y hace luces y sombras en tu mirada, habla del dolor incesante de tus huesos, habla del vértigo, habla de tu respiración, de tu desolación, de tu traición. Es tan oscuro, tan en silencio el proceso a que me obligo. Oh habla del silencio.

De repente poseída por un funesto presentimiento de un viento negro que impide respirar, busqué el recuerdo de alguna alegría que me sirviera de escudo, o de arma de defensa, o aun de ataque. Parecía el Eclesiastés: busqué en todas mis memorias y nada, nada debajo de la aurora de dedos negros. Mi oficio (también en el sueño lo ejerzo) es conjurar y exorcizar. A qué hora empezó la desgracia? No quiero saber. No quiero más que un silencio para mí y las que fui, un silencio como la pequeña choza que encuentran en el bosque los niños perdidos. Y qué sé yo qué ha de ser de mí si nada rima con nada.

Te despeñas. Es el sinfín desesperante, igual y no obstante contrario a la noche de los cuerpos donde apenas un manantial cesa aparece otro que reanuda el fin de las aguas.

Sin el perdón de las aguas no puedo vivir. Sin el mármol final del cielo no puedo morir.

En ti es de noche. Pronto asistirás al animoso encabritarse del animal que eres. Corazón de la noche, habla.

Haberse muerto en quien se era y en quien se amaba, haberse y no haberse dado vuelta como un cielo tormentoso y celeste al mismo tiempo.

Hubiese querido más que esto y a la vez nada.

Va y viene diciéndose solo en solitario vaivén. Un perderse gota a gota el sentido de los días. Señuelos de conceptos. Trampas de vocales. La razón me muestra la salida del escenario donde levantaron una iglesia bajo la lluvia: la mujer-loba deposita a su vástago en el umbral y huye. Hay una luz tristísima de cirios acechados por un soplo maligno. Llora la niña loba. Ningún dormido la oye. Todas las pestes y las plagas para los que duermen en paz.

Esta voz ávida venida de antiguos plañidos. Ingenuamente existes, te disfrazas de pequeña asesina, te das miedo frente al espejo. Hundirme en la tierra y que la tierra se cierre sobre mí. Éxtasis innoble. Tú sabes que te han humillado hasta cuando te mostraban el sol. Tú sabes que nunca sabrás defenderte, que sólo deseas presentarles el trofeo, quiero decir tu cadáver, y que se lo coman y se lo beban.

Las moradas del consuelo, la consagración de la inocencia, la alegría inadjetivable del cuerpo.

Si de pronto una pintura se anima y el niño florentino que miras ardientemente extiende una mano y te invita a permanecer a su lado en la terrible dicha de ser un objeto a mirar y admirar. No (dije), para ser dos hay que ser distintos. Yo estoy fuera del marco pero el modo de ofrendarse es el mismo.

Briznas, muñecos sin cabeza, yo me llamo, yo me llamo toda la noche. Y en mi sueño un carromato de circo lleno de corsarios muertos en sus ataúdes. Un momento antes, con bellísimos atavíos y parches negros en el ojo, los capitanes saltaban de un bergantín a otro como olas, hermosos como soles.

De manera que soñé capitanes y ataúdes de colores deliciosos y ahora tengo miedo a causa de todas las cosas que guardo, no un cofre de piratas, no un tesoro bien enterrado, sino cuantas cosas en movimiento, cuantas pequeñas figuras azules y doradas gesticulan y danzan (pero decir no dicen), y luego está el espacio negro -déjate caer, déjate caer-, umbral de la más alta inocencia o tal vez tan sólo de la locura. Comprendo mi miedo a una rebelión de las pequeñas figuras azules y doradas. Alma partida, alma compartida, he vagado y errado tanto para fundar uniones con el niño pintado en tanto que objeto a contemplar, y no obstante, luego de analizar los colores y las formas, me encontré haciendo el amor con un muchacho viviente en el mismo momento que el del cuadro se desnudaba y me poseía detrás de mis párpados cerrados.

Sonríe y yo soy una minúscula marioneta rosa con un paraguas celeste yo entro por su sonrisa yo hago mi casita en su lengua yo habito en la palma de su mano cierra sus dedos un polvo dorado un poco de sangre adiós oh adiós.

Como una voz no lejos de la noche arde el fuego más exacto. Sin piel ni huesos andan los animales por el bosque hecho cenizas. Una vez el canto de un solo pájaro te había aproximado al calor más agudo. Mares y diademas, mares y serpientes. Por favor, mira cómo la pequeña calavera de perro suspendida del cielo raso pintado de azul se balancea con hojas secas que tiemblan en torno de ella. Grietas y agujeros en mi persona escapada de un incendio. Escribir es buscar en el tumulto de los quemados el hueso del brazo que corresponda al hueso de la pierna. Miserable mixtura. Yo restauro, yo reconstruyo, yo ando así de rodeada de muerte. Y es sin gracia, sin aureola, sin tregua. Y esa voz, esa elegía a una causa primera: un grito, un soplo, un respirar entre dioses. Yo relato mi víspera, ¿Y qué puedes tú? Sales de tu guarida y no entiendes. Vuelves a ella y ya no importa entender o no. Vuelves a salir y no entiendes. No hay por donde respirar y tú hablas del soplo de los dioses.

No me hables del sol porque me moriría. Llévame como a una princesita ciega, como cuando lenta y cuidadosamente se hace el otoño en un jardín.

Vendrás a mí con tu voz apenas coloreada por un acento que me hará evocar una puerta abierta, con la sombra de un pájaro de bello nombre, con lo que esa sombra deja en la memoria, con lo que permanece cuando avientan las cenizas de una joven muerta, con los trazos que duran en la hoja después de haber borrado un dibujo que representaba una casa, un árbol, el sol y un animal.

Si no vino es porque no vino. Es como hacer el otoño. Nada esperabas de su venida. Todo lo esperabas. Vida de tu sombra ¿qué quieres? Un transcurrir de fiesta delirante, un lenguaje sin límites, un naufragio en tus propias aguas, oh avara.

Cada hora, cada día, yo quisiera no tener que hablar. Figuras de cera los otros y sobre todo yo, que soy más otra que ellos. Nada pretendo en este poema si no es desanudar mi garganta.

Rápido, tu voz más oculta. Se transmuta, te transmite. Tanto que hacer y yo me deshago. Te excomulgan de ti. Sufro, luego no sé. En el sueño el rey moría de amor por mí. Aquí, pequeña mendiga, te inmunizan. (Y aún tienes cara de niña; varios años más y no les caerás en gracia ni a los perros.)

mi cuerpo se abría al conocimiento de mi estar
y de mi ser confusos y difusos
mi cuerpo vibraba y respiraba
según un canto ahora olvidado
yo no era aún la fugitiva de la música
yo sabía el lugar del tiempo
y el tiempo del lugar
en el amor yo me abría
y ritmaba los viejos gestos de la amante
heredera de la visión
de un jardín prohibido

La que soñó, la que fue soñada. Paisajes prodigiosos para la infancia más fiel. A falta de eso -que no es mucho-, la voz que injuria tiene razón.

La tenebrosa luminosidad de los sueños ahogados. Agua dolorosa.

El sueño demasiado tarde, los caballos blancos demasiado tarde, el haberme ido con una melodía demasiado tarde. La melodía pulsaba mi corazón y yo lloré la pérdida de mi único bien, alguien me vio llorando en el sueño y yo expliqué (dentro de lo posible), mediante palabras simples (dentro de lo posible), palabras buenas y seguras (dentro de lo posible). Me adueñé de mi persona, la arranqué del hermoso delirio, la anonadé a fin de serenar el terror que alguien tenía a que me muriera en su casa.

¿Y yo? ¿A cuántos he salvado yo?

El haberme prosternado ante el sufrimiento de los demás, el haberme acallado en honor de los demás.

Retrocedía mi roja violencia elemental. El sexo a flor de corazón, la vía del éxtasis entre las piernas. Mi violencia de vientos rojos y de vientos negros. Las verdaderas fiestas tienen lugar en el cuerpo y en los sueños.

Puertas del corazón, perro apaleado, veo un templo, tiemblo, ¿qué pasa? No pasa. Yo presentía una escritura total. El animal palpitaba en mis brazos con rumores de órganos vivos, calor, corazón, respiración, todo musical y silencioso al mismo tiempo. ¿Qué significa traducirse en palabras? Y los proyectos de perfección a largo plazo; medir cada día la probable elevación de mi espíritu, la desaparición de mis faltas gramaticales. Mi sueño es un sueño sin alternativas y quiero morir al pie de la letra del lugar común que asegura que morir es soñar. La luz, el vino prohibido, los vértigos, ¿para quién escribes? Ruinas de un templo olvidado. Si celebrar fuera posible.

Visión enlutada, desgarrada, de un jardín con estatuas rotas. Al filo de la madrugada los huesos te dolían. Tú te desgarras. Te lo prevengo y te lo previne. Tú te desarmas. Te lo digo, te lo dije. Tú te desnudas. Te desposees. Te desunes. Te lo predije. De pronto se deshizo: ningún nacimiento. Te llevas, te sobrellevas. Solamente tú sabes de este ritmo quebrantado. Ahora tus despojos, recogerlos uno a uno, gran hastío, en dónde dejarlos. De haberla tenido cerca, hubiese vendido mi alma a cambio de invisibilizarme. Ebria de mí, de la música, de los poemas, por qué no dije del agujero de ausencia. En un himno harapiento rodaba el llanto por mi cara. ¿Y por qué no dicen algo? ¿Y para qué este gran silencio?

EXTRACTING THE STONE OF MADNESS
They, the souls …, are crazy and suffer and nothing brings them a remedy; they are injured and broken and nothing comforts them.
Jean de Ruysbroeck [2]

The bad light has come and nothing is true. And if I think about everything that I ‘ve read about the spirit … when I closed my eyes, I saw luminous bodies that turned in the fog, in the place of evasive communities. Do not fear this, nothing will happen to you, there are no more corpse snatchers. The silence, always silence, the golden coins of the dream.

I speak as I speak. Not my voice intent in mimicking human speech but the other one that testifies that I am still a beast of the forest.

If only you saw the one who sleeps in a garden, in ruins, in memory without you. There I, drunk with a thousand deaths, talked about me to me, curious if it’s true that I lay under the grass. I do not know their names. Who will you tell that you do not know? You wish that you were someone else. Your other self wishes you were another. What happened in that green orchard? It happens that it isn’t green, there isn’t even an orchard. And now you hide your crown by acting like a slave. Who gave you that? Who anointed you? Who consecrated you? The invisible people of the oldest memory. Lost by your own design, you have renounced your kingdom for ashes. The one who hurts you the most reminds you of all your old homages. Even now you cry unhappily and evoke your madness and even want to extract it, cut it out from you, that which remains like privilege or a stone. On a white wall you draw the allegory of repose and she is always a mad queen who lies under the moon on the sad grass of the old garden. But do not talk about the gardens, do not talk about the moon, do not talk about the rose, do not talk about the sea. Talk about what you know. Talk about what vibrates in your marrow and lights and shadows in your eyes, speaks of the incessant pain of your bones, speaks of vertigo, speaks of your breathing, your desolation, your betrayal. It is so dark, so silent this process that forces me. O speak of silence.

Suddenly possessed I’m filled with fatal foreboding of a black wind that prevents breathing. I sought-after the memory of joy that would shield me, like armor or a weapon, or even attack. I looked like the Ecclesiastes: I searched in all my memories and nothing, nothing under the sun’s black fingers. My trade (also in sleep) is to conjure and exorcise. When did this shame begin? I don’t want to know. All I want is silence for myself and the other selves I once was, a silence like the little hut that the lost children find in fairyland forests. And what will become of me if nothing rhymes with anything?

You fall. This endless despair, flowing with the current and against it to the night of the bodies where scarcely a spring dries up when another resumes its path.

Without the forgiveness of water I cannot live. Without the marble tomb of heaven closing I cannot die.

It’s nighttime inside you. Soon you will witness the animal that you are rearing up. Heart of the night, speak.

To have died in the one you were and the one you once loved, to turn and not turn, like a sky that is both stormy and celestial.

I would have loved more than this and I would have loved nothing.

She comes and goes, she calls herself as she swings alone. A lost sense of the days fall drop by drop. Lures of concepts. Vowel traps. Reason shows me a path away from the spot where they raised a church in the rain: the wolf-woman deposits her cubs on the threshold and flees. Mournful candle light is stalked by a cancerous breeze. The wolf-girl cries. None who sleep hears her. May all the plagues plague those who sleep in peace.

This impatient voice of mine comes from old lamentations. Naively you exist, you dress up as a little assassin, frightening yourself in front of the mirror. To sink into the earth while the earth to closes up around me. Ignoble ecstasy. You know they humiliated you until they showed you the sun. You know that you will never know how to defend yourself, that you only want to present the trophy, I mean your corpse, so that they will eat it, so that they will drink it.

Consolation’s home, the consecration of innocence, the unadjectival joy of the body.

What if suddenly a painting comes alive and the ardent Florentine child extends a hand and invites you to remain by his side in the terrible joy of being an object gazed at and admired? No (I said), to be separate you have to be different. I am outside this framework but the way of offering ourselves is the same.

Leaves of grass, headless dolls, I call for my name, I call for myself all night long. And in my dream there is a circus wagon full of dead corsairs in their coffins. A moment before, with beautiful trappings and black eye-patches, the pirate captains jumped from one sailing ship to another like waves, like beautiful suns.

So I dreamed captains and delicious coffins of colors and now I am afraid of all the things that I keep inside, not pirate booty, not well buried treasure, not all the many things set in motion, how many small blue and gold statuettes gesticulate and dance (but they are mute), and then there is the black space—you shall fall and fall—through the threshold of your greatest innocence or perhaps only through madness. I understand my fear is a revolt of these little blue and gold statuettes. A departed soul, a shared soul, I have wandered and missed so much in order to start a union with the Florentine, to be painted as an object to contemplate, and yet, after analyzing the colors and forms, I found myself making love with a living boy even as the painted man stripped me naked and dragged me behind my closed eyelids.

He smiles and I am a tiny pink puppet with a celestial umbrella I enter his smile I build my little house on his tongue I live in the palm of his hand closing his fingers on golden powder, a bit of blood, goodbye O goodbye.

Like a voice not far from the night, this is how the most exact fire burns. Without skin and bones, the animals roams through the ashes of the burnt forest. Once the song of a single bird had brought you thrilling heat. Seas and diadems, seas and snakes. Please, watch how the little dog skull is suspended from the blue-painted sky swings with dry trembling leaves. Cracks and holes in my flesh escaped from a fire. To write is to look for the charred bone of the arm that corresponds to the burnt bone of the leg among the tumult of a great fire. Miserable mixture that I restore, that I reconstruct, I am surrounded by death. Without grace, without halo, without truce. And that voice, that elegy to a first creator: a shout, a breath, there is breathing among the gods. I say my evening prayers. And what about you? You rise out of your lair and you do not understand. You return and it does not matter whether you understand or not. There is no breathe and yet you speak of breathing gods.

If you talk about the sun I shall die. Lead me like a little blind princess, slowly and carefully, like autumn falling in a garden.

You will come to me with your voice tinged with a vague accent that forces me to evoke an open door, with the shadow of a beautiful named bird, with the remains of a shadow left in my memory, with what is left behind when they throw the ashes of a young woman dead to the wind, with the strokes pressed into the sheet of paper after erasing a house, a tree, a sun, an animal.

If he did not arrive it’s because he did not arrive. It’s like autumn arriving. You expect nothing from his arrival. You expect everything. Shadow of my life, what do you want? A delirious party, a language without limits, a shipwreck in your own waters, O so greedy.

Every hour, every day, I would like to not have to talk. Others are like wax figures, me especially, I am more other than the others. All I want from this poem is to clear my throat.

Quick, use your most hidden voice. It transmutes, it transmits to you. So much to do so I fall apart. They excommunicated you from yourself. I suffer, then I do not know. In dreams the king died of love for me. Here, little beggar, they’ll immunize you. (And you still have the face of a girl, but in several more years you won’t even be able to seduce dogs.)

my body opened to the knowledge of my being
and of being confused and diffuse
my body trembled and breathed
all to a song long forgotten
no fugitive of music
I knew the place of time
and the time of place
I opened myself up to love
and rhythms the old gestures of a mistress
inheritrix to the vision
of a forbidden garden

She who dreamed, she who was dreamed. Colossal landscapes for the most faithful of childhoods. In the absence of that -which is not much-, the voice that slanders is right.

The dark luminance of drowned dreams. Painful water.

To late to dream, too late for white horses, too late to leave behind a melody. The melody pulsed in my heart and I cried at the loss of my one good thing, someone saw me crying in the dream and I explained (as far as possible), using simple words (as far as possible), good, safe words (far as possible). I took possession of myself, I plucked her from her beautiful delirium, I annihilated her in order to calm the terror of someone who said that I’d die at home.

And me? How many have I saved?

I have prostrated myself before the suffering of others, I have silenced myself in honor of others.

My red elemental violence receded. Sex at the heart, the path of ecstasy between my legs. My violence of red winds and black winds. The real parties take place in the body and in dreams.

Doors of the heart, the beaten dog, I see a temple, I tremble. What happens? Nothing is happening. Once I detected a total writing. The animal throbbed in my arms with hints of living organs, of heat and heart and breathe, all musical, all silent at the same time. What does it mean to translate yourself into words? And the projects of long-term perfection? Every day you measure the probable elevation of my spirit, the disappearance of my grammatical errors. My dream is a dream without alternatives and I want to die at the foot of the letter of the law of the humdrum that says dying is the same as dreaming. Who do you write for? The light, the forbidden wine, the vertigo. Ruins of a forgotten temple. If only celebrating were possible.

Mourning a mangled visions of a garden with broken statues. Your bones hurt at the edge of dawn. You tear yourself open. I’m warning you and I warned you. Disarm. I’m telling you. I told you. You undress. You get laid. I predicted all this. Suddenly it breaks down: no birth. You take yourself and you overtake yourself. Only you know of this broken rhythm. Now for your booty, you pick them up one by one, this great boredom, where to leave them. Had I been closer I’d have sold my soul in exchange for invisibility. Drunk with myself, with music, with poems, with -why not just say it?- the hole in my emptiness. In a ragged anthem tears roll down my face. And why doesn’t someone say something? And what’s with this great silence?

EL SUEÑO DE LA MUERTE O EL LUGAR DE LOS CUERPOS POÉTICOS
Esta noche, dijo, desde el ocaso, me cubrían con una mortaja negra en un lecho de cedro. Me escanciaban vino azul mezclado con amargura. — El Cantar de las Huestes de Igor

Toda la noche escucho el llamamiento de la muerte, toda la noche escucho el canto de la muerte junto al río, toda la noche escucho la voz de la muerte que me llama.

Y tantos sueños unidos, tantas posesiones, tantas inmersiones, en mis posesiones de pequeña difunta en un jardín de ruinas y de lilas. Junto al río la muerte me llama. Desoladamente desgarrada en el corazón escucho el canto de la más pura alegría.

Y es verdad que he despertado en el lugar del amor porque al oír su canto dije: es el lugar del amor. Y es verdad que he despertado en el lugar del amor porque con una sonrisa de duelo yo oí su canto y me dije: es el lugar del amor (pero tembloroso pero fosforescente).

Y las danzas mecánicas de los muñecos antiguos y las desdichas heredadas y el agua veloz en círculos, por favor, no sientas miedo de decirlo: el agua veloz en círculos fugacísimos mientras en la orilla el gesto detenido de los brazos detenidos en un llamamiento al abrazo, en la nostalgia más pura, en el río, en la niebla, en el sol debilísimo filtrándose a través de la niebla.

Más desde adentro: el objeto sin nombre que nace y se pulveriza en el lugar en que el silencio pesa como barras de oro y el tiempo es un viento afilado que atraviesa una grieta y es esa su sola declaración. Hablo del lugar en que se hacen los cuerpos poéticos –como un cesta llena de cadáveres de niñas. Y es en ese lugar donde la muerte está sentada, viste un traje muy antiguo y pulsa un arpa en la orilla el río lúgubre, la muerte en un vestido rojo, la bella, la funesta, la espectral, la que toda la noche pulsó un arpa hasta que me adormecí dentro del sueño.

La muerte es una palabra.

La palabra es una cosa, la muerte es una cosa, es un cuerpo poético que alienta en el lugar de mi nacimiento.

Nunca de este modo lograrás circundarlo. Habla, pero sobre el escenario de cenizas; habla, pero desde el fondo del río donde está la muerte cantando. Y la muerte es ella, me lo dijo el sueño, me lo dijo la canción de la reina. La muerte de cabellos del color del cuervo, vestida de rojo, blandiendo en sus manos funestas un laúd y huesos de pájaro para golpear en mi tumba, se alejó cantando y contemplada de atrás parecía una vieja mendiga y los niños le arrojaban piedras.

Cantaba en la mañana de niebla apenas filtrada por el sol, la mañana del nacimiento, y yo caminaría con una antorcha en la mano por todos los desiertos de ete mundo y aún muerta te seguiría buscando, amor mío perdido, y el canto de la muerte se desplegó en el término de una sola mañana, y cantaba, y cantaba.

También cantó en la vieja taberna cercana del puerto. Había un payaso adolescente y yo le dije que en mis poemas la muerte era mi amante y amante era la muerte y él dijo: tus poemas dicen la justa verdad. Yo tenía dieciséis años y no tenía otro remedio que buscar el amor absoluto. Y fue en la taberna del puerto que cantó la canción.

Escribo con los ojos cerrados, escribo con los ojos abiertos: que se desmorone el muro, que se vuelva río el muro.

La muerte azul, la muerte verde, la muerte roja, la muerte lila, en las visiones del nacimiento.

El traje azul y plata fosforescente de la plañidera en la noche medieval de toda muerte mía.

La muerte está cantando junto al río.

Y fue en la taberna del puerto que cantó la canción de la muerte.

Me voy a morir, me dijo, me voy a morir.

Al alba venid, buen amigo, al alba venid.

Nos hemos reconocido, nos hemos desaparecido, amigo el que yo más quería.

Yo, asistiendo a mi nacimiento. Yo, a mi muerte.

Y yo caminaría por todos los desiertos de este mundo y aún muerta te seguiría buscando, a ti, que fuiste el lugar del amor.

][][

DREAM OF DEATH OR THE PLACE OF THE POETIC BODIES
“Tonight, he said, from sunset, they covered me with a black shroud and set me on a cedar bed. They poured blue wine mixed with bitterness over me.” — The Song of the Hosts of Igor

All night long I hear the call of death, all night long I listen to the song of death by the river, all night long I hear the voice of death calling me.

So many dreams brought together, so many possessions, so many plunges, in my possessed dead little girl left in a garden of ruin and lilacs. By the river death calls out to me. Desolate and torn, in my heart I hear the song of the purest joy.

And it is true that I have awakened in this place of love because, when I heard its song, I said: this is the place of love. And it is true that I have awakened in the place of love because, with a smile in mourning, I heard their song and I said to myself: this is the place of love (trembling, phosphorescent).

And the mechanical dances of ancient dolls and all the inherited misfortunes and the rushing water going in circles, please, don’t feel afraid to say it: the rushing water going in short circles while on the shore the frozen gesture of the stopped arms in an embrace, in the purest of nostalgias, in the river, in the fog, in the weak sun filtering through the fog.

More from within: the unnamed object that is born and ground into small-grains in the spot where silence weighs as heavy as gold bars and time is a sharp wind that crosses a crack and that is its only statement. I speak of the place where the poetic bodies are made — like a handbasket full of little girls’ corpses. And that is where death sits, dressed in a very old suit, playing a harp on the shore the gloomy river, death in a red dress, the beautiful one, the dismal one, the ghostly one, the one that played the harp all night until I fell asleep inside my own dream.

Death is a word.

The word is one thing, death is also a thing, a poetic body that strength from the place of my birth.

You’ll never be able to surround it. It speaks, but only on a stage of ashes; it speaks, but only from the bottom of the river where death is singing. And death is her, the dream told me, the queen’s song told me. The death of hair the color of crow, dressed in red, brandishing in her menacing hands a lute and bird bones to beat on my grave. She walked away singing, looking like an old beggar while children threw stones at her.

I sang in a foggy morning unfiltered by the sun, the morning of birth, and I walked with a torch in my hand through all the deserts of this world and even dead I would still continue to search for you, my lost love. Let the song of death blossom out within a single morning and she sang, she sang.

She also sang in the old tavern near the wharf. I found a teenage clown there and I told him that in my poems death was my lover and my lover was death and he said: your poems speak truth. I was sixteen and had no choice but to seek out absolute love. And it was in the harbor tavern where she sang her song.

I write with my eyes closed, I write with my eyes open: that the wall crumbles, that the wall becomes a river.

Visions of birth: blue death, green death, red death, lilac death.

Blue and silver phosphorescent suits of the mourners on the medieval night of each of my deaths.

Death is singing by the river.

And it was in the harbor tavern that she sang her song of death.

I’m going to die, she said, I’m going to die.

At dawn, please come, my good friend, at dawn come.

We have recognized ourselves, we have disappeared, I and the friend that I most wanted.

Me, attending my own birth. Me, at my own death.

And I would’ve walked through all the deserts of this world, even if I were dead, looking for you, you who were the place of love.

][][

NOCHE COMPARTIDA EN EL RECUERDO DE UNA HUIDA

Golpes en la tumba. Al filo de las palabras golpes en la tumba. Quién vive, dije. Yo dije quién vive. Y hasta cuándo esta intromisión de lo externo de lo interno, o de lo menos interno de lo interno, que se va tejiendo como un manto de arpillera sobre mi pobreza indecible. No fue el sueño, no fue la vigilia, no fue el crimen, no fue el nacimiento: solamente el golpear como un pesado cuchillo sobre la tumba de mi amigo. Y lo absurdo de mi costado derecho, lo absurdo de un sauce inclinado hacia la derecha sobre un río, mi brazo derecho, mi hombro derecho, mi oreja derecha, mi desposesión. Desviarme hacia mi muchacha izquierda —manchas azules en mi palma izquierda, misteriosas manchas azules—, mi zona de silencio virgen, mi lugar de reposo en donde me estoy esperando. No aún es demasiado desconocida, aún no sé reconocer estos sonidos nuevos que están iniciando un canto de queja diferente del mío que es un canto de quemada, que es un canto de niña perdida en una silenciosa ciudad en ruinas.

¿Y cuántos centenares de años hace que estoy muerta y te amo?

Escucho mis voces, los coros de los muertos. Atrapada entre las rocas: empotrada en la hendidura de una roca. No soy yo la hablante: es el viento que me hace aletear para que yo crea que estos cánticos del azar que se formulan por obra del movimiento son palabras venidas de mí.

Y esto fue cuando empecé a morirme, cuando golpearon en los cimientos y me recordé. Suenan las trompetas de la muerte. el cortejo de muñecas de corazones de espejo con mis ojos azul—verdes reflejados en cada uno de los corazones .

Imitas viejos gestos heredados. Las damas de antaño cantaban entre muros leprosos, escuchaban trompetas de la muerte, miraban desfilar —ellas, las imaginadas— un cortejo imaginario de muñecas con corazones de espejo y en cada corazón mis ojos de pájara de papel dorado embestida por el viento. La imaginada pajarita cree cantar; en verdad sólo murmura como un sauce inclinado sobre el río.

Muñequita de papel, yo la recorté en papel celeste, verde, rojo, y se quedó en el suelo, en el máximo de la carencia de relieves y de dimensiones. En medio del camino te incrustaron, figurita errante, estás en el medio del camino y nadie te distingue pues no te diferencias del suelo aun si a veces gritas, pero hay tantas cosas que gritan en un camino ¿por qué irían a ver qué significa esa mancha verde, celeste, roja?

Si fuertemente, a sangre y fuego, se graban mis imágenes, sin sonidos, sin colores, ni siquiera lo blanco. Si se intensifica el rastro de los animales nocturnos en las inscripciones de mis huesos. Si me afinco en el lugar del recuerdo como una criatura se atiene a la saliente de una montaña y al más pequeño movimiento hecho de olvido cae —hablo de lo irremediable, pido lo irremediable—, el cuerpo desatado y los huesos desparramados en el silencio de la nieve traidora. Proyectada hacia el regreso, cúbreme con una mortaja lila. Y luego cántame una canción de una ternura sin precedentes, una canción que no diga de la vida ni de la muerte sino de gestos levísimos como el más imperceptible ademán de aquiescencia , una canción que sea menos que una canción, una canción como un dibujo que representa una pequeña casa debajo de un sol al que le faltan algunos rayos; allí ha de poder vivir la muñequita de papel verde, celeste y rojo; allí se ha de poder erguir y tal vez andar en su casita dibujada sobre una página en blanco.

SHARED NIGHT IN MEMORY OF RUNNING AWAY

Beating on the grave. On the edge of language they are beating on the grave. Who is it? I asked. I asked who is it. And how longer will this intrusion of external into internal go? or the less internal into the internal, woven like a burlap veil over my unspeakable poverty. It was not the dream, it was not the vigil, it was not the crime, it was not the birth: it was only fist-beatings, like a heavy knife piercing the grave of a friend. And the absurdity of my right side, the absurdity of a willow leaning to the right over a river, my right arm, my right shoulder, my right ear, my dispossession. To deviate towards my left girl — blue blotches on my left palm, mysterious blue blotches — my region of virgin silence, my resting place where I am waiting for myself. Is she still too unknown yet? I still do not know how to recognize these new sounds that begin as a song of objection different from mine own, which is a burnt song, which is a song of a girl lost in a silent city of ruins.

And how many hundreds of years have gone by since I died and I loved you?

I listen to my voices, the choruses of the dead. Trapped between the rocks: embedded in the cleft of a rock. I am not the speaker: it is the wind that makes me flutter so that I believe that this chorus of chance was formulated by the movement of words that came out of me.

And this was when I started to die, when they struck these foundations and I recalled myself. Death’s trumpets can be heard. The courtship of dolls with mirror-hearts stare with my blue eyes — green reflected in each one of the hearts.

Imitate these old-worn, familial gestures. The ladies of old sang among the leper’s wall while listening to death’s trumpets, while watching the procession — they, the imagined ones — an imaginary procession of dolls with mirror-hearts and in each heart stared my golden paper eyes slouching in the wind. This imagined little bird believes she can sing; in truth she just murmurs like a willow leaning over a river.

Paper doll, I cut her from green, red, blue paper as she remained on the floor, at the edge of relief and dimensions. In the middle of the road they buried you, little traveler, you are in the middle of the road and nobody knows you because you do not differentiate yourself from the ground even if sometimes you scream, but there are so many things that scream. Why would anyone come to gaze on a green blotch, a light blue blotch, a red blotch?

If you squeeze them, even the blood and fire, all my images leave traces in the air, without sounds, without colors, not even white. If the traces of nocturnal animals are intensified, are inscribed on my bones — if I root in the place of memory as a creature rooted to the ledge of a mountain and whose smallest movement will make oblivion falls — I speak of the irremediable, I ask for the irremediable — the body unleashed and the bones scattered in silence upon the traitorous snow. Look ahead for my return, cover me with a purple shroud. And then sing me a song of an unprecedented tenderness, a song that does not mention life or death but only of the slightest of gestures, of the most imperceptible of agreements, a song that is less than a song, a song that is a drawing of a small house under a sun that is missing some of its rays; that is where the green and red and light blue doll might live. Perhaps she will stand up and perhaps she will walk into her little house, the one drawn on a blank sheet of paper.

NOTES:
[1] The Escorial is a vast royal building complex located in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, near Madrid.
[2] One of the Flemish mystics of the medieval Catholic Church.

pizarnik’s ‘los trabajos y las noches’

27 Sunday Jan 2019

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, Spanish, Translation

≈ Comments Off on pizarnik’s ‘los trabajos y las noches’

Tags

Alejandra Pizarnik, i love this so much, LOS TRABAJOS Y LAS NOCHES, poems, Poetry, Spanish translation

-1-

][][

POEMA

Tú eliges el lugar de la herida
en donde hablamos nuestro silencio.
Tú haces de mi vida
esta ceremonia demasiado pura.

POEM

You choose the place for the wound
where we once spoke our silence
You turned my life into
this immaculate ceremony.

][][

REVELACIONES

En la noche a tu lado
las palabras son claves, son llaves.
El deseo de morir es rey.

Que tu cuerpo sea siempre
un amado espacio de revelaciones.

REVELATIONS

In the night by your side
words are codes, are keys.
The desire to die is king.

I want your body to always be
a beloved space of revelations.

][][

EN TU ANIVERSARIO

Recibe este rostro mío, mudo, mendigo.
Recibe este amor que te pido.
Recibe lo que hay en mí que eres tú.

ON YOUR ANNIVERSARY

Take this face of mine, a mute, a beggar.
Take this love that I request from you.
Take from me that which is within me, which is you.

][][

DESTRUCCIONES
…en besos, no en razones — Quevedo

Del combate con las palabras ocúltame
y apaga el furor de mi cuerpo elemental.

DESTRUCTION
in kisses, not in reasons — Quevedo

Hide me from words that battle within me
and douse the fury of my elemental body.

][][

AMANTES

una flor
no lejos de la noche
mi cuerpo mudo
se abre
a la delicada urgencia del rocío

LOVERS

a flower
not far from the night
my silent body
parts open
to the delicate urgency of the dew

][][

QUIEN ALUMBRA

Cuando me miras
mis ojos son llaves,
el muro tiene secretos,
mi temor palabras, poemas.
Sólo tú haces de mi memoria
una viajera fascinada,
un fuego incesante.

WHO ILLUMINATES

When you look at me
my eyes are the keys
the wall has secrets
my fears are words, poems.
Only you make my memory
into a fascinated traveler,
a ceaseless fire

][][

RECONOCIMIENTO

Tú haces el silencio de las lilas que aletean
en mi tragedia del viento del corazón.
Tú hiciste de mi vida un cuento para niños
en donde naufragios y muertes
son pretextos de ceremonias adorables.

RECOGNITION

You make the silence of lilacs fluttering
into the tragedy of the wind in my heart.
You made my life into a story for children
where shipwrecks and deaths
are excuses for adorable ceremonies.

][][

PRESENCIA

tu voz
en este no poder salirse las cosas
de mi mirada
ellas me desposeen
hacen de mí un barco sobre un río de piedras
si no es tu voz
lluvia sola en mi silencio de fiebres
tú me desatas los ojos
y por favor
que me hables
siempre

PRESENCE

your voice
in what couldn’t escape
my stare
in things stripped from me
if it isn’t your voice
make me a boat upon a river of stones
a solitary rain in my feverish silence
you unleash my eyes
and please
keep talking to me
forever

][][

ENCUENTRO

Alguien entra en el silencio y me abandona.
Ahora la soledad no está sola.
Tú hablas como la noche.
Te anuncias como la sed.

ENCOUNTER

Someone enters the silence and abandons me.
Now solitude is not alone.
You speak as the night.
You announce yourself as thirst.

][][

DURACIÓN

De aquí partió en la negra noche
y su cuerpo hubo de morar en este cuarto
en donde sollozos, pasos peligrosos
de quien no viene, pero hay su presencia
amarrada a este lecho en donde sollozos
porque un rostro llama,
engarzado en lo oscuro,
piedra preciosa.

DURATION

From here she went into the dark night
and her body was to dwell in this room
where sobs, dangerous footsteps
won’t come, but here her presence
is tied to this bed where my sobs,
because a face called,
set in the dark,
gemstone.

][][

TU VOZ

Emboscado en mi escritura
cantas en mi poema.
Rehén de tu dulce voz
Petrificada en mi memoria.
Pájaro asido a su fuga.
Aire tatuado por un ausente.
Reloj que late conmigo
para que nunca despierte.

YOUR VOICE

Ambushes me in my writing
you are singing in my poem.
I am hostage to your sweet voice
frozen in my memory.
The bird’s attempt to escape.
The air tattooed by absence.
The clock that beats with me
so that I will never wake up.

][][

EL OLVIDO

en la otra orilla de la noche
el amor es posible

-llévame –

llévame entre las dulces sustancias
que mueren cada día en tu memoria

OBLIVION

on the other side of night
love is possible

– take me –

take me from these sweet substances
that die every day in your memory
][][

LOS PASOS PERDIDOS

Antes fue una luz
en mi lenguaje nacido
a pocos pasos del amor.

Noche abierta. Noche presencia.

LOST STEPS

Before it was light
in my language born
a few steps from love.

The open night. The night presence.

][][

DONDE CIRCUNDA LO ÁVIDO

Cuando sí venga mis ojos brillarán
de la luz de quien yo lloro
mas ahora alienta un rumor de fuga
en el corazón de toda cosa.

WHERE AVID CIRCLES

When it does come my eyes will shine
with the light of the one of whom I mourn
but now hints at a rumor of flight
into the heart of everything.

][][

NOMBRARTE

No el poema de tu ausencia,
sólo un dibujo, una grieta en un muro,
algo en el viento, un sabor amargo.

NAMING YOU

Not a poem about your absence,
just a quick sketch, a crack in the wall
something lost in the wind, a bitter taste.

][][

DESPEDIDA

Mata su luz un fuego abandonado.
Sube su canto un pájaro enamorado.
Tantas criaturas ávidas en su silencio
y esta pequeña lluvia que me acompaña.

FAREWELL

The abandoned fire kills its own light.
Her song rises from a bird in love.
So many avid creatures in my silence
and this small rain that accompanies me.

][][

LOS TRABAJOS Y LAS NOCHES

para reconocer en la sed mi emblema
para significar el único sueño
para no sustentarme nunca de nuevo en el amor

he sido toda ofrenda
un puro errar
de loba en el bosque
en la noche de los cuerpos

para decir la palabra inocente

WORKS AND NIGHTS

to recognize that thirst is my symbol
that the only dream means
I’ll never fill myself with love again

I’ve been nothing but a sacrifice
pure, wandering
the wolf of the forest
into the bodies of the night

for saying the innocent word

][][

SENTIDO DE SU AUSENCIA

si yo me atrevo
a mirar y a decir
es por su sombra
unida tan suave
a mi nombre
allá lejos
en la lluvia
en mi memoria
por su rostro
que ardiendo en mi poema
dispersa hermosamente
un perfume
a amado rostro desaparecido

A SENSE OF ABSENCE

if I dare
to look and speak
it is because her shadow
joined so softly
to my name
far away
in the rain
in my memory
her face
burning in my poem
scattered beautifully
perfume of
a beloved face missing

][][

-2.-

VERDE PARAÍSO

extraña que fui
cuando vecina de lejanas luces
atesoraba palabras muy puras
para crear nuevos silencios

GREEN PARADISE

stranger I’d become
as a neighbor of distant lights
I treasured the purest words
for crafting new silences

][][

INFANCIA

hora en que la yerba crece
en la memoria del caballo.
El viento pronuncia discursos ingenuos
en honor de las lilas,
y alguien entra en la muerte
con los ojos abiertos
como Alicia en el país de lo ya visto.

CHILDREN

Hour when the grass grows
in the memory of the horse.
The wind gives naive speeches
in honor of the lilacs,
and someone enters death
open-eyed
just like Alice in Wonderland once did.

][][

ANTES
a Eva Durrell

bosque musical

los pájaros dibujaban en mis ojos
pequeñas jaulas

BEFORE
for Eve Durrell

musical forest

birds sketched in my eyes
small cages

][][

-3-

ANILLOS DE CENIZA
a Cristina Campo

Son mis voces cantando
para que no canten ellos,
los amordazados grismente en el alba,
los vestidos de pájaro desolado en la lluvia.

Hay, en la espera,
un rumor a lila rompiéndose.
Y hay, cuando viene el día,
una partición del sol en pequeños soles negros.
Y cuando es de noche, siempre,
una tribu de palabras mutiladas
busca asilo en mi garganta,
para que no cante ellos,
los funestos, los dueños del silencio.

ASH RING
for Cristina Campo

They are my voices singing
so others cannot
gagged grayness of dawn
desolate birds dressed in the rain.

There, waiting,
a rumor of shattering lilacs.
And there, when day comes,
a division in the sun of tiny black suns.
And when it is the night always
a tribe of mutilated words
seeking asylum in my throat,
I will not sing to them,
the dismal, the owners of silence.

][][

MADRUGADA

Desnudo soñando una noche solar.
He yacido días animales.
El viento y la lluvia me borraron
como a un fuego, como a un poema
escrito en un muro.

DAWN

Dreaming naked into a solar night.
I have lain with day-like animals.
Wind and rain erased me
like a fire, like a poem
written on a wall.

][][

RELOJ

Dama pequeñísima
moradora en el corazón de un pájaro
sale al alba a pronunciar una sílaba:
NO

CLOCK

Tiny lady
dweller in the heart of a bird
you rise at dawn to utter your syllable:
NO

][][

EN UN LUGAR PARA HUIRSE

Espacio. Gran espera.
Nadie viene. Esta sombra.

Darle lo que todos:
significaciones sombrías,
no asombradas.

Espacio. Silencio ardiente.
¿Qué se dan entre sí las sombras?

IN A PLACE TO FLEE THE SELF

Space. The long wait.
No one comes. This shadow.

Give what everyone gives:
bleak meanings
that do not amaze.

Space. Burning silence.
What do shadows give each other?

][][

FRONTERAS INÚTILES

un lugar
no digo un espacio
hablo de
qué
hablo de lo que no es
hablo de lo que conozco
no el tiempo
sólo todos los instantes
no el amor
no
sí
no
un lugar de ausencia
un hilo de miserable unión

USELESS BORDERS

a place
do not say a space
talk about
what
talk about what is not
I speak of what I know

no time
only the instants
not love
no
yes
no

a place of absence
a miserable binding thread

][][

EL CORAZÓN DE LO QUE EXISTE

no me entregues
tristísima medianoche,
al impuro mediodía blanco

THE HEART THAT EXISTS

do not deliver me,
sad midnight
to unclean white noon

][][

LAS GRANDES PALABRAS
a Antonio Porchia

aún no es ahora
ahora es nunca

aún no es ahora
ahora y siempre
es nunca

BIG WORDS
for Antonio Porchia

not yet now
now is never

not yet now
now and forever
is never

][][

SILENCIOS

La muerte siempre al lado.
Escucho su decir.
Sólo me oigo.

SILENCES

Death is always at my side.
I listen to what it says.
I hear only myself.

][][

PIDO EL SILENCIO
canta, lastimada mía — Cervantes

aunque es tarde, es noche,
y tú no puedes.

Canta como si no pasara nada.

Nada pasa.

I ASK FOR SILENCE
sing, my hurt — Cervantes.

although it is late, it is night
and you cannot.

Sing as if nothing had happened.

Nothing happens.

][][

CAER

Nunca de nuevo la esperanza
en un ir y venir
de nombres, de figuras.
Alguien soñó muy mal,
alguien consumió por error
las distancias olvidadas.

FALLING

Never again this hope
of going back and forth
with names, with figures.
Someone dreamed very badly,
someone consumed this by mistake
all these forgotten distances.

][][

FIESTA

He desplegado mi orfandad
sobre la mesa, como un mapa.
Dibujé el itinerario
hacia mi lugar al viento.
Los que llegan no me encuentran.
Los que espero no existen.

Y he bebido licores furiosos
para transmutar los rostros
en un ángel, en vasos vacíos.

PARTY

I spread out my orphan self
upon the table like a map.
I drew the route
to my home in the wind.
Those who come do not find me.
Those that I hope for do not exist.

And I drank furious liquor
to transform their faces
to an angel, to empty cups.

][][

LOS OJOS ABIERTOS

Alguien mide sollozando
la extensión del alba.
Alguien apuñala la almohada
en busca de su imposible
lugar de reposo.

THE EYES OPEN

Someone’s measured sobbing
is just the extension of dawn.
Someone stabs her pillow
to make it impossible to
find a resting place.

][][

CUARTO SOLO

Si te atreves a sorprender
la verdad de esta vieja pared;
y sus fisuras, desgarraduras,
formando rostros, esfinges,
manos, clepsidras,
seguramente vendrá
una presencia para tu sed,
probablemente partirá
esta ausencia que te bebe.

ROOM ALONE

If you dare to surprise
the truth out of this old wall;
and its cracks, its gashes,
forming faces, sphinxes,
hands, water clocks,
a presence for your thirst
will surely come,
this absence that you drink
very well might leave.

][][

LA VERDAD DE ESTA VIEJA PARED

que es frío es verde que también se mueve
llama jadea grazna es halo es hielo
hilos vibran tiemblan
hilos

es verde estoy muriendo
es muro es mero muro es mudo mira muere

TRUTH OF THIS OLD WALL

that it’s cold it’s green that it moves as well
it pants it calls out it croaks it’s halo is ice
threads tremble shake
threads

it’s green I’m dying
it’s a wall, it’s a mere wall, it’s mute, it looks, it dies

][][

HISTORIA ANTIGUA

En la medianoche
vienen los vigías infantiles
y vienen las sombras que ya tienen nombre
y vienen los perdonadores
de lo que cometieron mil rostros míos
en la ínfima desgarradura de cada jornada.

OLD HISTORY

At midnight
the juvinile watchmen come
and shadows that already have a name
and the ones who forgive
what my thousand faces had committed
in the tiny gash of each day.

][][

INVOCACIONES

Insiste en tu abrazo,
redobla tu furia,
crea un espacio de injurias
entre yo y el espejo,
crea un canto de leprosa
entre yo y la que me creo.

INVOCATIONS

Insist on your embrace,
redouble your fury,
create a space for insults
between me and the mirror,
create a song of leprosy
between me and what I think I am.

][][

DESMEMORIA

Aunque la voz (su olvido
volcándome náufragas que son yo)
oficia en un jardín petrificado

recuerdo con todas mis vidas
porqué olvido.

FORGETFULNESS

Although the voice (her forgetfulness
washes up shipwrecked in my changed selves)
judging over a petrified garden

I remember all my lives
why I forget

][][

UN ABANDONO

Un abandono en suspenso.
Nadie es visible sobre la tierra.
Sólo la música de la sangre
asegura residencia
en un lugar tan abierto.

ABANDONMENT

Abandonment in suspense.
No one is visible on earth.
Only the music of the blood
can insure residence
in such an open place.

][][

FORMAS

no sé si pájaro o jaula
o amazona jadeando en la gran garganta oscura
mano asesina
o joven muerta entre cirios
o silenciosa
pero tal vez oral como una fuente
tal vez juglar
o princesa en la torre más alta

FORMS

I do not know if it is bird or cage
an assassin’s hand
a dead girl among candles
an Amazon gasping in her vast deep throat
or silent
but perhaps it speaks like a fountain
perhaps as a troubadour
a princess in the highest tower.

][][

COMUNICACIONES

El viento me había comido
parte de la cara y las manos.
Me llamaban ángel harapiento.
Yo esperaba.

COMMUNICATIONS

The wind had eaten
parts of my face and hands.
They called me a tattered angel.
I lay in wait.

][][

MEMORIA
a Jorge Gaitán Durán

Arpa de silencio
en donde anida el miedo.
Gemido lunar de las cosas
significando ausencia.

Espacio de color cerrado.
Alguien golpea y arma
un ataúd para la hora,
otro ataúd para la luz.

MEMORY
for Jorge Gaitán Durán

Harp of silence
where fear nests.
Moaning of lunar things
that stand in for absence.

Space of closed color.
Someone nails and puts together
a coffin for the hours,
another coffin for the light.

][][

SOMBRA DE LOS DÍAS A VENIR
a Ivonne A. Bordelois

Mañana
me vestirán con cenizas al alba,
me llenarán la boca de flores.
Aprenderé a dormir
en la memoria de un muro,
en la respiración
de un animal que sueña.

SHADOW OF THE DAYS TO COME
for Ivonne A. Bordelois

Morning
they will dress me with ashes at dawn,
they will fill my mouth with flowers.
I will learn to sleep
in the memory of a wall,
in breathing
of an animal that dreams.

][][

DEL OTRO LADO

Años y minutos hacen el amor.
Máscaras verdes bajo la lluvia.
Iglesia de vitrales obscenos.
Huella azul en la pared.

No conozco.
No reconozco.
Oscuro. Silencio.

THE OTHER SIDE

Years and minutes make love.
Green masks hang in the rain.
The church’s stained glass is obscene.
Blue finger marks on the wall.

I do not know it.
I do not recognize it.
Dark. Silence.

][][

CREPÚSCULO

La sombra cubre pétalos mirados
El viento se lleva el último gesto de una hoja
El mar ajeno y doblemente mudo
en el verano que apiada por sus luces

Un deseo de aquí
Una memoria de allá

TWILIGHT

The shadow covers cautious petals
The wind carries the last gesture of leaves
The twice-silent and alien sea
in the summer that is pitied by other lights

A desire from here
A memory of there

][][

MORADAS
a Théodore Fraenkel

En la mano crispada de un muerto,
en la memoria de un loco,
en la tristeza de un niño,
en la mano que busca el vaso,
en el vaso inalcanzable,
en la sed de siempre.

MANSIONS
for Théodore Fraenkel

In the clenched hand of the dead,
the memory of a madman,
the sadness of a child,
the hand that gropes for a glass,
the unattainable cup,
the thirst that lasts forever.

][][

MENDIGA VOZ

Y aún me atrevo a amar
el sonido de la luz en una hora muerta,
el color del tiempo en un muro abandonado.

En mi mirada lo he perdido todo.
Es tan lejos pedir. Tan cerca saber que no hay.

BEGGING VOICE

And still I dare to love
the sound of light in the dead hour,
the color of time abandoned on the wall.

In my eyes I’ve lost everything.
It’s so far away to ask. So close to know what is not.

pizarnik’s árbol de diana/ diana’s tree

25 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, Spanish, Translation

≈ Comments Off on pizarnik’s árbol de diana/ diana’s tree

Tags

Alejandra Pizarnik, Árbol de Diana, Diana's Tree, poem, Poetry, Spanish translation

1.
He dado el salto de mí al alba,
he dejado mi cuerpo junto a la luz
y he cantado la tristeza de lo que nace.

I have leaped from myself into the dawn,
I have left my body next to the light
and sung the sadness of what is born.

2.
Éstas son las versiones que nos propone:
un agujero, una pared que tiembla …

These are the versions proposed:
a hole, a shaking wall …

3.
sólo la sed
el silencio
ningún encuentro
cuídate de mí amor mío
cuídate de la silenciosa en el desierto
de la viajera con el vaso vacío
y de la sombra de su sombra

only thirst
silence
no chance encounter
be careful of me, my love
be careful of the silent one in the desert
of the traveler with the empty glass
and the shadow of her shadow

4.
AHORA BIEN:
Quién dejará de hundir su mano en busca delbvtributo para la pequeña olvidada. El frío pagará. Pagará el viento. La lluvia pagará. Pagará el trueno.

WELL NOW:
Who will stop plunging her hand in searching for the tributes for the forgotten girl? The cold will pay. The wind will pay. As will the rain. And the thunder.

5.
por un minuto de vida breve
única de ojos abiertos
por un minuto de ver
en el cerebro flores pequeñas
danzando como palabras en la boca de un mundo

just for a moment in this short life
to be the one with open eyes
for just a minute to witness
small flowers in the brain
dancing like words in the mouth of a world

6.
ella se desnuda en el paraíso
de su memoria
ella desconoce el feroz destino
de sus visiones
ella tiene miedo de no saber nombrar
lo que no existe

she strips naked in the paradise
of her memory
she does not know the cruel destiny
of her visions
she is afraid of not knowing how to name
what does not exist

7.
Salta con la camisa en llamas
De estrella a estrella.
De sombra en sombra.
Muere de muerte lejana
La que ama al viento.

She jumps with her shirt on fire
From star to star.
From shadow to shadow.
She dies a distant death
She who loves the wind.

8.
Memoria iluminada, galería donde vaga la sombra de lo que espero.
No es verdad que vendrá. No es verdad que no vendrá.

Illuminated memory, gallery where the shadow of what I wait for wanders.
It’s not true that it’ll come. It is not true that it won’t.

9.
Estos huesos brillando en la noche,
estas palabras como piedras preciosas
en la garganta viva de un pájaro petrificado,
este verde muy amado,
esta lila caliente,
este corazón sólo misterioso.

These bones glowing in the night,
these words like precious stones
in the living throat of a petrified bird,
this beloved green,
this hot lilac,
this mysterious heart.

10.
un viento débil
lleno de rostros doblados
que recorto en forma de objetos que amar

a weak wind
full of bent faces
that I slice into objects to love

11.
ahora
en esta hora inocente
yo y la que fui nos sentamos
en el umbral de mi mirada

now
in this innocent hour
the one I once was sits with me
on the threshold of my gaze

12.
no más las dulces metamorfosis de una niña de seda
sonámbula en la cornisa de niebla
su despertar de mano respirando
de flor que se abre al viento

no more the sweet metamorphoses of a silk girl
sleepwalker on the edge of fog
her breathing hand awakening like a flower
that blooms in the wind

13.
explicar con palabras de este mundo
que partió de mí un barco llevándome

explain with words from this world
that a boat left my self carrying me away

14.
El poema que no digo,
el que no merezco.
Miedo de ser dos
camino del espejo:
alguien en mí dormido
me come y me bebe

The poem that I do not say,
the one that I do not deserve.
Fear of being two
the way of the mirror:
someone asleep inside me
she eats me and drinks me

15.
Extraño desacostumbrarme
de la hora en que nací.
Extraño no ejercer más
oficio de recién llegada.

I miss getting used to
to the time when I was born.
I miss not having to work anymore
as a new arrival.

16.
has construido tu casa
has emplumado tus pájaros
has golpeado al viento
con tus propios huesos
has terminado sola
lo que nadie comenzó

you have built your house
you have feathered your birds
you’ve hit the wind
with your own bones
alone you finished
what no one began

17.
Días en que una palabra lejana se apodera de mí. Voy por esos días sonámbula y transparente. La hermosa autómata se canta, se encanta, se cuenta casos y cosas: nido de hilos rígidos donde me danzo y me lloro en mis numerosos funerales. (Ella es su espejo incendiado, su espera en hogueras frías, su elemento místico, su fornicación de nombres creciendo solos en la noche pálida.)

Days when a distant word seizes me. I pass through those days sleepwalking and transparent. The beautiful automaton sings to herself, it is loved, tells herself things and stories: a nest of rigid threads where I dance and cry in my numerous funerals. (She is her own burning mirror, she wait for cold fires, her mystical element, she fucks with the names that grow alone in the pale night.)

18.
como un poema enterado
del silencio de las cosas
hablas para no verme

like a poem aware of
the silence of things
you talk so as not to see me

19.
cuando vea los ojos
que tengo en los míos tatuados

when you see the eyes
I’ve tattooed on mine

20.
dice que no sabe del miedo de la muerte del amor
dice que tiene miedo de la muerte del amor
dice que el amor es muerte es miedo
dice que la muerte es miedo es amor
dice que no sabe

she says she doesn’t know about fear of death of love
says she is afraid of death of love
says that love is death is fear
says that death is fear is love
she says that she does not know

21.
he nacido tanto
y doblemente sufrido
en la memoria de aquí y allá

I’ve been born so often
and doubly suffering
in the memory of here and there

22.
en la noche
un espejo para la pequeña muerta
un espejo de cenizas

at night
a mirror for the little dead girl
a mirror of ashes

23.
una mirada desde la alcantarilla
puede ser la visión del mundo
la rebelión consiste en mirar una rosa
hasta pulverizarse los ojos

a view from the gutter
a vision of the world
resistance consists of looking at a rose
until your eyes become dust

24.
(un dibujo de Wols)
estos hilos aprisionan a las sombras
y las obligan a rendir cuentas del silencio
estos hilos unen la mirada al sollozo

(a drawing by Wols)
these threads imprison the shadows
and force them to account for silence
these threads unite your gaze with their sob

25.
(exposición Goya)
un agujero en la noche
súbitamente invadido por un ángel

(Goya exhibition)
a hole in the night
suddenly invaded by an angel

26.
(un dibujo de Klee)
cuando el palacio de la noche
encienda su hermosura
pulsaremos los espejos
hasta que nuestros rostros canten como ídolos

(a drawing by Klee)
when the night palace
blazes with beauty
we’ll bring together the mirrors
until our faces sing like idols

27.
un golpe del alba en las flores
me abandona ebria de nada y de luz lila
ebria de inmovilidad y de certeza

dawn ricocheting off flowers
leaving me drunk on nothing and on violet
drunk with languor and certainty

28.
te alejas de los nombres
que hilan el silencio de las cosas

you flee from the names
that spin the silence of things

29
Aquí vivimos con una mano en la garganta. Que nada es posible ya lo sabían los que inventaban lluvias y tejían palabras con el tormento de la ausencia. Por eso en sus plegarias había un sonido de manos enamoradas de la niebla.

Here we live with a hand to our throat. That nothing is possible the inventors of rain knew this and wove their words into the torment of absence. This is why in her prayers sound like hands in love with the fog.

30
en el invierno fabuloso
la endecha de las alas en la lluvia
en la memoria del agua dedos de niebla

in the fabulous winter
the lament of the wings in the rain
in the memory of water in fingers of fog

31
Es un cerrar de ojos y jurar no abrirlos. En tanto afuera se alimenten de relojes y de flores nacidas de la astucia. Pero con los ojos cerrados de un sufrimiento en verdad demasiado grande pulsamos los espejos hasta que las palabras olvidadas suenan mágicamente.

It means close your eyes and swear not to open them as strangers outside feed on the watches and flowers born from your cunning. But with the closed eyes, with vast suffering, we must tempt the mirrors until all their forgotten words sound magical.

32
Zona de plagas donde la dormida come
lentamente
su corazón de medianoche.

Plague zone where a sleeping woman
slowly eats
her midnight heart.

33
alguna vez
alguna vez tal vez
me iré sin quedarme
me iré como quien se va

one day
someday maybe
I will go without staying
I’ll go like one who’s leaving

34
la pequeña viajera
moría explicando su muerte
sabios animales nostálgicos
visitaban su cuerpo caliente

the little traveler
died explaining her death
while wise nostalgic animals
visited her body, still warm

35
Vida, mi vida, déjate caer, déjate doler, mi vida, déjate enlazar de fuego, de silencio ingenuo, de piedras verdes en la casa de la noche, déjate caer y doler, mi vida.

Life, my life, let yourself fall, let yourself hurt, my life, let yourself bond with fire, with naive silence, with green stones in the house of the night, let yourself fall and hurt, my life.

36
en la jaula del tiempo
la dormida mira sus ojos solos
el viento le trae
la tenue respuesta de las hojas

in the time cage
the sleeping woman looks at her lonely eyes
the wind brings
the leave’s distant answer

37
más allá de cualquier zona prohibida
hay un es pejo para nuestra triste transparencia

beyond every forbidden area
lies a mirror for our sad transparency

38
Este canto arrepentido, vigía detrás de mis poemas:
este canto me desmiente, me amordaza.

This repentant song, peering out from behind my poems:
this song negates me, it silences me.

][][

NOTES:
22.
I know Pizarnik is talking about a little dead girl, but I can’t help wondering if, “la pequeña muerta,” is also similar to the French, “la petite morte,” the little death, the orgasm. I like to think that Pizarnik would be happy with either translation.

marjorie agosín’s “peces”

08 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, Spanish, Translation

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Marjorie Agosín, Peces, poem, Poetry, Spanish translation, ZJC

Saludo a los peces del mar
respetando su milenaria
genealogía,
sus danzas fugaces y suaves,
los colores que delatan
otros colores,
sus colas iridiscentes
parecidas a los cristales
de las adivinanzas.

Brindo un vaso
de agua
por todos los peces
todavia libres
por su elegante sangre fria
y sus simetrias perfectas.

][][

I greet the fish of the sea
respecting their ancient
tribes,
their fleeting and smooth dances,
colors that reveal
other colors
their iridescent tails
like a fortune teller’s
crystal ball.

I drink a glass
water
for all fish
still free
their elegant coolness
and perfect symmetries.

Marjorie Agosín, “Fish”
– translated by ZJC

garcia lorca’s sorpresa [por michael brown]

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenian, Poetry, Spanish, Translation

≈ Comments Off on garcia lorca’s sorpresa [por michael brown]

Tags

Federico Garcia Lorca, Ferguson, Michael Brown, Missouri, poem, Poetry, Sorpresa

… because even as I work on this translation another person has been shot by police in Ferguson, MO.  As Garcia Lorca said about an apathetic country when its children are murdered by their own police, “Nobody could look into his eyes staring up into the hard air.” I suppose this is the point where I say something cliché like, “I pray for peace,” when in reality the only way there will be peace is when those who have been hiding behind their “to serve and protect” badges are held accountable.

][

SORPRESA

— by Federico Garcia Lorca

Muerto se quedó en la calle con un puñal en el pecho.

No lo conocía nadie.

¡Cómo temblaba el farol!

¡Madre, cómo temblaba el farolito de la calle!

Era madrugada.

Nadie pudo asomarse a sus ojos abiertos al duro aire.

Que muerto se quedó en la calle que con un puñal en el pecho y que no lo conocía nadie.

][

[in English]

SURPRISE

Dead they left him in the street with a knife in his chest.

No one knew who he was.

How the lamppost trembled!

Mother! How the little lantern trembled!

It was early morning.

Nobody could look into his eyes staring up into the hard air.

And he was dead in the street with a knife in his chest, and no one knew who he was.

][

[in Armenian, transliteration]

ANAKNKAL

Merrats e, vor lk’yel e nran p’voghots’um danakov ir krtsk’avandaki.

Voch’ vok’ ch’giter, t’ye ov e na:

Vor lapterasyun vakhets’av!

Mayry! P’vok’r lamperi vakhets’av!

Da vagh arravotyan:

Voch’ vok’ ch’i karogh nayel nra ach’k’yeri mej ch’ap’azants’ ach’k’i ynknogh mej tsanr od:

Yev na merrats p’voghots’um danakov ir krtsk’avandaki, yev voch’ vok’ ch’giter, t’ye ov e ink’y:

][

[in Armenian]

ԱՆԱԿՆԿԱԼ

Մեռած է, որ լքել է նրան փողոցում դանակով իր կրծքավանդակի.

Ոչ ոք չգիտեր, թե ով է նա:

Որ լապտերասյուն վախեցավ!

Մայրը! Փոքր լամպերի վախեցավ!

Դա վաղ առավոտյան:

Ոչ ոք չի կարող նայել նրա աչքերի մեջ չափազանց աչքի ընկնող մեջ ծանր օդ:

Եւ նա մեռած փողոցում դանակով իր կրծքավանդակի, եւ ոչ ոք չգիտեր, թե ով է ինքը:

garcia lorca’s la guitarra [in english and armenian]

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Illustration and art, Poetry, Spanish, Translation

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Tags

Armenian translation, art, Federico Garcia Lorca, la guitarra, poem, Poetry

awesome

Note from the Translator:

I must apologize with my sorry attempts to bring a beautiful Spanish poem by Federico Garcia Lorca into both English (my mother tongue) and fantastic Armenian. I’ve been told on more than one occasion that both my grasp of Spanish and Armenian are comically pathetic, usually by native speakers, which is only fair. However, life is short and as far as I can tell there is nobody who lives near by to help in my translations, so I present these new labors, not because it is the best that you can find for free on the Internets but because it’s the best that I can do. You’ll find four versions here; the original Spanish, my English translation, and since not a lot of people can read pure, uncut Armenian, a transliteration version as well as the pure Heyeren. Hope it does not displease. Cheers!

][

LA GUITARRA

— Federico Garcia Lorca

Empieza el llanto de la guitarra.

Se rompen las copas de la madrugada.

Empieza el llanto de la guitarra.

Es inútil callarla.

Es imposible callarla.

Llora monótona como llora el agua, como llora el viento sobre la nevada.

Es imposible callarla.

Llora por cosas lejanas.

Arena del Sur caliente que pide camelias blancas.

Llora flecha sin blanco, la tarde sin mañana, y el primer pájaro muerto sobre la rama.

¡Oh guitarra!

Corazón malherido por cinco espadas.

][

[in English]

THE GUITAR

The crying of the guitar begins.

The glasses of dawn are broken.

The crying of the guitar begins.

It is useless to stop her.

It is impossible to stop her.

She weeps endlessly, as water weeps, as the wind weeps over the snow.

It is impossible to stop her.

She weeps for things remote.

The hot southern sands yearning for a white camellia.

A weeping arrow without target, evening without morning, and the first dead bird on the branch.

Ai, guitar!

Heart wounded by five knives.

][

[in Armenian, transliteration]

KIT’ARR

Sksvum e kit’arri lats’y.

Skahakner ein arravotyan kotrel.

Sksvum e kit’arri lats’y.

Anogut e lrrets’nel ayn.

Anhnar e lrrets’nel ayn.

Da lats’ e linum anverj, ayn lats’ e linum jri pes, ayn lats’ e linum nman k’amu nkatmamb dzyan.

Kit’arry artasvum e baneri hamar herravor.

T’yezh haravayin avazner klk’i spitak kamelianeri.

Lats’ e linum mez slak’y arrants’ npatakayin yerekoyan, arrants’ arravotyan, yev arrajin mahats’ats t’rrch’ni masnachyughi.

Ai, kit’arr!

Sirty mahats’u viravorvats e hing danakner.

][

[in Armenian] 

ԿԻԹԱՌ

Սկսվում է կիթառի լացը:

Սկահակներ էին առավոտյան կոտրել:

Սկսվում է կիթառի լացը:

Անօգուտ է լռեցնել այն:

Անհնար է լռեցնել այն:

Դա լաց է լինում անվերջ, այն լաց է լինում ջրի պես, այն լաց է լինում նման քամու նկատմամբ ձյան:

Կիթառը արտասվում է բաների համար հեռավոր:

Թեժ հարավային ավազներ կլքի սպիտակ կամելիաների:

Լաց է լինում մեզ սլաքը առանց նպատակային երեկոյան, առանց առավոտյան, եւ առաջին մահացած թռչնի մասնաճյուղի:

Օ, կիթառ!

Սիրտը մահացու վիրավորված է հինգ դանակներ:

ballad of black dread, by federico garcia lorca

28 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, Spanish, Translation

≈ Comments Off on ballad of black dread, by federico garcia lorca

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ballad of black dread, Federico Garcia Lorca, poem, romance de la pena negra, Spanish translation

Frenetic axes of cocks
digging in search of the dawn
when down from the dark foothills
comes Soledad Montoya.
Yellow copper of her flesh
smelling of horses and murk.
Smoky anvils of her breasts,
wailing out rounded songs.
“Soledad, who are you calling for,
all alone, at this hour?”
“Do not worry who it is,
what is this to you, anyway?
I want whatever I want,
my body and my joy.”
“Soledad, dreadful one,
the stallion that runs free
finds at last the sea
only to be swallowed by the waves.”
“Do not speak to me of the sea,
for the black dread surges out
from the land of the olive tree,
under the rustling of its leaves.”
“Soledad, what anguish you have
what horrendous pain!
You wail lemon juice,
bitter from the lips with longing.”
“Ai, what anguish! I drift
around my house,
from kitchen to bedroom,
my braids undone, on the floor.
Ai, what terror! My clothes
and flesh are fading into black.
Ai, my linen nightgowns!
Ai, my poppy thighs!”
“Soledad, wash your body
in skylark water.
Let peace into your heart,
Soledad Montoya.”

Downhill the river sings:
mantle of leaves and sky.
The new light is crowned
in wild pumpkin flowers.
Ai, the pain! Pain of the gypsies,
clean pain from a hidden stream
and from the endless dawn!

—- translation by ZJC

][][

romance de la pena negra

Las piquetas de los gallos
cavan buscando la aurora,
cuando por el monte oscuro
baja Soledad Montoya.
Cobre amarillo, su carne,
huele a caballo y a sombra.
Yunques ahumados sus pechos,
gimen canciones redondas.
Soledad, ¿por quién preguntas
sin compaña y a estas horas?
Pregunte por quien pregunte,
dime: ¿a ti qué se te importa?
Vengo a buscar lo que busco,
mi alegría y mi persona.
Soledad de mis pesares,
caballo que se desboca,
al fin encuentra la mar
y se lo tragan las olas.
No me recuerdes el mar,
que la pena negra, brota
en las tierras de aceituna
bajo el rumor de las hojas.
¡Soledad, qué pena tienes!
¡Qué pena tan lastimosa!
Lloras zumo de limón
agrio de espera y de boca.
¡Qué pena tan grande! Corro
mi casa como una loca,
mis dos trenzas por el suelo,
de la cocina a la alcoba.
¡Qué pena! Me estoy poniendo
de azabache carne y ropa.
¡Ay, mis camisas de hilo!
¡Ay, mis muslos de amapola!
Soledad: lava tu cuerpo
con agua de las alondras,
y deja tu corazón
en paz, Soledad Montoya.

Por abajo canta el río:
volante de cielo y hojas.
Con flores de calabaza,
la nueva luz se corona.
¡Oh pena de los gitanos!
Pena limpia y siempre sola.
¡Oh pena de cauce oculto
y madrugada remota!

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