Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology (38 page)

in Cazorla I saw you a spring;

today, dying in Sanlúcar.

A gushing of clear water

under a green pine

you were: how keen your chime!

Like myself, close to the sea,

river of brackish mud, do you

dream of your source’s clarity?

Charles Tomlinson, 1962

A n t on io M ac h a d o
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Ga br iel a M istr a l
(1889–1957)

Th

e Death Sonnets

I

From the cold niche where they laid you down to rest,

to the sunny, humble earth I’ll let you go.

I too must sleep there, though they have not guessed

we’ll dream on the same pillow down below.

I’ll lower you into the sun-warmed ground

as a mother gently lays a child to sleep,

and the earth, become a cradle soft as down,

shall wrap your hurt child’s body safe and deep.

Th

en I shall sprinkle earth, and dust of roses,

and in the moonlight’s fl oating azure mist

the slight remains of you will lie alone.

I’ll boast, victorious, as one who now supposes

in such a secret depth no other fi st

will wrestle with me for a single bone!

II

Th

is long fatigue will grow until one day

soul tells the body that it can no more

bear its great weight along the fl owery way

where men pursue the life they settle for . . .

You’ll sense they’re digging near you, with great strength:

a new sleeper for your quiet neighborhood.

I’ll wait until they’ve covered all my length . . .

and then take up our talk again, for good!

You’ll know, then, why your fl esh cannot mature

toward the deep boneyard that awaits it yet;

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you had to go, unwearied, there to lie.

New light will show, where fate resides obscure,

how, to unite us two, the stars were met,

then, when our great pact failed, you had to die . . .

III

Evil hands seized his life the very hour

when, drawn by stars, he left behind his source,

snowy with lilies. In joy he came to fl ower.

Evil hands ruined and entered him by force . . .

And I said to the Lord, “To deadly lands

ignorant guides have borne my dearest shade!

Wrest him away, Lord, from those fatal hands,

or he sinks to the deep sleep that you have made!

I cannot call, or follow where he goes!

His ship obeys dark storm winds from above.

Back to my arms, or you take him in full bloom.”

His life’s vessel detained, fresh as a rose . . .

You say I have no pity, feel no love?

You know it, Lord, who will pronounce my doom!

Close to Me

Little fi ber from my body

that I spun so tenderly,

little fi ber cold and trembling,

fall asleep here, close to me!

In the clover sleeps the partridge,

hears it stirring in the breeze:

let my breathing not disturb you,

fall asleep here, close to me!

G a br i e l a M i s t r a l
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Tender shoot still all aquiver

and amazed simply to be,

do not leave my breast that holds you:

fall asleep here, close to me!

I who’ve lost my every treasure

tremble now before I sleep.

Do not slip from my embracing:

fall asleep here, close to me!

Rhina P. Espaillat, 2011

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Jorge Guillén
(1893–1984)

Th

e Nymphs

Th

ey seek, high and alone,

that brilliance of a sun

which would prefer them pure.

And, glory, the level garden

will elevate the new

perfection of its morning.

Now the heights are heavens,

populous with light,

without edge or penumbra.

Th

e splendor springs again

as though a form akin

to its own hope in-dwelling.

Further: the fl esh, in greater

reality, ascends

thus naked, unto fortune.

Time unto Time, or Th

e Garden

All the garden is off ered to the glance.

A casual lord who reigns, who so admires,

I stare, and from the palace I prevail.

If gift s from the largess of nature fl ow,

Only the slope of this ravine defi es,

Changeless, such austerity of beauty.

By certain boxwood trees that tempt the touch,

Two fountains as a pair of myths direct

Th

e garden and my soul, who know each other.

Jorg e Gu i l l é n
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And there, among their lean extremities,

Sight dwindles through those grovèd poplar trees

Amenable to rustle and to thought.

Below, always the water of the pool

Saves us a few skies that approximate

Th

eir adventures in that interior.

Murmurs that from the leaves approach, murmurs

Make passage by me like the lights of seasons

Receding for the moment—where I abide.

It is the garden lift s and honors me

Above his height, above the tangible

Centuries here saved contemporary.

Between the fl ower, exact in its return,

And the fl at turf continually growing,

Now more a friend, what has been is gathered in.

Here beside this infancy of a stream

Th

e perpetual succession of the instant

Gathers and merges, presides over me.

Here the years compass time; the fountain is

Divinity: this water has no end.

Th

rough the grove shivers a profounder sun.

W. S. Merwin, 1954

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Vicen te Huidobro
(1893–1948)

Ars Poetica

Let the line be like a key

that opens a thousand doors.

A leaf falls; something fl ies by;

Whatever the eyes see, let it be created,

and let the soul of the hearer tremble.

Invent many worlds and look to your word;

the adjective, when it does not vivify, kills.

We are in the age of nerves.

Th

e muscle hangs loose,

like a memory, in museums;

but we are not the weaker for that:

true power

resides in the head.

Why do you sing of the rose, you poets!

Make it fl ower in the poem;

Only for us

do all things live under the sun.

Th

e poet is a small god.

Rhina P. Espaillat, 2011

V ic e n t e H u i d obro
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Jorge Luis Borges
(1899–1986)

Rose

From Fervor de Buenos Aires

O rose,

Imperishable rose I do not sing,

All density and fragrance,

Rose of the black garden in deepest midnight,

Or any garden on any given evening,

Rose that is resurrected from delicate ashes

By the art of alchemy,

Rose of the Persians, Ariosto’s rose,

Rose that is always one, alone,

Always the rose of roses,

Th

e ageless Platonic fl ower,

Ardent and blind, o rose I do not sing,

Rose, unattainable.

Buenos Aires

From El otro, el mismo

And now the city is like an unfolded plan

of all my failures and humiliations;

before this door I watched the sun go down

so oft en, and waited in vain before this statue.

Here the uncertain past and exacting present

off ered my thoughts the common circumstances

of every kind of person, here my footsteps

traced out a labyrinth, unforeseeable.

Here the ashen evening waits and hopes for

the outcome owed or promised by tomorrow;

here my shadow in the no less hopeless

evening shadows loses itself, but lightly.

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If love binds us at all, it is by terror;

and that is the explanation of desire.

Emily Grosholz, 2011

Poem of the Gift s

Let no one see self-pity or rebuke

In this avowal of the mastery

Of God, Who has, with consummate irony,

Given me books and darkness at one stroke.

Over this city of books He has, it seems,

Given dominion to sightless eyes, that can

Read only in the libraries of dreams

Th

e senseless paragraphs that every dawn

Yields to their yearning. All in vain the day

Lavishes on them its infi nities

Of books as rigorous as the codices

Th

at went up in smoke at Alexandria.

From thirst and hunger (we learn from a Greek story)

A king dies amid garden plots and fountains;

I weaken aimlessly in the blind confi nes

Of this profound and loft y library.

Th

e high stacks proff er in their vast detail

Encyclopedias, atlases, dynasties

Of East and West, symbols, cosmogonies,

Eras and eons,—but to no avail.

Haltingly, slowly in the vacant gloom,

I explore these shadows with a cane for eyes,

I, who always imagined Paradise

Under the aspect of a reading-room.

Something that certainly cannot be conveyed

Jorg e Lu i s B org e s
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By the word
hazard
governs all these things;

Another man in other murky evenings

Received the myriad volumes, and the shade.

Pacing along the unhurried corridors

I oft en feel with a kind of sacred dread

Th

at I am that other person who, now dead,

Paced the same paces in the selfsame hours.

Which of us two is writing out this verse

Of a single shadow and a plural I?

What matter my surname if it signify

A singular and indivisible curse?

Groussac or Borges, I contemplate this cherished

World as it blazes up and changes shape

And fl ickers out into a vague white ash

Th

at looks much like oblivion, or sleep.

My Books

My books (which do not know that I exist)

Are as much a part of me as this visage

With its grey hair at the temples and grey eyes

Th

at I look for vainly in glass surfaces

And wonderingly run my curved hand over.

And not without some logical bitterness

It occurs to me that the essential words

Th

at most express me are not in my own writings

But in those books that don’t know who I am.

Better that way. Th

e voices of the dead

Will utter me forever.

Simón Carbajal

Antelo’s fi elds, 1890 or so,

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My father had charge of him. Perhaps they exchanged

A few sparing and long forgotten words.

He remembered nothing of the man but this:

Th

e back of his dark-skinned left hand crisscrossed

With scratches,—claw marks. Back then, on the ranch,

Everyone worked out his own destiny:

Th

is one broke horses, that one was a wrangler,

Another man could rope like nobody else—

Simón Carbajal was the jaguar man.

Whenever a jaguar preyed upon the sheepfold

Or someone heard her growling in the darkness,

Carbajal would track her into the mountains.

He took a knife with him, and a few dogs.

And when at last he closed with her in a thicket

He would set the dogs on her. Th

e tawny beast

As like as not sprang suddenly on the man

Shaking a poncho draped over his left arm,

Both shield and a muleta. Th

e white belly

Was unprotected and the animal

Felt the knife as it entered her and felt

Th

e steel burning inside her as she died.

Th

e duel was fatal, and it was infi nite.

He went on killing always the same jaguar

Which was immortal. Don’t let this surprise you

Too much. His destiny is yours, and mine,

Except for the fact that our jaguar takes forms

Th

at change continuously. Call it Hatred,

Or Love, or Hazard, call it Every Moment.

Th

e Temptation

Here goes General Quiroga to his funeral,

Invited by the venal Santos Pérez,

And above Santos Pérez there is Rosas,