Poemas traducidos, I

de Faro Vacío (1983)

Punta Mogotes

Boards of joy in the salty shore;
born in the gentle dunes of the lighthouse
when the sun was a tepid topaz of the ocean.
Boards of completion in the sunset
with the last gusts;
born in the white sands of desire

I,
proud parishioner of the dock piles,
lay down in the sun when a net gathered the beautiful bodies
in a battle of bloodstained swans
I, who said,
let the universe blow up in infinite pieces
if the promised Eden doesn´t hold the vagabond souls

Born in the balmy route of summer under the tents
when time was music in the idle days,
come to the coast in winter when there is
no one,
like the torn seine or the broken oar
returned by the tide.

≈

Ballerina

Her needful memory
her terrible, olive-colored
body,
her trap, her spiderweb,
those dresses
her empty heart where we all crossed
a night
her breakfasts
the cheerless slaps of dawn.

≈

It never occurred your death
or the past
or the trees or the whistling of the storm.
And never occurred the coffee in the hands of the living
the compassion in the souls of the living
or time.

It never occurred your death
or the past
or the month of July so distant from the moon
or the month of January.
or walking the violent road of coming back
or kissing the fear of the house
or merely sinking the head, like stubborn medals
like long summers.

It never occurred your death
or the past
it was instead the usual nightmare
the sea of ignorance, the lingered awareness
the ironies of history, and the other words.

≈

Nayib Chammás

According to a tatoo in his arm, in 1881
he was born in Lebanon —Amioun—
son to Abraham and Futín.
At the age of 14 he went off to Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, and other cities,
to sell combs, buttons, and bagatelles to miners.
Then he argued with his brothers, left the money
and headed back.
He roamed around Budapest, in the kingdom of Hungary,
Prague and Warsaw which were poor,
burgs and towns with the first smoke of the century
and villages tied to the roadsides, like crosses,
sins,
or the gaze of the elder;
sooner or later, all daughters of war.
More years passed by
and in Arabia
he married Ada, of fifteen years, in winter.
They reached to Guadalupe and he had a store,
a garden, and eight children
—some better than others—
three boys and five girls. One of them, my mother.
In 1913
Santa Fe was flooded again until the bankruptcy of stores.

He rose and sank many times, and ended up sunk.
Years always passed by;
then they begun to die: Ada, my grandmother; Antonio, my uncle;
Magda,
and my mother.
In Buenos Aires at last,
still fascinated by America,
thin and recalling his wife he died in my aunt´s arms.
Ninety-six times he could see the change of the seasons,
and if God doesn´t exist, his passage through history or time,
will soon have been a lie, what a drop is alwaysin a ruthless river, or less, unmoved.