Born to such hapless times, I mourn this sorrow here in vain.
translated by Irving Lo & Kenneth Yasuda
poetry
From July 1990 by Tomas Tranströmer
It was a funeral
and I felt that the dead man
was reading my thoughts
better than I could.
The organ was silent, the birds sang.
The grave out in the sunshine.
My friend’s voice belonged
on the far side of the minutes.
I drove home seen-through
by the glitter of the summer day
by rain and quietness
seen-through by the moon.
translated by Robin Fulton
After Someone’s Death by Tomas Tranströmer
Once there was a shock
which left behind a long pale glimmering comet’s tail.
It contains us. It makes TV pictures blurred.
It deposits itself as cold drops on the aerials.
You can still shuffle along on skis in the winter sun
among groves where last year’s leaves still hang.
They are like pages torn from old telephone directories–
the subscribers’ names are eaten up by the cold.
It is still beautiful to feel your heart throbbing.
But often the shadow feels more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armour of black dragon scales.
translated by Robin Fulton
from an untitled poem by Raid Hernandez Novas
She was born for love, she burns in love, sensing the fruit,
for love her waist has grown like the world’s edges,
and a deep peace springs from her hair and her dress.
translated by Katherine M. Hedeen
Carpet: for Lourdes Casal by Nancy Morejon
The idea of a poem
comes in through the window,
perhaps performed, with no notice.
Did I maybe manage to fool
so much lost longing. . .?
It’s as if a carpet,
as if someone placed
a carpet at my feet
and now steady I should take
sharp flights, with benevolence
of that reader whose dream nested
the reading of Boti. . .
I can’t. . .
Oh steady dream,
oh clear sails toward my red body. . .
And the idea of the poem
is no longer,
is no longer.
translated by Katherine M. Hedeen
Under the Wheels by Luis Lorente
Why do the dead want hearts
İf they’re keeping on barefoot,
stealthily, sunken in a bottle?
Why the need to proclaim themselves, write up manifestos,
raise barricades upon the very shifting sand
if they’ll never be able to see or hear or speak?
Why feel hunger when now the sowing
has spread to the hills of dim purgatory?
How is it they’re obsessed with knowing their future
if they’re only granted what’s final?
Why cry out for company if the sentence is irrevocable?
Why ask to see one other, dialogue, make after dinner conversation
if spiders copulate behind their portraits?
Why are arrows so pressing when arrows were what
changed them to eternal poplars and statues?
Why ask for a ceasefire when they don’t disagree,
aren’t alternatives, don’t aspire to power?
Why yearn so for incidences of spring?
What more do the dead want?
What more do they want to know?
translated by Katherine M. Hedeen
Salt of Memory: for Mariano Arias by Pablo Armando Fernandez
Fortunate the one who at the root
has within hand’s reach
the flower.
The sediment of centuries cuts
the tutelary home into the stone.
By those rooms does one enter
the labyrinth
where light scatters its enigmas.
Fortunate the one who in the pyramidal
centre
founds the rising stairs.
In the beginning was writing
the stellar signs of continuity.
There rest the codes of knowledge:
the mountain and the river.
Fortunate the one who finds
his fulfillment in sap
and aspires to the spiraling perfume
of the flower formed by stars.
translated by Katherine M. Hedeen
from Pardon This Slight Distraction by Raul Rivero
A man is always a bit of his past,
his first moments, his first blow to the face.
translated by Katherine M. Hedeen
A Miscellany on the Garden of Autumn Clouds: Peach-Blossom Pond by Sung Wan
Green water reflects scales of bright red;
Weeds and algae appear as clear as in a mirror.
When the fisherman rapped on his boat,
I thought it was petals falling.
translated by Yin-nan Chang
Random Poem on the lake by Sung Wan
Of mountain scenery, the Southern Screen is best;
Its atmosphere misty, half is hidden, half is there.
A small skiff moors in the winding pond;
Pelicans rest under withered willow trees.
Clouds rise up and a thousand peaks are thrown together;
The sky clears and a single pagoda stands alone.
With inspiration come thoughts of distant views;
Melodies from a Tartar flute fill West Lake.
translated by Yin-nan Chang
Leonard Durso 