SECTION ELEVEN
POETRY PAGE ONE

COLUMN FORTY-FIVE, MAY 1, 1999
(Copyright © 1999 Al Aronowitz)

(Photo Courtesy Myles Aronowitz )

TRANSLATIONS 1

Esteban Moore (Buenos Aires, 1952) Has published La noche en llamas (1982), Providencia terrenal (1983), con Bogey en Casablanca (1987), Poemas 1982-87 (1988) and Tiempos que van (1994).

His last published work is Viajes por America desierta (Ediciones Unesco, Paris/Graffiti, Montevideo, 1996) a selection of poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti translated into Spanish. He has also translated poems by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, R. Carver, Charles Bukowski, Wallace Stevens, Craig Czury and Seamus Heaney.]

chronicle

in chile sarmiento's whole body's ablaze
while he decides what's good on either side

in santa ana do livramento with his guitar josé hernandez
entertains the sad gauchos gathered to drink
some lines come to him he can't quite figure out

beneath the sun in misiones quiroga pens a letter
begs martinez estrada to join him in his solitude

lugones at his ease like a tiger
observing the delta's tranquil waters
resolves he'll compose his final poem

and... in buenos aires borges begins his blindness
in a public library perusing the desolate shelves

(Translation Dave Oliphant) ##

* * *

Homage to memory

we were...
a happy trooper in a childhood spent in the countryside
a soldier awaiting in silence the last attack
a fighter pilot in defence of english skies
a spy hidden in the darkened movie house
a lone explorer defeated by desert sands
a daring sailor at the boundless tips of capes
all this we were....
and too, the blind poet smiling
                     before the smallnes
                              of the writing
                              that we are...

(Translation Dave Oliphant) ##

* * *

Prayer
(For A.G.)

Oh father
you gave us the light
earth's burning sun
the reptilian jaws of night
theatening skies
acid rain
toxic waste
bodies full of corrupt cells
evil-smelling sewers
the plague of chemical clouds
decaying sphincters
air chained to smoke
skin covered with boils
the landscape floating in city mist
Oh father
and desire with its metal teeth
greed and its visions of the universe
and these bloody tastebuds absorbing
                                the virus from your mouth
Oh father
you gave us the celebration of your name
Why? Tell me
does an apple in the mouth of a naked woman
justify the state of things?
Our father....

(Translation Steven White) ##

* * *

urban journeys

we who travel
every day in this city
in the packed metro
of the public transit system often compare the unavoidable routine
to the odyssey of tasty canned sardines

this is how
we move through this life on earth
imagining, perhaps
the real fate of the sardines
in their tranquil tin mansions

the sardines
those marvelous creatures from the depths
GOD'S brilliant objects

(Translation Steven White) ##

* * *

with bogie in casablanca

bogie silently drinks
the sour bourbon of oblivion
his eyes, lost in the african night
mask the deep scars lefover from love

from his table bogie observes
the piano player's bright ebony hands
cuddling emotionlessly
a dilapidated piano's keyboard

at the rear of the poorly illuminated
saloon with the background of an old guitar
the french girl, skinny and sad
holds the tepid 'maté' of longing

bogie looks at her through the dense smoke
and slowly comments
in the way only he is able to do
with an accent appropiate for a bum
who is used to hanging out by the 'abasto'
"boys... someday she will understand it...
Gardel has left us forever"

Maté: Argentina's national beverage.
Abasto: a neighbourhood in Buenos Aires.

(Translation Susan Luckstone Jaffer and Juan Amador) ##

* * *

in vitro

what to make
of that man who in life wants it all
              including the grace of god
of that woman whose desire is no longer
                             a hard stone
             growing in each one of her breasts
of the leaves that fly twisted and dragged
                    by head-strong winds
of that other one who one morning
              in front of the mirror
                  discovers
    liverspots all over his body
&
what
of the ignored woman who under bridges
   or under the circular domes of night
    caresses with a surgical knife her veins
       & remembers her entire crummy life
what
of simon the magician proposing a deal
              to saint peter
                                and saint paul
           the sale of their healing powers
what
     of the damp shadows of venice
    that still conceal
   the outright fear of a man
           named pietro aretino
& of those neutrons -those atoms
        over palestine's own sky
what
of that artist's brush that traces volumes
       from your naked body
& of the gentle defenseless citizen who
               at the landfill
       checks out everything
    sees pigs of an oversized herd
       eating hospital waste
         chewing bloody tampons
& of those who in this country of thick wine
                      of tender beef
                    read the sky
                                              predicting
the precise time to sow their fields
       to expand their herds
masters of reading the future
from their gut feelings and market reports
what
       of the young and worn out
  who still show the insolence of the ones who couldn't
make it
        and the arrogance of those that live exploiting
other people's money
what
of the mounds of earth recently removed
    in the cemetery
    on which well-kept grass will grow
   from previous well kept grass
what
of that radiant woman
   who when sunday comes around
      waits in the doorway smiling
           the table filled
   with home-cooked dishes
what
of the flashy qualities of that hand on the naked skin
   stimulating with her fingers
                              back and forth
               raising the sound of magnetized vowels
what
of that one who painfully waits in silence
   seeks words of encouragement
               promises
            from the doctor
what of the furious unraveling of the elements
                           that are faraway
                                                   strange
                                eerie
                                        dark music
what of ramakrishna
          in the reddish penumbra
of a dressing room
                            dressed as a woman
                    having in mind krishna kindness
what of the homeless children
                                           and mothers
those unknown
                            living on the streets
weeping with no one to hold them
what
of the tough cotton fiber
                mechanically spun
          that swells with luster
        piercing the eye of the needle
what
of borges one sunday morning
         with sun shining through rain
                in buenos aires
who praises the magical quality
of the runic inscriptions
    imagines the colours of the light
what to make
of the tireless breeze that carves-out
        one by one
the faces of the people
        whittling the bodies
    those bodies
that time eats away with lucidity
                                               what to make...
what to make
                    of the filament
                                         of the electric bulb
                    when it goes out
leaving us in total darkness
                     afraid of not waking up

(Translation Craig Czury) ##

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