Never enough
I think it has to do
with Antigone’s loneliness.
Her almost suicidal tragedy
occurs because she can no longer
be with anyone
that loves her. She loses
parents, brothers
and her stubborn pity is not
enough to cover
the fratricidal horror.
Never enough.
And we keep on believing
that our resentment
has no consequences.
Or that this quiet
acceptance of her
sister Ismene
can be read
as answer
and solution to the choral
nonsense.
They advise,
the Confucians,
that when the government is bad
one must run to the hills
and flee from the pain,
seeking refuge in the painting,
not of great canvases
that hang but
of small and long
scrolls that can be
admired in
private contemplation
of a landscape
picturing peaceful hills
perhaps or also
tragic water
falls or venerable
rocks or oaks
with wise crowns.
Where could I find,
in my inner hill or slope,
an oak at all?
Home is your journey
After the first tragedy
of the first epic
the muse sang not
of wrath and cities
turned to ashes
but of migrants.
Because
poetry
only change persists
and your journey is home.
From De la metáfora, fluida (Madrid: Visor, 2019)
Tree,
self-portrait wearing the dress inside-out
and an empty sleeve, ranting,
impoverished, but not deranged?
That’s how I saw myself in my mother in a dream,
humble.
Not humiliated.
Because the pink trumpet trees were in bloom
and from her I know
that the contemplation
of such beauty
is a sign
of divine grace.
***
Spent looks the source.
Salt and sand block the tears.
I wish it would open
a window to the wind,
towards the flight of a fine and slight bird,
that could help me see clearer
from this doubtful distance.
***
For watching ugly things
serpents and snakes encircled
my face and throat
and I didn’t know how to get rid of them.
The dream taught me.
With patience.
One word at time.
From Fugaz lagartija (Madrid: Kalathos, 2024)
What’s not been said of the silence of animals,
that it’s distance or higher reason
or else a sign of human exile.
Be it sign or distance, migration,
is the cruelty of humans translatable?
Do we deserve to be expelled from paradise,
the verbosity of anguish or had we better keep
our own silence?
Maybe. Since “every language has its own silence,”
says Canetti. Although I recently read
that they are like stray dogs,
the wise, and that’s why
they bark and bark and never are
really taken seriously:
…homeless dogs, thin as philosophers, they understand it all and bark and bark.
Ilya Kaminsky
***
Like a furry and lively being,
it’s not that a poem can define us.
But when in vigilant silence
it boldly meets a threat,
a David against a Goliath,
its heart is bravery
that I’d like to translate at least
into at a single verse,
free,
courageous.
***
What happens when I lose hope,
left sparse,
mute on the chair smudged
with paint?
Will this silence always be
despair?
Soon after a bird flies past outside,
behind the window.
We inherit hope,
Gift of forgetfulness.
Wislawa Szymborska
***
I know nothing of songs of sibylline snakes,
of serpentine hissing.
However,
the scales that I admired
in color combinations
of the anaconda at home
disclosed silent shapes
of suspicious uncertantity
and mistrust
and necessary doubt
between one verse and the other.
Careful:
what we admire
can be also alarming.
I don’t know if the snake has a visage.
I have no answer for that question.
Emmanuel Levinas
From the forthcoming book lo animal si poema (Madrid, Visor, 2026)
Translated by Gabriel Araujo
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