Where does your voice come from? The one you speak with, or the one you read with? What does it sound like when you read, silently, to yourself? There are the first influences, or at least the ones that first come to mind. But you quickly admit that there are others as well. The voices that emerged from different styles, tones, and patterns in books, stories, poems. From songs and television programs, family members and teachers. There are the voices that you don’t remember as voices, the words you don’t remember reading. This voice, this combination of symbols describing a translated book of poetry, for example, might be acknowledged as the very latest influence in your life.
After leaving Argentina in exile during the dictatorship of the military junta (1976-1983), Néstor Ponce found his way to France, where he now lives. He has written that throughout his life, reading has connected him to a shifting, unstable set of voices—a community of readers and writers that crisscrosses borders of all kinds, unafraid of conflict and contradiction. boy says (a book with no ending) opens to that community with poems that are at once the words of one poet and the traces of an infinite number of poets, some of whom are explicitly named in the titles of the poems.
This bilingual English–Spanish edition is an open library that is also a private one, made public. As you read, it might be difficult not to ask questions about Nazim Hikmet, Alejandra Pizarnik, Dina Posada, Eugenio Montale, Anna Greki, or Édouard Glissant. And it will be impossible to answer those questions without finding their books, opening them, and hearing your voice shaped by their and Ponce’s words.
Giuseppe Ungaretti
En la vacía inmensidad de la ausencia
caben mares selvas y tréboles de diez hojas
Se pueden rascar las costras del tiempo
y alisar los callos del perjurio
Y como si esto no alcanzara
se abren las arrugas de la piedra en el agua
Giuseppe Ungaretti
In the open immensity of absence
there’s room for oceans forests and ten-leaf clovers
You can scratch at the scabs of time
file down callouses of false witness
And as if this weren’t enough
the wrinkles in the stone open up in the water
Discépolo
El cantor silabeó
que la lucha es cruel
y es mucha
que se hace de anocheceres
salpicando naufragios
en el río de la plata
Yo siempre quise ser un surubí
para bailar tangos tornasolados
entre el dos x cuatro de tus piernas
Tener una lucha
entre tus brazos
que fuera larga y mucha
como un amanecer
de revoltijos entre las sábanas
Cuando fui por fin una vigilia
entre tus olores y humedades
el techo se iba alejando
se separaba de tu piel
nos miraba lleno de envidia
Discépolo
The singer pronounced
that the struggle’s too long
too far gone
and made of nightfalls
splashing shipwrecks
in the silver-plated river
I always tried to be a sorubim catfish
to dance spinning tangos
within the two x four of your legs
To struggle
in your arms
may it be too long too far gone
like waking in
twisted sheets
Finally fast awake
among your smells your sweat
the ceiling began to float away
separating itself from your skin
to watch us full of envy
John Keats
Los ruiseñores son imborrables
son perplejos
atraviesan calendarios y planetas
y su trino resuena
en el cuenco de las manos
de reyes y labriegos
En inglés ruiseñor
se dice
nightingale
que es un arpegio movedizo
que suena a rossignol
o a ruiseñor
e incluso a usignolo
Cuando el poeta
los oye cantar
hace trinos con los dedos
se le llenan los dedos
de trinos
los dedos se rellenan
de ruiseñores
que hablan en inglés
en italiano o en guaraní
se ponen a zumbar
sobre los hombros
trazan corcheas entre los olivos
y se quedan para siempre
en la misma rama
en el mismo verso
John Keats
The nightingales are indelible
perplexed
they travel across calendars and planets
and their song echoes
in the bowl of the hands
of kings and laborers
In Spanish nightingale
is pronounced
ruiseñor
which is a shifting arpeggio
that sounds like rossignol
or nightingale
and even usignolo
When the poet
hears them singing
he makes his fingers trill
his fingers are filled
with birdsong
the fingers are refilled
with nightingales
that speak Spanish
Italian or Guaraní
they begin to buzz
over the shoulders
tracing quavers between the olive trees
and remain forever
on the same branch
on the same verse
Constantin Cavafy
En cualquier instante
desde la dicha o las colinas
desde la tempestad o las dunas
llegan los Bárbaros
El trueno de los cascos
el ronco aullido de los carros
va rompiendo el horizonte
estrella cruces y estatuas de piedad
Se han muerto los dioses
ardieron los templos de la fe
cayeron cruces de malta
manos tejidas con fibras de seda
músicas apretadas como plegarias
Desde hace siglos
cabalgan los Bárbaros
las patrias infinitas
Nuestros gobernantes los aguardan
con las llaves de las ciudades
el raso de las alcobas
el gemido que se escapa
les ofrendan sus mujeres
Yo siempre me opuse a la barbarie
me degollaron en Pekín
en un campo de látigos yertos
caí en las afueras de Amsterdam
en un campo de tulipanes abiertos
y una madrugada me levanté
adulado en un museo
alzando espadas que nunca imaginé
Y /
como los Bárbaros
resucito
Constantin Cavafy
At any instant
from happiness or the hills
from the storm or the dunes
come the Barbarians
The thunder of helmets
the hoarse scream of the carts
breaks the horizon
destroys crosses and pious statues
The gods have died
they burned the temples of the faith
all the Maltese crosses fell
hands woven with silk threads
songs as tight as prayers
For centuries now
the Barbarians ride
across infinite countries
Our leaders wait for them
with the keys to the cities
the bedroom satin
the escaped whimper
they offer up their women
I was always opposed to barbarity
they cut my throat in Beijing
on a field of rigid whips
in the outskirts of Amsterdam I fell
upon a field of open tulips
and one morning I got up
was worshipped in a museum
raising swords that I had never imagined
And /
like the Barbarians
I am resurrected
Édouard Glissant
La poesía es ladrona
pero no roba
se apropia de las palabras
las desnuda
las abre a las calles
La poesía masca el odio
anega el amor
es contradictoria
tiene manos suaves
de iracundo pelaje
La poesía es equina
anda con dos patas rengas
tiene belfo humeante
y grupa de puntos cardinales
La poesía es omnívora
y no descartable
posee nueve costillas
y fecunda con rara facilidad
La poesía es bicéfala
con una lengua lame la incertidumbre
con la otra restaña misterios
con otra escondida
revela piedras de cuarzo
Es interminable
vuelve a comenzar
Édouard Glissant
Poetry’s a thief
but never steals
it appropriates words
takes off their clothes
opens them to the street
Poetry chews up hate
inundates love
it’s contradictory
has soft hands
of irascible fur
Poetry is equine
walks with two lame legs
has a smoking lip
and cardinal point haunches
Poetry is omnivorous
can’t be discarded
possesses nine ribs
and fertilizes with rare ease
Poetry is bicephalous
with one tongue it laps uncertainty
with the other it staunches mysteries
and with another one, hidden
it reveals stones of quartz
Interminable
it begins again
