{"id":40983,"date":"2025-06-26T12:01:42","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T18:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2025\/06\/boy-says-a-book-with-no-ending-translated-by-max-ubelaker-andrade\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T08:23:43","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T14:23:43","slug":"boy-says-a-book-with-no-ending-translated-by-max-ubelaker-andrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/2025\/06\/boy-says-a-book-with-no-ending-translated-by-max-ubelaker-andrade\/","title":{"rendered":"boy says (a book with no ending), translated by Max Ubelaker Andrade"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t remember as voices, the words you don\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

After leaving Argentina in exile during the dictatorship of the military junta (1976-1983), N\u00e9stor 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\u2014a community of readers and writers that crisscrosses borders of all kinds, unafraid of conflict and contradiction. <\/span>boy says (a book with no ending)<\/span><\/i> 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

This bilingual English\u2013Spanish 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 \u00c9douard 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\u2019s words.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nGiuseppe Ungaretti<\/b><\/p>\n

En la vac\u00eda inmensidad de la ausencia
\n<\/span>caben mares selvas y tr\u00e9boles de diez hojas<\/span><\/p>\n

Se pueden rascar las costras del tiempo
\n<\/span>y alisar los callos del perjurio<\/span><\/p>\n

Y como si esto no alcanzara
\n<\/span>se abren las arrugas de la piedra en el agua<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Giuseppe Ungaretti<\/b><\/p>\n

In the open immensity of absence
\n<\/span>there\u2019s room for oceans forests and ten-leaf clovers<\/span><\/p>\n

You can scratch at the scabs of time
\n<\/span>file down callouses of false witness\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And as if this weren\u2019t enough
\n<\/span>the wrinkles in the stone open up in the water<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Disc\u00e9polo<\/b><\/p>\n

El cantor silabe\u00f3
\n<\/span>que la lucha es cruel
\n<\/span>y es mucha
\n<\/span>que se hace de anocheceres
\n<\/span>salpicando naufragios
\n<\/span>en el r\u00edo de la plata<\/span><\/p>\n

Yo siempre quise ser un surub\u00ed
\n<\/span>para bailar tangos tornasolados
\n<\/span>entre el dos x cuatro de tus piernas<\/span><\/p>\n

Tener una lucha
\n<\/span>entre tus brazos
\n<\/span>que fuera larga y mucha
\n<\/span>como un amanecer
\n<\/span>de revoltijos entre las s\u00e1banas<\/span><\/p>\n

Cuando fui por fin una vigilia
\n<\/span>entre tus olores y humedades
\n<\/span>el techo se iba alejando
\n<\/span>se separaba de tu piel
\n<\/span>nos miraba lleno de envidia<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Disc\u00e9polo<\/b><\/p>\n

The singer pronounced
\n<\/span>that the struggle\u2019s too long
\n<\/span>too far gone
\n<\/span>and made of nightfalls
\n<\/span>splashing shipwrecks
\n<\/span>in the silver-plated river\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I always tried to be a sorubim catfish
\n<\/span>to dance spinning tangos
\n<\/span>within the two x four of your legs<\/span><\/p>\n

To struggle
\n<\/span>in your arms
\n<\/span>may it be too long too far gone
\n<\/span>like waking in
\n<\/span>twisted sheets<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally fast awake
\n<\/span>among your smells your sweat
\n<\/span>the ceiling began to float away
\n<\/span>separating itself from your skin
\n<\/span>to watch us full of envy<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

John Keats<\/b><\/p>\n

Los ruise\u00f1ores son imborrables
\n<\/span>son perplejos
\n<\/span>atraviesan calendarios y planetas
\n<\/span>y su trino resuena
\n<\/span>en el cuenco de las manos
\n<\/span>de reyes y labriegos
\n<\/span>En ingl\u00e9s ruise\u00f1or
\n<\/span>se dice
\n<\/span>nightingale
\n<\/span>que es un arpegio movedizo
\n<\/span>que suena a rossignol
\n<\/span>o a ruise\u00f1or
\n<\/span>e incluso a usignolo<\/span><\/p>\n

Cuando el poeta
\n<\/span>los oye cantar
\n<\/span>hace trinos con los dedos
\n<\/span>se le llenan los dedos
\n<\/span>de trinos
\n<\/span>los dedos se rellenan
\n<\/span>de ruise\u00f1ores
\n<\/span>que hablan en ingl\u00e9s
\n<\/span>en italiano o en guaran\u00ed
\n<\/span>se ponen a zumbar
\n<\/span>sobre los hombros
\n<\/span>trazan corcheas entre los olivos
\n<\/span>y se quedan para siempre
\n<\/span>en la misma rama
\n<\/span>en el mismo verso<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

John Keats<\/b><\/p>\n

The nightingales are indelible
\n<\/span>perplexed
\n<\/span>they travel across calendars and planets
\n<\/span>and their song echoes
\n<\/span>in the bowl of the hands
\n<\/span>of kings and laborers
\n<\/span>In Spanish nightingale
\n<\/span>is pronounced
\n<\/span>ruise\u00f1or
\n<\/span>which is a shifting arpeggio
\n<\/span>that sounds like rossignol
\n<\/span>or nightingale
\n<\/span>and even usignolo<\/span><\/p>\n

When the poet
\n<\/span>hears them singing
\n<\/span>he makes his fingers trill
\n<\/span>his fingers are filled
\n<\/span>with birdsong
\n<\/span>the fingers are refilled
\n<\/span>with nightingales
\n<\/span>that speak Spanish
\n<\/span>Italian or Guaran\u00ed
\n<\/span>they begin to buzz
\n<\/span>over the shoulders
\n<\/span>tracing quavers between the olive trees
\n<\/span>and remain forever
\n<\/span>on the same branch
\n<\/span>on the same verse<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Constantin Cavafy<\/b><\/p>\n

En cualquier instante
\n<\/span>desde la dicha o las colinas
\n<\/span>desde la tempestad o las dunas
\n<\/span>llegan los B\u00e1rbaros<\/span><\/p>\n

El trueno de los cascos
\n<\/span>el ronco aullido de los carros
\n<\/span>va rompiendo el horizonte
\n<\/span>estrella cruces y estatuas de piedad<\/span><\/p>\n

Se han muerto los dioses
\n<\/span>ardieron los templos de la fe
\n<\/span>cayeron cruces de malta
\n<\/span>manos tejidas con fibras de seda
\n<\/span>m\u00fasicas apretadas como plegarias<\/span><\/p>\n

Desde hace siglos
\n<\/span>cabalgan los B\u00e1rbaros
\n<\/span>las patrias infinitas<\/span><\/p>\n

Nuestros gobernantes los aguardan
\n<\/span>con las llaves de las ciudades
\n<\/span>el raso de las alcobas
\n<\/span>el gemido que se escapa
\n<\/span>les ofrendan sus mujeres<\/span><\/p>\n

Yo siempre me opuse a la barbarie
\n<\/span>me degollaron en Pek\u00edn
\n<\/span>en un campo de l\u00e1tigos yertos
\n<\/span>ca\u00ed en las afueras de Amsterdam
\n<\/span>en un campo de tulipanes abiertos
\n<\/span>y una madrugada me levant\u00e9
\n<\/span>adulado en un museo
\n<\/span>alzando espadas que nunca imagin\u00e9<\/span><\/p>\n

Y \/
\n<\/span>como los B\u00e1rbaros
\n<\/span>resucito<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Constantin Cavafy<\/b><\/p>\n

At any instant
\n<\/span>from happiness or the hills
\n<\/span>from the storm or the dunes
\n<\/span>come the Barbarians<\/span><\/p>\n

The thunder of helmets
\n<\/span>the hoarse scream of the carts
\n<\/span>breaks the horizon
\n<\/span>destroys crosses and pious statues<\/span><\/p>\n

The gods have died
\n<\/span>they burned the temples of the faith
\n<\/span>all the Maltese crosses fell
\n<\/span>hands woven with silk threads
\n<\/span>songs as tight as prayers\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For centuries now
\n<\/span>the Barbarians ride
\n<\/span>across infinite countries<\/span><\/p>\n

Our leaders wait for them
\n<\/span>with the keys to the cities
\n<\/span>the bedroom satin
\n<\/span>the escaped whimper
\n<\/span>they offer up their women\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I was always opposed to barbarity
\n<\/span>they cut my throat in Beijing
\n<\/span>on a field of rigid whips
\n<\/span>in the outskirts of Amsterdam I fell
\n<\/span>upon a field of open tulips
\n<\/span>and one morning I got up
\n<\/span>was worshipped in a museum
\n<\/span>raising swords that I had never imagined<\/span><\/p>\n

And \/
\n<\/span>like the Barbarians
\n<\/span>I am resurrected\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00c9douard Glissant<\/b><\/p>\n

La poes\u00eda es ladrona
\n<\/span>pero no roba
\n<\/span>se apropia de las palabras
\n<\/span>las desnuda
\n<\/span>las abre a las calles<\/span><\/p>\n

La poes\u00eda masca el odio
\n<\/span>anega el amor
\n<\/span>es contradictoria
\n<\/span>tiene manos suaves
\n<\/span>de iracundo pelaje<\/span><\/p>\n

La poes\u00eda es equina
\n<\/span>anda con dos patas rengas
\n<\/span>tiene belfo humeante
\n<\/span>y grupa de puntos cardinales<\/span><\/p>\n

La poes\u00eda es omn\u00edvora
\n<\/span>y no descartable
\n<\/span>posee nueve costillas
\n<\/span>y fecunda con rara facilidad<\/span><\/p>\n

La poes\u00eda es bic\u00e9fala
\n<\/span>con una lengua lame la incertidumbre
\n<\/span>con la otra resta\u00f1a misterios
\n<\/span>con otra escondida
\n<\/span>revela piedras de cuarzo<\/span><\/p>\n

Es interminable
\n<\/span>vuelve a comenzar<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00c9douard Glissant<\/b><\/p>\n

Poetry\u2019s a thief
\n<\/span>but never steals
\n<\/span>it appropriates words
\n<\/span>takes off their clothes
\n<\/span>opens them to the street<\/span><\/p>\n

Poetry chews up hate
\n<\/span>inundates love
\n<\/span>it\u2019s contradictory
\n<\/span>has soft hands
\n<\/span>of irascible fur\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Poetry is equine
\n<\/span>walks with two lame legs
\n<\/span>has a smoking lip
\n<\/span>and cardinal point haunches\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Poetry is omnivorous
\n<\/span>can\u2019t be discarded
\n<\/span>possesses nine ribs
\n<\/span>and fertilizes with rare ease\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Poetry is bicephalous
\n<\/span>with one tongue it laps uncertainty
\n<\/span>with the other it staunches mysteries
\n<\/span>and with another one, hidden
\n<\/span>it reveals stones of quartz\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Interminable
\n<\/span>it begins again\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/h5>\n
Translated by Max Ubelaker Andrade<\/span>
\n
\nboy says (a book with no ending)<\/span><\/i> is available now from <\/span>punctum books<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":40689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2893],"tags":[5334],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[5394],"lal_author":[5393],"class_list":["post-40983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adelantos-de-traduccion-y-novedades-editoriales","tag-numero-34","translator-max-ubelaker-andrade","lal_author-nestor-ponce-es"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40983"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41183,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40983\/revisions\/41183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40983"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=40983"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=40983"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=40983"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=40983"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=40983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}