jueves, 11 de agosto de 2016

Poems in Numéro Cinq (agosto)

From No todas las islas
Natural History
Words are crabs
Buried in the deep.
Shipwrecks speak
in seashells.
The wind sings its syllables
of whispered names.
.
The Giant Women
They came from the north,
but no one knows when they were wiped out.
From the cave of music
they made their rounds,
raising their pentagram arms;
they all croaked under lock and key.
The old men claim to have seen them
devoured by the sea.
.
from Boreas
THE DAY LABORERS howl with the sound
of war in the poppy fields,
music for bull calves,
train whistle that carries the breath
of the soldier suckled by Chernobyl.
There’s so much slackening the thread, Sipofene,
such fire in the crotch,
…………humiliated boots,
…………metallic hands,
…………headquarters’ silences.
What will the dust bring,
if we’re always dead in the presence
of the violet stockings’ nudity?
It is a field of iron, Sipofene,
…….a keloid field.
.
from Austral
THE WORLD SHOULD BE A BETTER PLACE,
with more poems and tulips;
no resection of the migrant
who flees in order to survive
the harassment of offices
that are after his right thumb.
Tell us what emporium has robbed you?
How many prisons have you trod?
Who knew the truth of your sandstone?
The cherry and blue meeting houses
were part of the eclipse.
We speculated up until the year of your birth.
NO ONE CLAIMS THE ASHES
of an angel of clay
in the jaws of the common grave,
no one asks for his minimum wage
at the sides of Cadmus’ ships,
and no one deserves to die by stone
on a high tension cliff,
but there go the 50 thousand orphans
who have lost their hunger
walling in the cattle.
.
from Zenith
IT IS CALLED RAGE, Sipofene,
the substance that undermines us
breaks us
deludes us
the exhausted gaze of serfs;
it’s called weariness, Sipofene,
this solitude without a capital
these lead hillsides,
paradise of the dissidents.


Traducciones de Cody Copeland para "The Deserts and the Seas: Zazil Alaíde Collins", entrevista de Dylan Brennan en Numéro Cinq (agosto, 2016).