🦋 Altazor's manifesto
I'm feeling on a bit of a roll with reading and translating the prologue to Altazor. Here is another section, in which Huidobro/Altazor lays out the manifesto of the poem. There is some tricky pronoun-switching here; but I think the way I'm reading it makes sense.
Oh: how beautiful... how beautiful.
I see the mountains, the rivers, the jungles, the sea, the ships, the flowers, the seashells.
I see the night and the day, the axis where they converge.
Oh, oh,-- I am Altazor, great poet, without a horse who eats birdseed, nor who warms his throat in the moonlight; with my little parachute, like a parasol above the planets.
From each drop of sweat on my forehead are born stars; I will leave you the task of baptizing them, like so many bottles of wine.
I see it all, my brain was forged in tongues of prophecy.
See the mountain as the breath of God, climbing its swollen thermometer until it touch the feet of my beloved.
Am that one who has seen all things, who knows all the secrets, without being Walt Whitman -- I have never had a white beard, white like lovely nurses, like frozen streams.
That one who hears at night the counterfeiters' hammers, just busy astronomers.
That one who drinks from the warm glass of wisdom after the flood, paying heed to the doves, who knows the path of fatigue, the seething wake behind the ships.
That one who knows the storehouses of memory, of lovely forgotten seasons.
He: he, shepherd of airplanes, who conducts lost nights and masterful winds to the matchless poles.
His moan is like a blinking web of unseen meteors.
The day rises in his heart; he lowers his eyelids to make night, the farmer's respite.
He washes his hands under the gaze of God, he combs his hair like light, like he's harvesting slender raindrops, satisfied.
The screams are more distant now, like a flock across the hills, when the stars are sleeping afer a night of continuous labor.
The beautiful hunter, looking at the heavenly watering-hole where the heartless birds drink.
(The as-yet-nameless stars will make another very satisfying appearance early in Canto I.)
Ah, qué hermoso... qué hermoso.
Veo las montañas, los rÃos, las selvas, el mar, los barcos, las flores y los caracoles.
Veo la noche y el dÃa y el eje en que se juntan.
Ah, ah, soy Altazor, el gran poeta, sin caballo que coma alpiste, ni caliente su garganta con claro de luna, sino con mi pequeño paracaÃdas como un quitasol sobre los planetas.
De cada gota del sudor de mi frente hice nacer astros, que os derea la tarea de bautizar como a botellas de vino.
Lo veo todo, tengo mi cerebro forjado en lenguas de profeta.
La montaña es el suspiro de Dios, ascendiendo en termómetro hinchado hasta tocar los pies de la amada.
Aquél que todo lo ha visto, que conoce todos los secretos sin ser Walt Whitman, pues jamás he tenido una barba blanca como las bellas enfermeras y los arroyos helados.
Aquél que oye durante la noche los martillos de los monederos falsos, que son solamente astrónomos activos.
Aquél que bebe el vaso caliente de la sabidurÃa después del diluvio obedeciendo a las palomas y que conoce la ruta de la fatiga, la estela hirviente que dejan los barcos.
Aquél que conoce los almacenes de recuerdos y de bellas estaciones olvidadas.
Él, el pastor de aeroplanos, el conductor de las noches extraviadas y de los ponientes amaestrados hacia los polos únicos.
Su queja es semejante a una red parpadeante de aerolitos sin testigo.
El dÃa se levante en su corazón y él baja los parpados para hacer la noche del reposo agricola.
Lava sus manos en la mirada de Dios, y peina su cabellera como la luz y la cosecha de esas flacas espigas de la lluvia satisfecho.
Los gritos se alejan como un rebaño sobre las lomas cuando las estrellas duermen después de una noche de trabajo continuo.
El hermoso cazador frente al bebedero celeste para los pájaros sin corazón.
posted evening of Tuesday, September 14th, 2010
➳ More posts about Altazor: The Journey by Parachute
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