READIN

🦋 Romantic beauty

A few things have reminded me lately of José Cárdenas Peña's poetry. Here is a translation that I spent some time on last summer.

El delincuente Si sólo fuese el grito del agua, o el rodar de una piedra que no encuentro acomodo a la orilla del llanto. Si sólo fuese la herida corrosiva de los pasos sin nombre en los días que mueren, o la processión lenta de las horas (centinelas del miedo). Si sólo fuese el puñado de hierba lo que cubre a la sangre, aventada al olvido, para poder decir: es el final.

Too Late If only it were just the scream the water's scream, the restless turning of a stone which finds no spot to nestle by the banks of the storm. If only it were just the wound, corrosive wound, that nameless passage, flow of dead time; the soft procession of the hours (sentinels of fear). If only that bundle of herbs, the ones we use to bind our wounds, could be scattered to oblivion, that we might say: it is over.

Cárdenas Peña seems like a good poet for Valentine's Day as he is just about as Romantic as they come. Wikipædia says that he was "infatuated with beauty, with masculine beauty; he passed his thankless days in Platonic admiration of young men's bodies. The contemplation of physical beauty, the slow and sensuous writing of his poetry, the dialogues which he carried out with himself in cheap hotels and in the beds of the poorhouse -- perhaps these were the three fundamental activities of his life."

posted evening of Monday, February 14th, 2011
➳ More posts about Los contados días
➳ More posts about Poetry
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about Translation
➳ More posts about Writing Projects
➳ More posts about Projects

Respond:

Name:
E-mail: (will not be displayed)
Link:
Remember info	Send