Giovanni Quessep / The artist of silence

The artist of silence

by Giovanni Quessep
Translated by Felipe Botero

Giovanni Quessep / El artista del silencio

Should it be denied?
If I am the last man walking on the earth
I would have to deny it
if there are no birds to sing an autumn song
if there is no autumn if the time of the seasons has already passed
I would have to deny it
if there is no blue for me to tell my bewilderment
if I am where the colours have no name
in the gardens’ incessant final judgement
I am the last man shouting on the earth
who shouts to the sky that has hidden itself forever
and I would have to deny it to whom, to God?
God is perchance the artist of silence
for there are so many leaves that are not or keep falling into the abyss
and explode in the squalid air but what air.

Giovanni Quessep / As autumn falls

As autumn falls

by Giovanni Quessep
Translated by Felipe Botero
Giovanni Quessep / Mientras cae el otoño

Shrouded in golden leaves,
we wait.
The world doesn’t end at sunset
and only dreams
limit themselves to things.
Through a labyrinth of blank hours
time leads us on
as autumn falls
over our house, our patio.
Shrouded in a relentless fog
we wait, we wait:
nostalgia means to live without remembering
the word we are made of.

Giovanni Quessep / To become one with music

To become one with music

by Giovanni Quessep
Translated by Felipe Botero
Giovanni Quessep / Para hacerte a la música

You are in need of everything:
grey roads,
deep glooms,
birds that sing even in silence;
the sky,
an autumn leaf,
hands empty,
love unreturning,
snow’s whiteness;
dawn lights,
you are in need of everything the dream requires,
to become one with the music
of the most faraway blues
so that eventually your soul
will have confidence in death.

Giovanni Quessep / In between trees

In between trees

by Giovanni Quessep

Translated by Felipe Botero

Giovanni Quessep / Entre árboles

If you are who I look for, come
in the night of lost reflections,
if you are the beloved body,
come in between trees, in between songs.

Here awaits you a time
dispossessed of fables,
a body punished by life
and the roads’ brambles.

If you are she who comes,
leave me a sign in between trees:
a white veil, a trace in the dust
will suffice in my wretchedness.

Come now that death awaits
as marvellous forest awaits death;
if you are who I look for,
come under the sky’s protection.

Giovanni Quessep / A Greek Verse for Ophelia

A Greek Verse for Ophelia

by Giovanni Quessep

Translated by Felipe Botero

Giovanni Quessep / Un verso griego para Ofelia

The afternoon I knew your death–
the summer’s purest, the almonds
had grown up to the sky,
and the loom halted in the rainbow’s
ninth colour. How, by the white rim, did
her movement go?
How was your flight by that thread woven
which gave almost the name of destiny?

Only the clouds uplifted in the light
told everybody’s writing, the ballad
of who has seen a kingdom and
another kingdom and remains
within the fable. They carried
your body, snow between dust branches
that have already heard the song and keep
peace of the nightingale among the tombs.

I shut the garden gates, the
castle’s high windows. Indeed I grudged
the troubadour, transmuting wood
to water, flower and lute, entry.
He sang his song; time has unravelled what
the Lord has ravelled, silver tapestry
already happening, moonlit wandering,
yet returning to the skein. Alone
you may find the shape that awaits you.

I don’t know what blue was, there and then, lonely,
I don’t know what forest imparted to
the bitter moon its enchantment, the sunflower found
under the ship on voyages that recall
the Mediterranean clear waters.
The afternoon I knew you
were leaving was death’s purest: you
were in my memory talking to me
among the lilies, in some lines by
Saint John of the Cross. What sky was there,
what hand knit slowly, what songs
brought the pain, the marvel
that is awed of being at that hour
in which the moon burst on the almonds
and burned down the jasmines. You came
by the side of the sea from where a song
is heard, perhaps from a drowning
virgin, as your steps on the land.

Then you departed through my soul, you queen
of ancient fables, dust kindred to those ships
that once seeded from sandal-
-wood and cedar the wine sea.
Alone you travelled, beautiful, in silence,
stone-beautiful; in your shoulder
a violin stopped in its tracks. The almonds in
the courtyard and the jasmines announced
a summer storm. The sky
shattered my house’s mirror, death
resounded deep in the cistern. I was
thus lost in that fiery bramble, in which
our memory conceals our loved ones.
I wore blue mourning and remained alone

“on the eve of the longest day”.