Michio Mado / Apple

APPLE

By Michio Mado

Translation: Takako Lento

As I place
one apple
here

the apple,
its mass,
all by itself
occupies all

Here exists
0ne apple
nothing else

Ah
what is
and what is not
come together
blindingly clear

Raúl Gómez Jattin / A Small Elegy

Raúl Gómez Jattin

A SMALL ELEGY

By Raúl Gómez Jattin

Translated from Spanish by Nicolás Suescún

Raúl Gómez Jattin / Pequeña elegía

Why remain a tree
if this two-year summer
tears away my leaves and my flowers
Why remain a tree
if the wind no longer sings in my foliage
if my birds migrate to other places
Why remain a tree
without inhabitants
besides those hanged ones that dangle
from my branches
like rotten fruit in Autumn

Raúl Gómez Jattin / The Adoring God

Raúl Gómez Jattin



THE ADORING GOD

By Raúl Gómez Jattin 

Translated from Spanish by Nicolás Suescún

Raúl Gómez Jattin / El dios que adora

I am a god in my town and my valley
not because they adore me    But because I adore myself
Because I bow before anyone who gives me
a few granadillas or offers me a smile
Or because I go where the harsh people live
to beg for a coin or a shirt and they give it to me
Because I watch the sky with the eyes of a hawk
and I name it in my verses   Because I am alone
Because I slept seven months in a hammock
and five on the sidewalks of a city
Because I look askance at riches
but not with hatred   Because I love those who love me
Because I know how to grow orange trees and vegetables
even under the noon sun  Because I have a godfather
and I baptized all of his children and blessed his marriage
Because I am not good in a known manner
Because I love birds and the rain washing my soul
in the open   Because I  was born in May
Because my mother abandoned me precisely
when I most needed her   Because when I am  sick
I go to the charity hospital   Because  above all
I respect only he who respects me The one that works
every day for a bitter lonely and disputed piece of bread
like these verses of mine stolen from death

Raúl Gómez Jattin / I have for you my good friend

Raúl Gómez Jattin and Milcíades Arévalo

I HAVE FOR YOU MY GOOD FRIEND
By Raúl Gómez Jattin

Translated from Spanish by Nicolás Suescún

Raúl Gómez Jattin / Yo tengo para ti mi buen amigo

I have for you my good friend
a heart of mango from the Sinú
fragant
genuine
kind and tender
(The rest of me is a wound
a no man’s land
a stone blow
a twinkling of an eye
in someone else’s night
hands that murder ghosts)
And a piece of advice
don’t ever meet me

Jorge Gaitán Durán / I know I'm alive



Noon
Saint-Rémy, 1980
Vincent van Gogh
París, Musée d'Orsay



I KNOW I’M ALIVE . . .

By Jorge Gaitán Durán

Translated from Spanish by Dina Moscovici

I know I’m alive on this beautiful day
laying beside you. It’s summer.
Heated fruits in your hand
pour their thick odor at midday.

Before we laid down here, this radiant
world didn’t exist. Never in vain
we tore away from desire
the human love that defies the stars!

I run naked towards the blue of the sea.
I return to you like I return to the sun and I knot myself in you,
I’m born in the splendor of knowing you.

I feel the sweat of the siesta.
We drink red wine. This is the feast
in which we remember death the most.

Eva Durán / The woman you loved

THE WOMAN YOU LOVED

By Eva Durán

Translated from Spanish by Anabel Torres

The woman you loved
During a night of wine
The sorceress
Who danced above you
Who kissed you in the mirror
Has satiated her
Body with music
And keeps nothing
In memory of your name
Not even the petty consolation
Of her disdain.

Eva Durán / The Perverted One

Angelicatas

THE PERVERTED ONE

By Eva Durán
Translated from Spanish by Anabel Torres

The perverted one
The good little girl in a sky-blue room
The quiet deep-rooted lover,
The night on fire turning into
Skin
The hopelessly ubiquituous
Who always leaves
Without saying goodbye
Without giving a kiss
Without admitting that she’s happy,
That she likes to be alive
That having been born suffices her,
The one who has learned to forgive
Above all things
and that precisely for that reason
Her hands are full,
That’s why she sings at dawn
That’s why she smiles when they say she’s
mad,
The one who came naked to the mango’s heart
Without a knife and fork
Closing her eyes
Chewing slowly
And the one who wakes up with you
Absent-mindedly
Because she expects nothing
Because she likes to devour you
Because she reads Fallaci
Because she
Loves you.

Eva Durán / Even if you don’t love me



EVEN IF YOU DON’T LOVE ME

By Eva Durán
Translated from Spanish by Anabel Torres

Even if you don’t love me
And don’t desire my small breasts
In your mouth
Very softly... dawn comes.

Gustavo Adolfo Garcés / Daybreak

DAYBREAK

By Gustavo Adolfo Garcés

Translated from Spanish by Nicolás Suescún

Oh!
the happy and solitary
certainty
of the first
thought
being your face

Gustavo Adolfo Garcés / Difficulties of Poetry

Drunks
by Fried Crispy
Piece done in Illustator then colored in Photoshop

DIFFICULTIES OF POETRY

By Gustavo Adolfo Garcés

Translated from Spanish by Nicolás Suescún

The idea was
to drink a bit
to be cheerful
but we got much
too drunk
and what we did
was to have too high
an opinion
of ourselves



Gustavo Adolfo Garcés / Power

Francis Bacon



POWER

By Gustavo Adolfo Garcés

Translated from Spanish by Nicolás Suescún

What will you achieve

by climbing

to that sky

that’s bleeding

Víctor Rodríguez Núñez / Entrance

ENTRANCE

By Víctor Rodríguez Núñez

I do not know by which path

but I have arrived here

To this strange site

with no houses or countryside

This naked place

from stones to soul

where the world sprouts

Perhaps you too arrive

following that path

In this life sated

with success and certainties

only error unites us

Poetry is the kingdom

of the mistaken

Cavafy / The City

Friedensreich Hundertwasse

THE CITY
By C. P. Cavafy

Translated by Edmund Keely

You said: "I'll go to another country. go to another shore,

find another city better than this one.

Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong

and my heart lies buried like something dead.

How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?

Wherever I turn, wherever I look,

I see the black ruins of my life, here,

where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally."

You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.

This city will always pursue you.

You'll walk the same streets, grow old

in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.

You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:

there's no ship for you, there's no road.

Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,

you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.