José Manuel Arango / Mountains / 3

MOUNTAINS / 3

By José Manuel Arango

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

1

With a glass in my hand, looking at the mountains,
I caress the back of my dog.

These mountains of ours
in the interior,
so familiar they are almost forgotten,
seen so much they are almost invisible,
it is not even sure that they are not
the furniture of a dream.

These sullen mountains
that become thinner,
that engross us.

Now perhaps only a manner
of the voice,
of the step,
of the gesture.


2

I like to caress them slowly following
with  my eyes
their rugged lines,
while on their backs light
imperceptibly
changes from green to blue
to violet.

I like to caress them with my eyes,
as I caress
the back of my dog with my free
hand.

José Manuel Arango / Two Poems

Cold Feet
by Krikit Haiku

TWO POEMS

By José Manuel Arango

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

I

men rush out on the streets
to celebrate the coming of night

the sound of a flute goes thinly into the ear
and the plazas are again places of festivity

where girls with bare backs that meet
the eyes of adolescent tellers

repeat the movements of an ancient
sacred dance

and in the clamor
of the fruit vendors
forgotten gods speak


II

the repeated shipwreck of the parks
at nightfall

the hour in which closed
by the graze of a somber
wing
the heart descends to cold abodes

Forough Farrokhzad / The Window



The Window

by Forough Farrokhzad

A window to see,
A window to hear,
A round window –
like an unending well:

It should reach–
to the garnet core of Earth.

And it should release–
into its gentle, lightly air.

A window that loads lonely, little hands–
with the nocturnal scent of generous stars.

A window that invites the sun–
to the glacial exile of the blooms.
A window,
A window is enough for me.

Tove Ditlevsen / The Labyrinth of Memory

Tove Ditlevsen

TOVE DITLEVSEN

THE LABYRINTH OF MEMORY

Tove Ditlevsen / New Translation Shares The Voice Of A Poet Who Wrote As Intensely As She Lived

Lise Busk-Jensen 

20 January 2012

Tove Ditlevsen (1917-1976) wrote poems from the age of ten; in 1937 she managed to get one of them published in Vild Hvede (Wild Wheat), a journal for young writers and artists. The title of the poem is “Til mit døde Barn” (To My Dead Child), the form is traditional, eight four-line stanzas with end-rhyme, but the content is striking: a mother talking to her dead baby boy as she lays him in the coffin.

Ungermann, Arne (1902-1981): Book cover. Pigesind by Tove Ditlevsen. 1939. Photo: Geert Nicolai Vestergaard-Hansen

The poem was incorporated in the debut collection Pigesind (1939; A Girl’s Mind), which received excellent reviews. The readers viewed Tove Ditlevsen’s poems as beautiful and natural expressions of genuine femininity: no one seemed surprised that a nineteen-year-old publishing her first poem had chosen so morbid a subject as a stillborn baby – without apparently having any first-hand experience of either motherhood or death.

Til mit døde Barn (To My Dead Child)

I never heard your little voice.
Your pale lips never smiled at me.
And the kick of your tiny feet
Is something I will never see.

We have been together many days,
all my sustenance I shared with you.
You and I can surely not be blamed,
for all our weakness, yours and mine.

Infant child, you now will never feel
the heady pulse of life for good or bad. –
’Tis for the best, sleep soundly darling boy,
for we must yield to those of greater strength.

See how I kiss your icy hand,
happy to be with you yet awhile,
silently I kiss you, weeping not, –
though the tears are burning in my throat.

When the men bring in the casket white,
you need not fear, for mother will come with you,
I will dress you in your tiny silken shirt
for the first time – and the very last.

I will make believe you lived some days,
I will pretend that you have smiled at me,
and your little mouth has suckled at my breast,
so not a single drop remains.

How heavy is the footfall of the casket-bearers,
to no avail my laden breast awaits you.
Infant child, my golden now dead dream. –
Your tiny feet I kiss – and weep.

Gustavo Adolfo Garcés / Pupema

El rostro del durmiento
Barranquilla, 2011
Fotografía de Triunfo Arciniegas

PUPEMA

By Gustavo Adolfo Garcés
BIOGRAPHY

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

I wonder what became of Pupema
the alcoholic
the bum
who deliriously told us
about a night during the war
when three soldiers
with their heads bandaged
played dominoes
while the chaplain
and the musicians of the regiment
sang and got drunk
and an enemy soldier
tied to a tree
looked at the quagmire

I wonder what became of Pupema

Gustavo Adolfo Garcés / Invisible Stars

INVISIBLE STARS

By Gustavo Adolfo Garcés
BIOGRAPHY

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

There are nights
in which one discovers
the stairs
the door
and the lock

but the room
remains secret

José Manuel Arango / Whose whose job it is to wash the streets

THOSE WHOSE JOB IT IS

TO WASH THE STREETS

By José Manuel Arango

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

LOS QUE TIENEN POR OFICIO LAVAR LAS CALLES

Those whose job it is to wash the streets
(they get up early, so God helps them)
find on the stones, every other day, puddles of blood

And they also wash them: it is their job
Fast
so that the first passers-by don’t step on them

José Manuel Arango / Hölderlin



Deangel
On A Blue Cross



HÖLDERLIN

By José Manuel Arango

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

perhaps madness
is the punishment

for he who violates a secret precinct
and looks in the eyes of a terrible
animal

José Manuel Arango / Dance With Me, Girl

Shadow Dancer
by Michon

DANCE WITH ME, GIRL

By José Manuel Arango

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

                                 (after Anacreon)

DANZA CONMIGO, MUCHACHA

The girl, with the hair almost blue
and large, sparkling eyes
waves, excited by the music.

She spins round her slender hips,
she shakes her bare arms,
she wiggles her bosom.

I have been, with a glass in my hand,
lingeringly watching her dance.

Until I make up my mind and get up
and stretch out my arm inviting her,
and muttering, in the uproar of the music,
under my breath:

Dance with me, girl.
I will not let you see my loose
and brittle teeth,
or notice my hoary temples.

And she turns her smiling eyes
and comes dancing in my direction
and passes by my side and

goes to embrace an adolescent
with splendid teeth.

José Manuel Arango / As if crossing a river

Starry Night Body Painting

X

By José Manuel Arango

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

as if crossing a river
I undress beside her body

risky
like a river at night

José Manuel Arango / About the Boy Born in The Whorehouse

Nicoleta Tomás Caravia

ABOUT THE BOY BORN

IN THE WHOREHOUSE

By José Manuel Arango

Translated by Nicolás Suescún

ACERCA DEL NIÑO NACIDO EN LA CASA DE PUTAS

About the boy born
in the whorehouse

And if in the whorehouse a child is born

And if the men
when they finish undressing
to fornicate at night

hear him cry at the back of the house
or of their empty heart