Inner city by Elvira Hernández

Ignacio Oliden

Poem taken from Elvira Hernández, Santiago Waria, Cuarto Propio, Santiago de Chile, 1992.


Ciudad interior


No puedo ser otra que la pensativa del Patio de los
Callados, la llorosa del Parque de los Reyes,
la olvidadiza
                                              ni otra
que la que recoge papeles con sangre
                                                                  ni
aquella que no quiere el balazo solipsista
               porque nada desaparecerá

A ratos soy la misma, la Una, la del espejo
que camina con una araña en el ojal
                                                                 la sombra
que se pegó al hombre que dobló la esquina
y duele su cuello guillotinado.

Inner city


I cannot be other than the pensive one in the Patio
de los Callados, the weepy in the Parque de los Reyes,
the absentminded  
                                                 nor other than
the one who picks up blood stained papers
                                                                  nor
the one who doesn't want the solipsistic bullet
               because nothing shall disappear

At times I am the same, the One, the one in the mirror
who walks with a spider in the buttonhole
                                                                 the shadow
that stuck to the man who went down the corner
and grieves his guillotined neck

Elvira Hernández was born in Lebu in 1951. She has published fifteen books of poetry, including ¡Arre! Halley ¡Arre! (1986); Carta de Viaje(1989), El orden de los días (1991), Santiago Waria (1992), Cuaderno de deportes (2010), Pájaros desde mi ventana (2018. Círculo de críticos de arte Award), Pena Corporal (2018) and La Bandera de Chile (1991), a paradigmatic work on dictatorial processes, which has been translated and published in France, Italy and the United States. Her work has been anthologized in the volumes Actas Urbe (2014), Los trabajos y los días (2016) and Zona de desvíos (2018). In 2018, she received the Jorge Teillier National Poetry Prize, and the outstanding Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Prize, both for her literary career.

Ignacio Oliden

Ignacio Oliden (Buenos Aires, 1997) is a poet, translator and literary critic. He is Co-Editor in Chief of the literary magazine La Piccioletta Barca, and is a member of the editorial comittee of Buenos Aires Poetry (magazine and publishing house). He also participates as a regular critic in the Culture Supplement of the newspaper Perfil (Argentina). His work has appeared in print in newspapers, anthologies, and literary magazines in various countries, and his poetry has been translated into English, Italian and Greek. Among others, he has translated into Spanish the work of John M. Synge, Carl Sandburg, Anna de Noailles, and Marcantonio Flaminio, and he has published a book-length anthology of the poets of the Harlem Renaissance (Poetas del Renacimiento de Harlem, 2023, in collaboration with Juan Arabia). Mester de Juglaría, his first poetry compilation, will be published by Buenos Aires Poetry in 2023.

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