Play On Words

Nacho Oliden

Todos, a sabiendas o no, llevamos una jitanjáfora escondida como alondra en el pecho.
REYES: Las Jitanjánforas (1929)

There are sounds we carry
Like hidden larks in our chest:
Larks that fly over underground streams.

But there’s a mystery in the noise of those streams,
As there is in a rattle,
In the tolling of bells,
In the clashing of two swords,
In the roaring beast
And in the fire’s pop and crackle.

Somewhere in those tunnels,
Those forgotten caves,
There’s an echo that still rumbles;
They are Lewis Carroll’s words:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe…

Nacho 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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