Drunk on alcohol and despair Dylan Thomas shatters the night with his howling Vallejo coughs in a Paris rooming house the night reaches across the hemisphere in Mexico Lowry hides his zoological visions in the abrasive tongues of mezcal riding the screech of a freight train Kerouac between pukes sings hoarse praises for California's sour wine Bukowski slips and falls in the dazzling night of Sunset Boulevard in the back room of an all-night pharmacy Carver opens a bottle of bootleg liquor while an old lady with a silly little dog waits for the potion that will calm her torments at this small hour of the morning maybe someone is wondering what's happening under the burning sun of the southern regions In the Far East pale in the moonlight in a cage lit by a blinding light Pound mutters words his jailers don't understand in a Cuernavaca graveyard Michaux enveloped in night flies high on substances oblivious to the magic of the place in a city that doesn't know him Julio Huasi decides to yield to the darkness by his own hand others stop the precise rhythms of the heart with the tip of a bottle In a city famous for the loveliness of the sway of its women as they walk on the beach someone sipping his caipira with a smile on his lips soaks in the dark aroma of sugar the rancid perfume of hairy armpits the illusory fragrance of a flower fulsome flavor of desire from Montevideo we observe the heavy sky the mercurial modes of time care nothing for the charm of your desires they move relentlessly over mountains oceans plains they cross to the east dawn in the west they will subject each one of of those who try to penetrate the poles of the radiation to the petty questions of daily existence Perlongher travels in an automobile that glides through the suburbs his destiny a chapel where before the altar in the circle of sacred energy before the eyes of the bleeding lamb of God a priest administers hope yes and..... what gifts what words he sucks in in his desperate disillusion in what waters does he nourish that hasty faith Our Father... who art in the most holy heights he begins the useless invocation his only consolation the voraciousness of God strange voices To the wind in the river in the river to the wind ghosts The one who chooses in the poverty of exile the name of Sebastian Melmoth remembers a loving wife and children yearns for a world he cannot return to childishly missing the roundness of his collection of fine porcelain the color of London under autumn light he writes in his notebook: I have the tranquility of lost objects I am a man who has lived his time in symbolic relation to art and is not ashamed when someone behind him in the street mutters or shouts Fingal O'Flahertie o o o ooooooohhhhhh he repeats softly gently: pain is a moment prolonged too long Nor will he imagine as coming from Joyce the pun tossed out in the Ballad of Persse O'Reilly: Fingal Mac Oscar Onesine Bargearse Boniface who could come up with such words for Oscar Wilde arse as big as a barge Boniface meaning what? The shadows their geometric perfection remain who or what erodes the enveloping form who or what will carve in history the marks of an alien chastity Does anyone remember the eclipse of Lu Tung’s moon the emperor representing the sky the vision of his eyes dying out in earthly beauty the moon the nocturnal eye of the sky devoured by the tremendous mouth of the sun and of the terrible execution of this poet who loved allegories in the year of our Lord 835 Have they nothing to say asks a foreign voice The great circle turns on its own axis The first lights of dawn penetrate deep cavernous folds The glowing images repeat themselves again and again On a burnished surface what can they say in Mexico in Montevideo in Buenos Aires that has not been sung in the West in Venezuela in huge Brazil in the dead lost Orient where the Magi search the firmament for the luminous trajectory of a star the revelation of the secret Auden on the eve of a new year proposes a toast and lifts his glass I lift he says in the bitter aroma of the liquor the weight of the planets the mutability of the universe Let us not seek in the past illusory Edens nor even less the safety of hierarchies the world will present us with the imagined ruins Rimbaud will drag his golden gangrene The body of Alejandra her dark lips of quiet blood won’t utter the last word
In Memoriam Yeyé Vienna, April, 1994
Ángeles caídos
“city of fallen angels” Pintada mural / Silver Lake / L.A., CA, EEUU
Borracho de alcohol y desesperación Dylan con sus aullidos estremece la noche Vallejo tose en un conventillo parisino la noche se extiende en los hemisferios en México Lowry oculta sus visiones zoológicas en las abrasivas lenguas del mezcal viajando sobre el chirrido de un tren de carga Kerouac canta ronco vómito tras vómito las bondades del agrio vino californiano Bukowski resbala y cae en la noche brillante del Sunset Boulevard en la trastienda de una farmacia de turno Carver abre una botella de licor clandestino mientras una vieja con un perro ridículo espera el preparado que tranquilizará sus tormentas a esta hora de la madrugada quizás alguien se esté preguntando qué sucede bajo el ardiente sol de los parajes sureños en el extremo de Oriente pálido de luna En una jaula iluminada por reflectores Pound murmura palabras que sus carceleros no comprenden Michaux cubierto de noche en un cementerio de Cuernavaca se deja volar en sustancias sin entender la magia del paisaje en una ciudad que lo desconoce Julio Huasi decide por mano propia abrazar las tinieblas otros en el pico de una botella apagan los exactos compases del corazón En un sitio donde todos cantan la belleza de las ondulantes mujeres junto al mar alguien bebe risueño su caipira absorbe el oscuro aroma del azúcar el rancio perfume de pobladas axilas la imaginada fragancia de una flor pleno sabor deseado nosotros desde Montevideo observamos el cielo cargado Los modos cambiantes del tiempo no conocen la amabilidad de tus deseos se desplazan imperturbables a través de las cordilleras los océanos las llanuras cruzan el poniente someterán a cada uno de aquellos que intenten penetrar sus polos de radiación a las pequeñas obsesivas cuestiones cotidianas Perlongher viaja en un automóvil que se desliza hacia los suburbios su destino una capilla donde frente al altar en el círculo de energía otorgada ante los ojos del sangrante cordero de Dios un sacerdote administra la esperanza sí y... qué dones qué palabras mama en su desesperada desilusión en qué aguas alimenta esa fe apresurada Padre Nuestro... que estás en las sacrísimas alturas comienza la invocación inútil su único consuelo la voracidad de Dios Al viento en el río voces extrañas en el río al viento desconocidas almas en pena Aquel que elige en la pobreza del exilio el nombre de Sebastian Melmoth recuerda una esposa los hijos tan amados añora ese mundo al que no podrá regresar infantilmente recuerda la redondez de su colección de fina porcelana el color de Londres bajo la luz del otoño anota en su cuaderno: poseo la tranquilidad de los objetos perdidos/ soy un hombre que ha vivido su tiempo/ en simbólica relación con el arte/ ya no se avergüenza en las calles cuando alguien murmura a sus espaldas o grita Fingal O’Flahertie ooo ooooooohhhhh él repite en voz baja mansamente: el dolor es un momento demasiado prolongado Tampoco imaginará de Joyce el calembour lanzado en The Ballad de Persse O’Reilly: Fingal Mac Oscar Onesine Bargearse Boniface a quién se le ocurre Ortodebarcaza Carabonita Las sombras su proyección geométrica permanecen quién o qué erosiona la forma que envuelve grabará en la historia las marcas del pudor ajeno Alguien recuerda el eclipse de luna de Lu T’ung la figura del cielo el emperador la visión de sus ojos apagándose en la belleza terrenal la luna el ojo nocturno del cielo devorada por la tremenda boca del sol y de la terrible ejecución de este poeta que amó las alegorías en el 835 año del Señor No tienen nada que decir Pregunta una voz ajena El gran círculo gira sobre su propio eje Las primeras luces del alba Penetran profundos pliegues abismales Las imágenes fulgentes Se repiten Una y otra vez En la superficie bruñida Qué podrán decir en México en Montevideo en Buenos Aires que no haya sido cantado en el Occidente en Venezuela en el extenso Brasil en el muerto Oriente perdido donde los magos buscan por el firmamento la luminosa trayectoria de una estrella la develación del secreto Auden en vísperas de un nuevo año propone un brindis alza su copa elevo dice en el agrio aroma del licor el peso de los planetas la mutabilidad del universo no busquemos en el pasado edenes ilusorios menos aun la seguridad de las jerarquías el siglo nos presentará las imaginadas ruinas Rimbaud arrastrará su gangrena de oros El cuerpo de Alejandra sus oscuros labios de sangre quieta callarán la última palabra
A Yeyé in memoriam Custozzagasse 5, Viena, 1994.
Esteban Moore (Buenos Aires, 1952) Poet, essayist and translator. His eight books of poetry are included in the collection Poems (1982 - 2007) (Córdoba, 2015). His essays are collected in the volume Versiones y apropiaciones (Córdoba, 2012). His poetic translations from the English include the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, La poesía como un arte insurgente (Córdoba, 2018). In 1990 he was invited to The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute, Boulder, Colorado, where he initiated a translation project, and to Vienna, where he taught poetry and translation at the Schüle fur Dichtung in Wien. In 2005 and 2010 he gave seminars at the Escuela de Poesía de Medellín on the poetics of the Beats. In 2012 the University of Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela, awarded him the Alejo Zuloaga Order in poetry. He serves on the boards of the magazines Prometeo, published by the Medellín International Poetry Festival and Poesía, University of Carabobo, Venezuela. He has won support grants and the Poetry Prize from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, a public cultural institution run by the Argentine government.
Jo Anne Engelbert (1933) is Professor Emerita of Latin American Literature at Montclair State University where she established the Spanish Program in Translation and Interpretation. She has translated short stories, poems and essays by forty Latin American writers, including Isabel Allende, Luis Rafael Sánchez, and Ariel Dorfman Her work Return of the River by Honduran poet Roberto Sosa won the National Translation Award in 2003 from the American Literary Translators Association. In addition to articles on translation pedagogy, she has published Macedonio Fernández and the Latin American New Novel (New York University Press, 1978) and Macedonio: Selected Writings in Translation (Latitude Press, Texas, 1984). She has taught literature and translation at universities in Puerto Rico and Nicaragua. Since retirement she lives in St. Augustine, Florida and has taught poetic translation at the University of Florida at Gainesville.
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