3 Translations of Gilberto Owen by Jack Chelgren
Sombra
Mi estrella—óyela correr—se apagó hace años. Nadie sabría ya de dónde llega su luz, entre los dedos de la distancia. Te he hablado ya, Natanael, de los cuerpos sin sombra. Mira, ahora, mi sombra sin cuerpo. Y el eco de una voz que no suena. Y el agua de ese río que, arriba, está ya seco, como al cerrarle de pronto la llave al surtidor, el chorro mutilado sube un instante todavía. Como este libro entre tus manos, Natanael.
Shadow
My star—hear it run—went out years ago. Now no one would know where its light comes from, between the fingers of distance. I have told you, Nathanael, of bodies without shadow. Now look: my shadow without a body. And the echo of a soundless voice. And the water of that river above, which is dry now, like when someone cuts off a fountain at the tap, the mutilated jet still rises a moment. Like this book between your hands, Nathanael.
Viento
Llega, no se sabe de dónde, a todas partes. Sólo ignora el juego del orden, maestro en todos. Paso la mano por su espalda y se alarga como un gato. —Su araña es el rincón; le acecha, disfrazado de nada, de abstracción geométrica. Parece que no es nada su arrecife al revés. Y llega el viento y en él se estrella, ráfaga a ráfaga, deshojado. Queda un montón de palabras secas en los rincones de los libros.
Me salí a la tarde, a donde todas las mujeres posaban para Victorias de Samotracia. Las casas cantaban La trapera, precisamente. Las norias de viento ensayaban su código de señales, que sólo yo entendía. Por eso todos me preguntaban la hora. Llevaba atada de mi muñeca la cometa del sol.
En aquel paseo conocí también a la Hermana Ana, conserje de un hotel, encargada de abrir todas las puertas, incansablemente, para ser guillotinada por la última. A Barba Azul ya lo llamaban cielo.
Wind
It arrives, who knows from where, all around. A master of every game, only ignorant of the rules. I run my hand along its back, and it stretches like a cat.—Its spider is the corner; it creeps up, disguised as nothing, as geometric abstraction. It does look like nothing, an inside-out reef. And the wind arrives and crashes in it, gust by gust, plucked. There’s a mountain of dry words in the corners of books.
I went out in the evening, where all the women were posing for Nikes of Samothrace. The houses were singing “La Trapera,” precisely. The wind wheels were practicing their code of signals, which only I understood. That’s why everyone was asking me what time it was. I wore the sun tied to my wrist as a kite.
On that walk I also met Sister Ana, concierge of a hotel, charged with opening all the doors tirelessly, only to be guillotined by the last. They already called Bluebeard darling.
Interior
Las cosas que entran por el silencio empiezan a llegar al cuarto. Lo sabemos, porque nos dejamos olvidados allá adentro los ojos. La soledad llega por los espejos vacíos; la muerte baja de los cuadros, rompiendo sus vitrinas de museo; los rincones se abren como granadas para que entre el grillo con sus alfileres; y, aunque nos olvidemos de apagar la luz, la oscuridad da una luz negra más potente que eclipsa a la otra.
Pero no son éstas las cosas que entran por el silencio, sino otras más sutiles aún; si nos hubiéramos dejado olvidada también la boca, sabríamos nombrarlas. Para sugerirlas, los preceptistas aconsejan hablar de paralelas que, sin dejar de serlo, se encuentran y se besan. Pero los niños que resuelven ecuaciones de segundo grado se suicidan siempre en cuanto llegan a los ochenta años, y preferimos por eso mirar sin nombres lo que entra por el silencio, y dejar que todos sigan afirmando que dos y dos son cuatro.
Interior
The things that come in through the silence are beginning to reach the room. We know because we left our eyes in there. Loneliness arrives through empty mirrors; death climbs down from paintings, breaking the glass; corners open like pomegranates and welcome crickets with their pins; and although we neglected to turn off the lights, the darkness’s black light is so strong that the other one is eclipsed.
But these aren’t the things that come in through the silence—they are other, subtler things; if we’d left our mouths behind too, we could figure out their names. To evoke them, experts advise speaking of parallels which, without ever deviating, meet each other and kiss. But children who solve math problems when they’re in second grade always wind up killing themselves as soon as they turn eighty, and that’s why we prefer to look namelessly at what comes in through the silence, and let the rest keep affirming that two and two are four.
These poems originally appeared in the book Línea (1930). They have been translated from Obras by Gilberto Owen, published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Gilberto Owen (1904–1952) was born in El Rosario, a small town in Sinaloa, and died in Philadelphia. Associated with the Contemporáneos, a group of avant-garde writers in 1920s Mexico City, Owen wrote poetry, fiction, essays, and translations. In 1928, he moved to New York City to work at the Mexican Embassy, and spent much of the rest of his life abroad, living in Quito, Lima, Bogotá, and finally Philadelphia. His books include the short novels La llama fría (1925) and Novela como nube (1928) and the poetry collections Línea (1930) and Perseo vencido (1948).
Jack Chelgren is a poet and essayist from Seattle. He is working on a dissertation about the influence of film comedy on literary modernism in the Americas. Jack's poetry has appeared in Hot Pink Mag, Bedfellows, Tyger Quarterly, Pider, and SPAM, and his critical writing has appeared in Tripwire, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Chicago Review. He is the nonfiction editor of Chicago Review.