Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
This work comprises in an excerpt from the anthology on contemporary Spanish female poets entitled Las Diosas Blancas. Madrid, 1985. Copyright Ed. Ramon Buenaventura. Hiperion. This is an original and unpublished English version of the original poem written in Spanish. Translators Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arrospide would like to thank Casa del Traductor, in Tarazona and the British Literary Translation Association, East Anglia University Campus.
From this Spanish anthology –compiled by the well-known scholar and translator Mr. Ramón Buenaventura, whom we contacted earlier– a few selected authors were chosen for our joint translation work: Amalia Iglesias: Te buscare para decirte (I Will Find You To Tell You) , Ana Rossetti: Triunfo de Artemis sobre Volupta (Triumph Of Artemis Over Volupta) and Isolda (Isolda) , Blanca Andreu: Para Olga (For Olga) , Isla Correyero: Los Pajaros (Small Birds), Amparo Amoros: Midas (Midas) and Criaturas del gozo (Creatures Of Joy) , Rosalia Vallejo: Horno en llamarada (A Furnace In Flames) , Maria del Carmen Pallares: Sisargas (Sisargas), Margarita Arroyo: Era el mar lejos del mar ( It Was Sea Away From Sea).
We would like to thank Mr. Ramón Buenaventura and the above name poets, in advance, and let them rest assured that their work is protected by a legal Creative Commons Licence, by virtue of which the above named translators are willing to provide excerpts from their original translation work, provided that readers agree to use it under the terms of such licence. We strongly recommend reading the entire work and the poets’, who have continued evolving during these decades.
For Olga
Girl of delicately golden tresses,
girl obsession of the virgin stork
with tufts of damask feathers
that splashed death,
of the crazy stork with wings
of golden strychnine
which flew off leaving you with a corporeal perfume,
a neat smell of lilacs, already golden and rude dreams.
Girl who obeyed the apostle scops owl
and the murky look of real eyes,
with puerile drawings of Selene and the rest.
Girl of non-existent concert,
girl of cruel sonatines and malevolent books by Tom Wolfe,
or witch lace to bandage wounded deer ulcers,
of fallow deer gazing from mystical knolls,
or places like that.
Pluperfect girl, girl we never were,
tell it now,
tell it now, you, now that it’s so late,
spell out the sombre tempo,
spell me the tear
the purple silhouette of the mare,
the foal that lay at your feet waking up foam.
Abandoned recite the words of yesteryear,
shadow of Juan Ramón: Solitude, I am true to you.
Scornful recite the words of yesteryear,
but not that courtly verse,
don’t talk of queens white as a lily,
snow and Joan burning
and interwoven melancholy
of dear Villon,
speak clear verbs where you can drink the saddest liquid,
jars of sea and relief, now that it is already so late,
raise your tiny voice and summon up the song:
tell life that I remember her,
I remember her.
This small death is definitely lost in a nascent forest,
the shoot of an arrested comet,
that nobody saves
young volcano of novice gust and bones
made of bird, eyelid and thinking wave
that no stella book
no book painted with Italien solar gold,
no book of lava
will seal for me.
And so death so many times written
becomes radiant,
and i can talk
of desire and the unseeing beam of the lighthouse,
of the chimerical corpse of the crew.
And so death
becomes the story
of that mute girl who hanged herself
with boreal harp’s strings
because of nuptial poison on her tongue.
I definitely get lost cradling litters of rare epitaphs,
girl of golden tresses,
I will tell life that you remember her,
I will tell death that you remember her
that you remember their lines conjuring your shadow,
that you remember their habits and tempo solo,
bitter laurel, deep bramble, brazen error and sorrowful hordes,
while Ephesian cats are crying at my feet,
while lost silver cats
go curdling their ancestry in genealogical cypress and poplar,
I will tell life to remember you,
to remember me
now,
when I rise with loops and hair strings
up to the disaster of my head
up to the disaster of my twenty years,
up to the disaster, lammergeier light.
De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall, 1980
Para Olga
Niña de greyes delicadamente doradas,
niña obsesión de la cigüeña virgen
con mechones de plumas de damasco
que salpicaban muerte,
de la cigüeña loca con alones
de estricnina dorada
que viajaba dejándote un corpóreo perfume,
un pulcro olor a lilas, ya dorados y rudos sueños.
Niña que obedeció al autillo apóstol
y a la mirada turbia de los ojos reales,
con pueriles dibujos de Selene y demás.
Niña de inexistente concierto,
niña de crueles sonatinas y malévolos libros de Tom Wolfe,
o de encajes de brujas para vendar las llagas de los corzos heridos,
de ciervos vulnerados asomados en los oteros místicos,
en los sitios así.
Niña pluscuamperfecta, niña que nunca fuimos,
dilo ahora,
dilo ahora tú, ahora que es tan tarde,
pronuncia el torvo adagio,
pronúnciame la lágrima,
la silueta morada de la yegua,
la del potro que se tendió a tus pies despertando la espuma.
Declama abandonada las palabras de antaño,
sombra de Juan Ramón: Soledad, te soy fiel.
Declama desdeñosa las palabras de antaño,
pero no aquella estrofa cortesana,
no hables de reinas blancas como un lirio,
nieves y Juana ardiendo,
y la melancolía entretejida
del querido Villon,
sino los verbos claros donde poder beber el líquido más triste,
jarros de mar y alivio, ahora que ya es tarde,
alza párvula voz y eco albacea y canta:
Dile a la vida que la recuerdo,
que la recuerdo.
Definitivamente se extravía en un bosque naciente esta muerte pequeña,
el brote del cometa detenido,
esto que nadie salva,
joven volcán de huesos y ráfaga novicia
hecha de pájaro y de párpado y de ola pensante
que ningún libro estela,
ningún libro estofado de oro solar de Italia,
ningún libro de lava
viene a sellar por mí.
Y así la muerte tantas veces escrita
se me vuelve radiante,
y puedo hablar
del deseo y del lacre rubio y ciego en los faros,
del cadáver quimera de la tripulación.
Y así la muerte
se convierte en historia
de aquella niña muda que se ahorcó
con las cuerdas boreales del arpa
porque tenía en la lengua un veneno nupcial.
Definitivamente me extravío acunando camadas de raros epitafios,
niña de grey dorada,
diré a la vida que la recuerdas,
diré a la muerte que la recuerdas,
que recuerdas sus líneas conjurando tu sombra,
que recuerdas sus hábitos y su carácter solo,
su laurel ácido, su profunda zarza, su descarado error y sus hordas dolidas,
mientras gatos efesios van llorando a mis pies,
mientras gatas perdidas plateadas
van cuajando su alcurnia en ciprés genealógico y en álamo,
diré a la vida que te recuerde,
que me recuerde,
ahora,
cuando me alzo con cuerdas capilares y bucles
hasta el desastre de mi cabeza,
hasta el desastre de mis veinte años,
hasta el desastre, luz quebrantahuesos.
“De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall”1980
AUTHOR: BLANCA ANDREU (1959)
Bibliography:
– De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall (awarded the 1980 Adonais International Poetry Prize) (Ediciones Rialp, Madrid, 1981).
– Báculo de Babel (awarded the Fernando Rielo International Poetry Prize) (Hiperión, Madrid, 1983).
– Elphistone (Visor Libros, Madrid, 1988)
– El sueño oscuro: (poesía reunida, 1980-1989) (Hiperión, Madrid, 1994).
Blanca Andreu (born 1959 A Coruña) is a Spanish poet. She grew up in Orihuela, where her family still resides, and attended El Colegio de Jesus-Maria de San Agustin, followed by studies in philology in Murcia. At age 20, she moved to Madrid without formally completing her education. Here, she met Francisco Umbral, who introduced her to the literati of the city.
In 1980, she was awarded the Premio Adonáis de Poesía for her work entitled, De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall. Her use of surrealism is considered the beginning of the Post-Modern Generation. Her later work has tried to shy away from the surrealist tendencies of her early pieces.[2]
In 1985, she married novelist Juan Benet. After he died in 1993, she returned to La Coruña where she now lives a semi-reclusive life.
Awards
1980: Premio Adonáis de Poesía
1981: Premio de Cuentos Gabriel Miró
1982: Premio Mundial de Poesía Mística, Fernando Rielo
1982: Premio Ícaro de Literatura
2001: Premio Internacional de Poesía Laureà Mela
Translators:
Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a poet and translator. She has published seven poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar, Presencia en el Misterio,En el Oido del Viento, Hormigas en Diáspora , Jaccuzzi, and Valle Tiétar, as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and in both national and foreign magazines. She has received numerous awards.
All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae, a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
The spotted hyena aka the laughing hyena both male and female genitals are strikingly similar
Natural History Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) ab uno animali sepulchra erui inquisitione corporum
– it was more jackals that were prone to digging bodies out of shallow graves and eating them Robert Graves White Goddess – The Jackals, sacred to Anubis, Guardian of the Dead, because they fed on corpse like flesh and had mysterious nocturnal habits.
the hyena is of feline descent
hyenas were hermaphrodites bearing both male and female organs Aristotle declared in the Historia animalium “this is untrue.”
medieval bestiaries drew a moral lesson from the depravity of beasts excluded from Noah’s ark in 1614 God had only saved the purely bred hyenas were reconstituted after the flood through the unnatural union of a dog and cat
female hyenas virtually indistinguishable from males their clitoris enlarged and extended to form an organ of the same size shape and position as the male penis can also be erected
high foetal androgen levels responsible for male sexual facies in adult female spotted hyenas
an unfair stereotype of hyenas in reality fascinating intelligent even beautiful creatures
Disney animators sketches for The Lion King the trio of hyenas in the movie reinforce the common stereotype of hyenas as cowardly skulking lowlifes
Ernest Hemingway, – Fisi, the Hyena, hermaphroditic self-eating devourer of the dead, trailer of calving cows, ham-stringer, potential biter-off of your face at night while you slept, sad yowler, camp-follower, stinking, foul, with jaws that crack the bones the lion leaves, belly dragging, loping away on the brown plain –
“Hyenas” movie an urban legend account of human encounters and attacks by a sub-culture of predatory cryptohuman hyenas shape-shifting human-like creatures prowl the rural back roads and forests of North America thought to exist by cryptozoologists
folklore and sightings persist even as mainstream science denies their existence
Rudyard Kipling: The wise Hyenas come out at eve to take account of our dead,… they know the dead are safer meat than the weakest thing alive… and tug the corpse to light, the pitiful face is shown again, an instant ere they close in.
UK Teaching Resources TES Edwin Morgan enters the mind of the hyena English National 5 Poetry he describes its patient menacing personality Morgan adopts the persona of a hyena I sing and am the slave of darkness, my place is to pick you clean and leave your bones to the wind.
a hunters poem from Lesotho description shifts to the first person singular to give the hyena’s own words I growl being a poor body, I am small, I am hunched up like the elephant…
hyena of the Mmankala of Kone-land a group whose symbol is the hyena when it says ngou! it devours even man
a Yoruba hunting poem the hyena is regarded as the ultimate scavenger there being nothing it won’t eat oral poetry from Africa Hyena who is there when the mourner buries the corpse eats fat and bone, scabbard and hide
spotted hyena strongest jaws in proportion to body size across the entire mammal kingdom cunning hunting tactics nocturnal nature nefarious reputations frontal cortex of their brains thought to regulate social intelligence
the largest of the other three species brown striped and aardwolf spotted hyenas are among Africa’s most vocal animals
All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals, Collected Poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mistand the recently published Tesserae, a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
Author’s comment: this is a technically constructed work from texts both edited & derived from Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens & Homo Deus with interpolations and additions made by the author (2017)
*
we invent them to serve us controlling our existence
to create virtual worlds with hells and heavens
myths domesticate science
fiction and reality blur shaping our reality
an assembly of biochemical algorithms flash fade flash fade
*
spinning
*
epidemic is business economy grows
human experience as any other item
in the supermarket a designable product
intelligence mandatory consciousness optional
individuals = dividuals
in carbon or silicon
*
owned by imaginary gods
who what you are how to turn you on and off
*
beyond control
beyond
the opaque wall
algorithms can command empire
or an upper class ruling the planet
if words could make dreams come true
a simultaneous instant in the brain of seven billion
emerges the beautiful androgynous face of the serial killer
wheat eater bread winner
*
& the deluge of data
millions of nano-robots coursing humankind’s veins
an Orwellian police state
splits into
the chosen hi-tech Noah’s Ark
a new religion information flow
Datism
A Brave New World
*
to merge or not to merge
the human genome as a digital processor
where overwhelming data
garbles the message in dystopian double talk
will the defeaters prevail
or cometh utopia from outer space
our post human descendants
*
do as you would be done by Datism
as we condemned the mammoth to oblivion
your every action
but where no human can follow or need to understand
in the matrix the inter net of all things
*
where has the power gone
the cosmic data God draweth nigh
the great flow
to maximise to plug you in voters of the world unite
a colossus astride this narrow world
free market big brother
watches over every breath you take
invisible hand that flies in the night
*
between laboratory & museum
voice of a million ancestors
a ripple in the cosmic data flow
shifts homo centric view to data centric view
knowing us better than we know ourselves
*
forager
scavenger of carrion follower in fear & flight
big brained
Neanderthal Denisovan Sapiens
what drove you for 2 million years
a big bum?
*
what bound
small divergent groups of differing tongue & taboo
into the framework of humankind
but fiction
collective myths woven into our reality
from money to the nation state
imprisoned
by the archetypes
we’ve identified them with a virtual reality of cartoon molecules
All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals, Collected Poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mistand the recently published Tesserae, a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
los escombrados descampados que ahora son penumbra en el mostrador
Sin embargo, tú sigues viendo
el horizonte con su sombra
allí donde hoy hay un garaje.
Entre llaves y llantas,
entre motores y carrocerías
entre este mono azul y el suelo gris
aún huyen por las piedras los lagartos,
aún deja el caracol su rastro en la escombrera.
Florecen los almendros,
los trigales se elevan:
regresas con un olor a cardo y cicatriz,
vaho de miel,
apenas fragmentos de un azogue
ardidos en la hoguera.
La puerta del garaje se ha quedado abierta:
te asomas absorta a tu costado,
te quedas ahí, quieta, “respirando el verano”,
recordando,
respirando, recordando
la canícula secreta,
olvidando, mirando, quieta:
resbala una libélula
entre manos grasientas,
cae una tuerca,
cantan
¿quién canta?
llaves, llantas, ruedas
y unos niños que saltan
al estupor de piedra en piedra.
Correr sin caerse entre los escombros.
Correr deprisa, muy deprisa,
saltar, correr, cantar,
correr
antes de que todo desaparezca,
antes de que se acabe el verano,
antes de que ya solo quede
este garaje,
este vaho, este cristal,
este hombre rodeado de llaves,
aceites, llantas, tuercas,
piezas del velatorio de tu infancia.
Qué tarde se ha hecho:
aunque hemos sorteado los escombros,
cruzado los almendros, atravesado el trigal,
aunque estamos sudorosos y sin aliento,
la ciudad ha llegado antes,
ha llegado más lejos,
más deprisa, más dónde:
apenas un hilo sobre el cristal,
un puñado de azogue sobre el vidrio.
Es otra la ciudad
y entender es extranjero.
***
Madrid, 1973
And if the city was otherwise,
“just haze on crystal”.
just a handful of quicksilver on the glass?
But understanding is alien;
you need to step beside your side,
abandon the familiar breath:
the one that with its soul of smoke
knits the absorbed calendar days;
the one that threads the horizon´s shadow
through the pupil of time;
the one that holds
with pin heads of sand between its fingers
the walls of childhood,
the streets that are no more, the hours
already gone,
the dumping tips that are now twilight on the countertop.
Yet still you continue to see
the horizon with its shadow
where today a garage stands.
Between spanners and tyres,
between motors and bodyworks,
between a blue boiler suit and a grey floor
where lizards still dart amongst the stones,
where a snail still leaves its trail on the dump.
Almond trees flourish,
wheat fields rise up:
you return with a smell of thistle and scratches,
honey dew,
just fragments of quicksilver
burnt at the bonfire.
The garage door has remained open:
absorbed you peer into your side,
you remain there, still, “breathing the summer”,
remembering,
breathing, remembering
the secret midsummer heat
Forgetting, looking, still:
a dragonfly glides
between greasy hands,
a screw drops,
they sing,
who sings?
spanners, tyres, wheels
and children hop scotching
amazement from stone to stone.
Run without stumbling over the rubble.
Run fast, very fast,
skip, run, sing,
run
before everything vanishes,
before summer is over,
before only
this garage
this haze, this glass
remain,
this man surrounded by spanners,
oils, tyres, screws,
pieces of your childhood´s wake.
How late it´s grown:
even though we´ve avoided the dump,
crossed by the almond trees, passed through the wheat field,
even though we are sweaty and breathless,
the city has arrived before,
has arrived more far,
more quick, more where:
just a thread on the crystal,
a handful of quicksilver on the glass.
The city is otherwise
and understanding is alien.
Guadalupe Grande was born in Madrid in 1965. She has a Bachelor degree in Social Anthropology. Published poetry books: El libro de Lilit, (Renacimiento, awarded the 1995 Rafael Alberti Award, 1995), La llave de niebla (Calambur, 2003), Mapas de cera (Poesía Circulante, Málaga, 2006 and La torre degli Arabeschi, Milán, 2009), Hotel para erizos (Calambur, 2010) and Métier de crhysalide (an anthology, translated by Drothèe Suarez y Juliette Gheerbrant, Alidades, Évian-les-Bains, 2010).
As a literary critic, she has published in cultural journals and magazines, such as El Mundo, El Independiente, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, El Urogallo, Reseña and others.
In 2008 she was awarded the Valle Inclán grant for literary creation in the Academia de España in Rome.
In the publishing and cultural management areas, she has worked in institutions such as the Complutense University of Madrid Summer Courses, Casa de América and Teatro Real. Currently she manages poetical activities in the José Hierro Popular University at San Sebastian de los Reyes, Madrid.
The poems “Ocho y media” (Half past eight) and “Madrid, 1973” belong to La llave de niebla, (Key of Mist) which has been translated into English by Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arróspide.
***
Guadalupe Grande nació en Madrid en 1965. Es licenciada en Antropología Social.
Ha publicado los libros de poesía El libro de Lilit, (Renacimiento, Premio Rafael Alberti 1995), La llave de niebla (Calambur, 2003), Mapas de cera (Poesía Circulante, Málaga, 2006 y La torre degli rabeschi, Milán, 2009), Hotel para erizos (Calambur, 2010) y Métier de crhysalide (antología en traducción de Drothèe Suarez y Juliette Gheerbrant, Alidades, Évian-les-Bains, 2010).
Como crítico literario, ha colaborado en diversos diarios y revistas culturales, como El Mundo, El Independiente, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, El Urogallo, Reseña, etcétera.
En el año 2008 obtuvo la Beca Valle Inclán para la creación literaria en la Academia de España en Roma.
En el ámbito de la edición y la gestión cultural ha trabajado en diversas instituciones como los Cursos de Verano de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, la Casa de América y el Teatro Real. En la actualidad es responsable de la actividad poética de la Universidad Popular José Hierro, San Sebastián de los Reyes, Madrid.
Los poemas “Ocho y media” y “Madrid, 1973” pertenecen a La llave de niebla y han sido traducidos al inglés por Robin Ouzman Hislop y Amparo Arróspide.
Translators:
Amparo Arróspide (Argentina) has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento, as well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines. She has translated authors such as Francisca Aguirre, Javier Díaz Gil, Luis Fores and José Antonio Pamies into English, together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, who she worked with for a period as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, at Artvilla.com a Webzine. Her translations into Spanish of Margaret Atwood (Morning in the Burned House), James Stephens (Irish Fairy Tales) and Mia Couto (Vinte e Zinco) are in the course of being published, as well as her two poetry collections Hormigas en diáspora and Jacuzzi. She takes part in festivals, recently Transforming with Poetry (Leeds) and Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).
All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals, Collected Poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mistand the recently published Tesserae, a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
Francisca Aguirre, Premio Nacional de las Letras 2018 El jurado la ha elegido “por estar su poesía (la más machadiana de la generación del medio siglo) entre la desolación y la clarividencia, la lucidez y el dolor”
Francisca Aguirre, National Literature Prize 2018. The jury chose it “because its poetry is (the most Machadian* of the generation of the half century) between desolation and clairvoyance, lucidity and pain”
Francisca Aguirre was born in 1930 in Alicante, Spain and died in Madrid in 2019, she had fled with her family to France at the end of the Spanish Civil War, where they lived in political exile. When the Germans invaded Paris in 1942, her family was forced to return to Spain, where her father, painter Lorenzo Aguirre, was subsequently murdered by Francisco Franco’s regime.
Aguirre published Ítaca (1972), currently available in English (Ithaca [2004]), when she was 42 years old. Her work has garnered much critical success, winning the Leopoldo Panero, Premio Ciudad de Irún, and Premio Galliana, among other literary prizes. Aguirre was married to the poet Félix Grande and is the mother of poet Guadalupe Grande.
Excerpts from “NANAS PARA DORMIR DESPERDICIOS”
LULLABIES TO LULL THROWN AWAYS
by FRANCISCA AGUIRRE
NANA DE LAS SOBRAS A Esperanza y Manuel Rico Vaya
canción la de las sobras, eso sí
que era una nana para dormir el hambre.
Vaya canción aquella
que cantaba mi abuela con aquella voz
que era la voz de la misericordia
disfrazada de voz angelical.
Porque la voz de mi abuela
nos cantaba la canción de las sobras.
Y nosotras, que no conocíamos el pan,
cantábamos con ella que
las sobras de pan eran sagradas,
las sobras de pan nunca se tiran.
Siempre recordaré su hermosa voz
cantando aquella nana mientras el hambre nos dormía.
**
LULLABY FOR LEFTOVERS To Esperanza and Manuel Rico
Well, a leftovers song,
that truly was a lullaby to lull hunger to sleep.
Wow, that song my grandmother sang with a voice
that was the voice of mercy
disguised as the voice of an angel.
Because my grandmother´s voice
sang for us the leftovers song.
And we, who did not know bread,
sang together with her that
bread leftovers were holy,
bread leftovers shall never be thrown away.
I will always remember her beautiful voice
singing that lullaby while hunger lulled us to sleep.
**
NANA DE LAS HOJAS CAÍDAS A Marián Hierro Casi todo lo que se pierde tiene música,
una música oculta, inolvidable.
Pero las hojas, esas criaturas parlanchinas
que son la voz de nuestros árboles,
tienen, como la luz, el agua y las libélulas
una nana secreta y soñadora.
Lo que se pierde, siempre nos deja
un rastro misterioso y cantarín.
Las hojas verdes o doradas
cantan su desamparo mientras juegan al corro.
Cantan mientras los árboles las llaman
como llaman las madres a sus hijos
sabiendo que es inútil, que han crecido
y que se han ido a recorrer el mundo.
****
LULLABY FOR FALLEN LEAVES To Marián Hierro
Almost everything which is lost has a music, a hidden, unforgettable music. But leaves, those chattering creatures who are the voices of our trees have — like light, water and dragonflies — a secret dreamy lullaby. That which is lost to us, always leaves the mysterious trace of its song. Green or golden leaves sing of their neglect as they dance their ring a ring of roses. They sing while trees call to them as mothers do calling their children knowing it is futile, as they have grown up and left to travel the world over.
**
NANA DE LAS CARTAS VIEJAS
Tienen el olor desvalido del abandono
y el tono macilento del silencio.
Son desperdicios de la memoria, residuos de dolor,
y hay que cantarles muy bajito
para que no despierten de su letargo.
En ocasiones las manos se tropiezan con ellas
y el pulso se acelera
porque notamos que las palabras
como si fueran mariposas
quieren bailar delante de nosotros
y volver a contarnos el secreto
que duerme entre sus páginas.
Son las abandonadas,
los residuos de un tiempo de desdicha,
relatan pormenores de un combate
y al rozarlas oímos el tristísimo andar
de los presos en los penales.
**
LULLABY FOR OLD LETTERS
They give off the helpless smell of neglectfulness and the emaciated tone of silence. They are memory´s cast offs, residues of pain and should be sung to in a low croon so as not to awaken them from their lethargy. Sometimes your hands chance upon them and your pulse races because we realize that words wish to dance before us as if they were butterflies and tell us again the secret sleeping inside their pages. They are the neglected, the remnants of unhappy times, recounting the details of a struggle and as we brush them we hear the saddest steps of prisoners in jails.
**
NANA DEL HUMO
La nana del humo tiene muchos detractores,
casi nadie quiere cantarla.
Muchos dicen que el humo los ahoga,
otros piensan que eso de dormir al humo
no les da buena espina,
que tiene algo de gafe.
El humo no resulta de fiar:
en cuanto asoma su perfil oscuro
todo son malas conjeturas:
se nos está quemando el bosque,
aquella casa debe de estar ardiendo.
El humo es un extraño desperdicio,
tiene muy mala prensa.
Es un abandonado,
es un incomprendido;
casi nadie recuerda que el humo es un vocero,
un triste avisador de lo que se nos avecina.
Y por eso, cuando lo escucho vocear con impotencia
yo le canto la nana del silencio
para que no se sienta solo.
**
LULLABY FOR SMOKE
The lullaby for smoke doesn´t get many supporters, almost nobody wants to sing its song. Many say smoke stifles them, others think to lull smoke to sleep makes them queasy, that it´s a bit of a jinx. Smoke is not trustworthy: as soon as it rears its dark head it conjures up conjectures — a forest fire, a house burning down. Smoke is a weird remain, it´s got bad reports. It´s a reject, it´s a misunderstood thing; almost nobody remembers smoke is a herald, a sad forwarner of what looms over us. That´s why, when I hear it calling out helplessly, I sing to it the lullaby for silence so that it doesn´t feel so lonely.
***
Translated by Amparo Arrospíde & Robin Ouzman Hislop
Amparo Arróspide (Argentina) has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento, as well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines. She has translated authors such as Francisca Aguirre, Javier Díaz Gil, Luis Fores and José Antonio Pamies into English, together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, who she worked with for a period as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, at Artvilla.com a Webzine. Her translations into Spanish of Margaret Atwood (Morning in the Burned House), James Stephens (Irish Fairy Tales) and Mia Couto (Vinte e Zinco) are in the course of being published, as well as her two poetry collections Hormigas en diáspora and Jacuzzi. She takes part in festivals, recently Transforming with Poetry (Leeds) and Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).
All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals, Collected Poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mistand the recently published Tesserae, a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
Author’s remark: edited text extracts for Circuitry are derived from Super Intelligence Chapter 9 The Controle Problem Nick Bostrom, & Paul Mudoon’s Poem Side Project & based on the thematics from Impressions of Africa by Raymond Roussel
Circuitry
The notion that information being about
a certain topic is problematic
the equivalent to a smiley-face sticker xeroxed
trillions upon trillions of times
and plastered over the galaxies any piece of information
can in principle be relevant to any topic whatsoever
depending
on the background information of the reasoner
~ ~ ~
a unicorn
may graze in the dunes
in all their vagaries and never
quite grasp the point
a given datum set contains information
not only from the domain from which it was collected
even orange and lemon moving in their own sphere
who hasn’t woken up screaming in a four poster elephant herd
but also from various circumstantial facts
such that
one might infer from a nominal knowledge base
a variety of a wide range of topics
~ ~ ~
that same Hungarian dance music by Brahms
on the Orient Express
at least everyone in the circus crowd
accepts he’s no more than part
of the rank and file
where the fact that some information is included
whilst some information is not
i spotted the Norwegian bareback artiste
with one foot on the unicorn sire
in a figure eight of the elephant folio
could tell about a fabrication that conceived
any knowledge based designation
like your run of the mill Fegee Mermaid
or Pickled Punk malformed in his formaldehyde
as the workings of its own psyche
~ ~ ~
it’s that same Hungarian tune played
on a cornet from a unicorn
that once grazed the dunes in all their vagaries
the design choices reflected in its own source code
and no less proven in battle
the Missing Link Frog boy
the human chimera and the human alligator
the characteristics of its circuitry
which also allows us to remake ourselves
~ ~ ~
that same Hungarian dance music by Brahms
allows us to remake ourselves
as information not only from the domain
a unicorn may graze in the dunes
on the background information of times
plastered over the galaxies on the Orient Express
a bareback artiste with one foot
on any piece of information
which in principle once grazed the dunes
in all their circumstantial facts relevant to
any topic whatsoever
it’s that same Hungarian tune played in battle
the Missing Link Frog boy four poster elephant herd
but also Mermaid or Pickled Punk
malformed in all their vagaries
and never quite a variety of a wide range of topics
~ ~ ~
he’s no more than part of certain topic is problematic
the equivalent to the rank and file
where the fact infers from a nominal knowledge base
a characteristic of its circuitry
also on a cornet from a unicorn
the notion that information being about
an information is an information
~~~
i spotted the Norwegian and lemon moving
in their own sphere a unicorn sire
in a figure eight of fabrication
that conceived any knowledge based designation
its own source code and no less proven
a smiley – face sticker xeroxed
trillions upon trillions
the elephant folio could tell about
your run of the mill Fegee
a given datum set formaldehyde
as the workings of its own
human chimera and human alligator vagaries
the design choices reflected in that information is included
whilst some from which it was collected even orange
at least everyone in the circus crowd
~~~
i spotted the Norwegian and elephant herd but also Mermaid
or depending on various circumstantial facts
such that one be relevant to any topic
whatsoever vagaries such as the Orient Express
vagaries
the design choices reflected in its about
an information
an information plastered over the galaxies
plastered over the facts
inferred from a nominal knowledge from which it was collected
that same Hungarian dance music by Brahms
whilst some tell about your run of smiley- face sticker
xeroxed trillions upon trillions
that allows us to remake ourselves
as Frog in the circus crowd
in the circus unicorn the notion that information being
a psyche screaming in a psyche
it’s that same Hungarian tune played in battle
the human alligator vagaries
a unicorn may graze in the dunes
sire in a figure eight a fabrication of malformed Pickled Punk
in his all a background information of the reasoner
~ ~ ~
lemon & Orange on the Orient Express moving in their own sphere
Fegee grasps the point a Missing Link Frog boy four poster
who hasn’t woken up screaming conceived in that knowledge
based designation of their own vagaries
a never quite variety of which is also on a cornet from the galaxies
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
galaxies bareback artiste with one foot on topics no more than given datum set as the workings contain information not only from the domain elephant folio characteristic of its circuitry the wide range of topics the human chimera equivalent to the rank and file any piece of information can source a code no less proven
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
Solstice winds, rain return in spells
a moon waxes full, dogs howl as well.
All the babble of the Souk
men over there, over there women.
All the life of the planet
so little part of it that i breathe.
Weather beaten highlands, once passed through.
The river bed, no more like a parched bone
its late autumnal river meanders as a vein
past four reservoirs
a quest that will end in winter´s flood.
Between them are momentary mists
where brightly clad figures of the north, suddenly dim.
On the frontier’s beach taxis come, go
only the stranded remain, together with the seagulls
four men huddled, drenched in pouring rain
dead once more, again, all pathways home
washed away, again.
A broken song
remember me, sung in a doorway
brings the world at large together
as suddenly as it narrows.
Water runs on marble
nakedness revealed, nakedness concealed
form water words, water memories, mists, fates.
Veins wrestle the marble into mangled knots
blemished pearls on an implacable skin
shards leaving fragmentary traces
empty spaces awaiting faces.
Lights dance in the night, picturesque
“casas blancas del pueblo”
appear through the darkness
as the brush strokes of my mind steal the action of the shadow.
Mists cordon the mountain tops
guerdoned crowns like wreathes.
Ancient fields’ still colours surrounded
by burgeoning new lead to the valley below.
Old women, old as aglow, so slow they go
poised aloof in an untouchable world, trapped.
High in kiln firelight they cowl night’s shade
to oversee goats on the hill beneath.
Daughters of necessity naked in the rock
unleashed in white trefoil in the marsh
swamp of night rain, stark where epochs
sleep in their shadows
replication of memories, where the old
becomes the new, a world splits in two
with Morpheus in the breach.
Beyond control, beyond reach the erratic butterfly
flits bloom to bloom, the intrepid stalker with net
both captured in the mimic mould.
A knot is tied, a knot that wrestles
embraces, that ravels birth
unravels death & binds its existence.
Her face is as if a moon glazed over
with a less serene ceramic dust that in the end
after its perplexity contains its surety.
She draws her forefinger laterally across
under her eye lid in a smear
nor can you change the image of what you are
in the pupil of her eye.
Babble bodies blur
voices with their echoes down the street
sky high, prices fly
a bird song breaks, a splash charade.
Faces in the rain thin
weakness of watery years.
A winnowing canvass tosses corn
as fireflies in the blazing day.
The hag in her rags begs her bag
holding all shadows to account.
You sit in the solitary corner
at the empty dice board
to throw, as the music swells, as strings play.
On the washing line clothes of all shapes
sizes are waiting to be filled
suspended between earth, sky, where white sheets blow.
A twinge of nostalgia flashes
a link between a fluttering curtain
an open window frame, a sun shadow game
a flickering apparition pattern leaving only – strands.
A breeze flutters an open foolscap on the table
as though a phantom reader
should flick with regard through a score of notes
then stops at the first blank white sheets
stays, the moving hand that wrote, wrote no more.
On record, old honky-tonk goes on
amidst the heaps of consumer city sneakers
in the same dust where faces
turn from their spring red lustre to a sun soiled wear
through a beehive of alleys
names, aye to fetch them home again
as if where the countless dead resided, you’d said
in a market of women shrouded in shawls.
Berlin falls, Baghdad falls
all the years turn to further tears
further fears to merge with your voyage
the shape of dreams to come
to be only endearments of what has gone before.
A flower opens after a thousand years in a shell of tears
indifferent to its beholders’ sight
who paint it with the colours from the waters of their night
on an unknown shore, to whose sight it opened once before.
Children’s faces like radiant imps
play carefree in the streets below
overhead on red tiles, fat pigeons bicker, coo.
In an internet cafe, an Arab girl discrete in headdress
plays with cartoon molecules of Mickey Mouse
Koala bear
nubile women’s faces dream of nudity in their shrouds.
Wonky pinz nez specs, jumble sale clothes
bad teeth, unshaven grin
looking a faded duplicate of a down
out James Joyce with the come on
are you Irish, he asks
perhaps he was once upon a time.
They came through the cleft of the mountain
– where the river ran
to swim as a blur in the naked purple of the eye
on the mountain face there is a scar
once a sacred place, now extinct, as they are.
Yet wild still she runs, amidst the sheep, goats
toils at the hearth, dutifully bears children
yesterday she knows but not tomorrow
where she hides her sorrow
even as he ploughs the hillside
a photo will steal his soul, but his beasts will do.
Twilight’s girls, girls, girls
throng the bustling street corners eating caracoles.
By day the olive tree green in the blue sky of the window
seems almost immortal enriched with the blood
it’s enriched, now at its roots.
Costa de la playa, white beehives in the sun, all money, no honey.
In the broken lights of the bazaar
the dusky eyes of the beggar sunk in their sockets
maze in crooked cul de sacs embargo amidst
the furls of silk that foil the flickering lantern niche.
In the gloaming a solitary reaper reaps its shadow.
Streets packs ravage carcasses
at dawn, the city wakes to the city’s obedience
to obey its disappearing shadows.
A ghost city of watchers
watched as shadows by a memory that has outlived them
now fragments in an admixture of old, new
– amidst a junk yard of rubble
watcher shadows phased captive to their fading stories.
The street’s mechanics of the day
obey their limits, patterns of parts
where we end only to start in a series of nows
post mortem of the world at large
an autopsy of ghosts on the slab.
Born to see, in the boutiques people seem
like their own mannequins
existence is a mystery with no purpose
only we endow it with a destiny, it does not seek from us.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
enough bread on the window sill
to feed a thousand birds
goat shit in the air
we walk on fetid sewers
like the rats that inhabit them immuno
O noble savage
what lies beyond the heart of darkness
bonobos!
Elon Musk thinks
we must be in a simulation
otherwise we’d have gone extinct
& he’s footing the bill
we can’t object
to being disembodied brains in vats
on clipboards
anymore than dinosaurs!
(ii)
like a long dead insect
motor cycles in electric windows gleam
as if trying to get on to get off
a swerve
on the hill jammed in the valley
houses stacked like egg boxes
cloud & smoke at the interstices
traffic drone pedestrians cast like shadows
at night orange electrics
hang out converging symmetries
almost ephemerally
i am its inmate its identity
a dark amorphous mass
turning towards a lighted doorway
to scrawl its signature
(iii)
a fictitious identity effacing present
with a replaced distance
yonder
where the moment drifts
a wandering mind
on a happen stance edge
like light on the sea
an ephemeral instance of memory
a dazzling illusion of tongues
stained with the dust of ages
where i walk on sand
hearing those voices fall over
the horizon of this flat world
our mirror neurons
reconstructing a past
as a theatre of ghosts
a semblance
clinging to the threshold of the present
on the precipice of nothingness
(iv)
about
omnicide or superhuman cosmicide
long lived areosols
war of the trawlers
seabed shreds
bots
triffids
a glass house menagerie
we will
open all doors to take away
moments ever had
writ now
signifiers on tabloids
which will be erased
our experience about
& present
in our crooked
corner of the world
as indifferent
as day & night
(v)
head on
all the hype
a tattered flag
a battered form
signal & sign
before ruins
a monolithic artefact
the grain of yesterday’s tears
vanishing on a whim
in a whirlwind of dust
in multiple dusts
every day
the fumes rage
print the page
we rise from with hands
of clay
hang the numbers out to dry
a bag of tricks
(vi)
a lottery tumbler of memory
we choose at random
listen to the echoes
of our idiot dreams
address the parade
of paradoxical masks
sink into our
straight jackets that bind us
to tomorrow’s sky
with its
empty promises from before
(vii)
sex on the beach
a beverage
the sign said
tucked into a snug cove
where we sun our limbs
in wicker seats
with seagulls & snorklers
flipper fins plashing
the glitttering sea
white foam breaking
chiffon on the rocks
we blip a 1,000 selfies
on the jelly roll fleshly
nubile spawning shore
biologically hacked
biologically raped
under a celloid blue sky
buffet on plastic mariscos
before we drift off
towards our yellow beige
alabaster domed cupolas
our palatial hotel chateau
to enter its catacombs
bathed in golden light
like holographic silhouettes
at night rats will scourge
the waterfront promenade
festooning rubbish bins
neglected either by
white linen underpaid
immigrant blacks from
the hotels or pissed off
government employee cleaners
(viii)
GOOD NEWS New Study / People
eat at least 80,000
plastic particles a year
Story of the week
i rise from my 5 dollar a day
chez longe my 1.50 dollar
a day umbrella shade
to float on the see through sea
spitting out those same particles
washed inshore watching
brown bits of sewage dirt
through the corners of my eyes
( University of Victoria Canada
who led the research
other foods such as bread
processed products
meat dairy & vegetables
may well contain
just as much plastic)
cluster into filmy layers
to coagulate with algae
& mollusk on the rocks
that adorn the bay
& tilting my head
i look outward
to where the sun
will set on a distant isle.
(ix)
nothing is resolved
to be continued
things just get further away
a distance lost
in the translation of the moment
on a qucksilver sand
where memory betrays
the mirror symmetries from before
on this landslide life
where all the riddles remain
which i cannot fish out
from the pond of meaning
to dazzle the day those enigmas
that have shaped me up
to the intangible now that i am
as unexpected their appearance
& disappearance were they can
mean no more purpose for me
but that i was not their cause
on looking back
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
words at the speed of time
on precipitous edge awnings break
into kaleidoscopic space patterns
there’s no place like sing along
if you are going that way
tomorrow’s dawn framed no less forever unborn
on the floating horizon of memory
we find to the particular stance added
a wind written on water poem conch
encounter with preceding waves
on the shores of emergences
as sudden as nevermore beholds
ongoing to get you where it’s most
but never does never can can dance
because the shiny glistens
only because of havoc under wormwood
where the predatory plunders breaches
from niches unto the become assunder
time enough for mourning clouds to rain dust
& footprints fade where words become their fossils
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
