Poems
(from the Spanish)
Luisa Futoransky
all translations from The Duration of the Voyage (Junction Press, 1997)
for a bilingual reading of a few of her poems, click here
Non Lasciarmi Giammai
At the hour of truth, that night in the Alcalá Palace, the orchestra, Magdalena Bonnifaccio, poor Rigoletto and I confounded our blunders;
tears began to gather on my chin, it’s because I didn't reach that stage of analysis, but what’s for sure is that I never could put up with Gilda’s death all the way to the end, and I would wish that the people, like at soccer fields or bullrings, suddenly, five minutes before the thing is over, would disperse; but that night I didn’t split and since that wretched show in Madrid I’ve raised my grief-cracked estuary, I’ve squeezed my hands together until I injured them in order to tell myself: “this skin that hurts you so much does not resist that fellow’s voice shouting non lasciarmi giammai because it makes you speak with The Other, the absent one who functions in exact proportion to your love and who tells you to live burning your boats if there are no more americas to discover nor montezumas to love”;
but these must be the labors of hercules and now I’m getting the opera wrong and I’m coming and going between these crumpled paper sets, this galician singing as best he can to the houses of absence, the houses for reinventing love in places where the floor begins to tremble like your pulse, the great milestones or landmarks of each one’s geography, those imprecise limits always at war with the neighbors, the invaders, the local and visiting teams, but in those games Gardel assures us that you’re only loved once and how am I going to contradict him an expert leveler of nostalgia when along every highway in the world I stop to put money in the jukebox
I can see the blinking of the lights
that far away signal my return
The lights are saying that Gilda isn’t dead because they’re giving her a bouquet of flowers, some shout bravo!, she waves, perspires, smiles, in Madrid it’s snowing, someone gets in a taxi and afterwards sobs quietly into the pillow non-lasciarmi-giam-maaaii until mascara stains the sheets and later finally goes to sleep, or dies, which is the same, so that tomorrow when she drinks her daily coffee and the impartial observers arrive they can calmly assure themselves that nothing has happened here at all.
*
Vitraux of Exile
All the efficacy of the names
which the imagery laboriously built up to fascinate you
falls silent:
a rich cemetery of ashes
that, now, is your geography.
You learned at the cost of your youth
and most of your innocence
that to be alone in a forsaken suburb of the pampas
or in splendid Samarkand
holds the same dimension of oblivion or tragedy;
that the wind never took pity scattering
stones and the dead, that only the doomed tourists
take each other's photos showing off their glass beads
because to say country is to whisper barely seven letters
and through them the density of secret combinations
gravestones of strangers bearing our name
and pale photos that preserve the echo of your passage
toward love or despair.
It’s also the memory of tiring labors
or maybe some old tune
that retains the first risks of your youth.
A country is your name
and the acid violence with which a word comes
to your defenseless traveler’s mouth.
It’s a map with a river whose source and outlet
curiously unite at the exact spot on earth
that your bones wish to fertilize.
It’s daybreaks, insomnias, salutations, anger,
an arm, a shoulder, diminutives, insults,
farewells, gardens, meetings, tremors,
promises, autumns, rails, challenges,
absolute nouns that allow
no other explanation for its weight in ghosts:
these and not others.
*
Tatoong
Golden buddhas of Tatoong with their centers of balance in flames
buddhas with guardians strumming wise mandolins to help them sleep
meanwhile the interpreter strives before a shining trinity
explaining that the figures on the sides are the secretaries
but without specifying as to what faction, which cosmic party
what paperwork they have to fill out to pass from the blue
to the orange of illumination
how many incarnations at the mercy of the elements in the shacks of Yunnan
how much silk and manure and horse sweat
and yak’s milk so that the gust of silence and wind
causes me to doubt my light and shadow
but the Japanese are filming murmured sequences
of martial arts at the feet of the Contemplator
and after we go off in our buses to empty ourselves
of more dinners, more temples, more purchases
what do these tens of thousands of buddhas do at night
to be so happy and composed the next morning?
*
Robotics
Theory of the Ushebti
The ushebtis are among the various bits of Egyptian trickery that inhabit sarcophagi, populate museums, and constitute the delight of collectors, the prestige of tax-shelter foundations and, first and last, the fortune of grave robbers.
The Chinese have something similar. Clever as they naturally are, from time to time and to satisfy the insistent demands of tourism and cultural exports they unearth hundreds of well-wrought terracotta figures ranging from war lords, mounts included, to humble hairdressers, obsequious accountants or industrious poets, plus a detailed fauna omitting neither chimeras nor dragons, that accompanied the dead sonofabitch emperor and/or empress so that their relatives and overburdened people might feel relieved to think them in their normal company, unlikely therefore to return as ghosts to fuck with them as they did on this side morning noon and night.
Such monsters the Czechs call robot, and the rabbis golem.
In short, the Egyptian ushebti was supposed to replace that so-and-so in the performance of his tasks and errands in the kingdom of death, the kingdom of another breathing, or (without you) merely unbreathable.
How to Use the Automatic Teller
Let his hand grow numb on the wheel,
may his favorite thoughts, gardens,
turn to lime on his tongue.
Ushebti of my heart, make him dream of me;
as a mirage, a spider, papyrus, star-
fish or shooting stars, but make him dream of me.
So by an eternal fire brand him with the numbers of my voice,
open for him the lockless door of this chamber,
let him profane at will the words, the silence
and the pains of this body
so badly embalmed that it’s a shame.
In confidence, ushebti, man to man,
slave to servant, versa to vice,
I beg you to tell me,
which of us is the dead one.
Operation pip unauthorized pip pip. Remove your card pip. Thank you for your visit pip. Pip. Thank you for your. Thank.
Translated: snap out of it. There is neither man nor pharaoh in this story. Nor empress. Come back in another life, if you have the strength and desire, at the zero degree of writing. In the meantime: keep breathing. Asshole.
*
Circery
I changed
these men into little poems
and confined them to books and journals
because, nowadays,
it’s not worth
going about finding them acorns
or daisies for holy days.
As for Ulysses, the guy from Ithaca,
tell him my oven’s already full
of asps, toads
and mastodons like him.
Besides, the (circus) game
of resurrections
is no longer my specialty.
Now I weave.
Believe me.
*
Crema Catalana
In Gerona I deciphered the names
on old Hebrew tombstones,
I saw the thousand-year-old tapestry, profoundly impressed
by its emblematic winds and persistent blues,
I offered myself to the intimacies, ravages and refusals
provoked by the passionate contacts between visitors and hosts
with whom we exchange fleeting catalogues
of the dead that inevitably refer to still others,
more rotten, ferocious and private.
I silenced them, crossing as best I could through the perils of distorting mirrors;
I intended to drown them, eating and drinking the specialties of the house perhaps more
than I should have
and surrendered finally to the vision of the same film, cartilaginous and formless, that I
always produce in the wearisome lines of the highways.
In my hands I am left with this swollen face, scabby and withered,
where I am reflected
and with the aching and fragrant staff of the word
desconegut, unknown, throbbing in my lap.
*
Tristamrit
I checked it out: the little bird that stubbornly chirps at Masada is called Tristamrit, but they didn’t tell me why nor that the root of the word for sadness is tied up in the name.
There are also cats at Masada. At some point male and female must have gone up and stayed. A Chinese proverb states that going down is much more difficult than going up. The cats are nuisances and lazy. Who knows, maybe they jumped right off from Noah’s Ark.
Tristamrit whistles a windy tune: “No species should be alone, because they get bored and waste away; when they’re besieged, they kill themselves.”
Archeologists come here to classify sandals from the sect of Qumran, rusted daggers by the first and last names of their blood and the thickness of the wounds in the eternal grain of their blades, and also parched amphoras preserving shrivelled seeds, but what an obstinate way to live. Then proudly they descend in a service car; the city waits for them to sign receipts, buy deodorant, stock up on carbon 14 and hope to fulfill as best they can their Friday duty: to fornicate with the wife. As a reward perhaps at the full moon they will be awakened and entertained by that minx Lilith.
I say:
After taking their lives will whales keep hearing the rhythm of the waves caressing the reef? Will they still count the grains of sand that erode their bones and their soul’s flippers still coo at the winks and sighs of the North Star?
Meanwhile the landscape of Masada remains impassive and startling.
*
Time, Soap, The End
Soap, the bathtub and death maintain a greater intimacy than is generally thought. At fifteen, when one slips on the soap in the place called bathroom, the bump heals itself with a good curse. With life’s curves, bruises appear. Soap also has its importance in the final nudge which certain probable survivors count on to seize the inheritances they covet. At some point the relationship between bars of soap called Lux or La Toja and the demise of poor Aunt Jacinta or Cousin Magdaleno will have to be looked into. The fateful link between old age, soap and hip is proverbial. When the three get together, watch out! because the master of ceremonies is calling the steps for the last rigadoon.
*
The Dwarf
Quite late I understood that not only does one not continue to grow, but that one shrinks, not just in the shoulders, but all over. Someone who hadn’t seen me for a while said to me: “I thought you were much taller.” Then I began to have to stand on tiptoes to grab hold of things that I used to reach normally. Now I live in the cracks of the baseboard. To see the world from below. How to reach, the clouds, the table, his mouth’s evasion.
*
Teeth
Bloody battles, lost in advance by each
of my molars and teeth,
a map with banderillas of privations and trimmings
whose traces are lost
on the same repeated stairways
that lead to identical thrones
of apprehension, ignominy
and panic
Heaps of names, plaster casts emptied of meaning
like maxillaries canines molars,
to be left with a single basic reference:
front, back,
upper, lower,
like the first steps of Buddha
naked
in the hostile
world
Incisors of a vampire a walrus
rodents,
caricatures, first gateways revealing
power
to mankind
Breaking/ not breaking
Gnashing
the teeth
Oh, my dentists with their forceps
gauzes
syringes
bridges
crowns
false anesthesias from the world over
singular hands that yanked out
the roots of my wisdom one by one
and every so often, for lack of so many things,
prescribe tablets that put bacteria to sleep
but offer me no relief
Gums
residues
dreams
Dazzling
the colgate or kolinos smile
shines as it never has
in its permanent
unadorned
absence
*
Self-Portrait 31.12.96
papa told me that when I was barely a teenager I wanted to play the harp and then to
be a journalist;
I only remember a bitter spring dusk when I was ten
and I wanted to be a ballerina and I raged on the attic stairs against
my parents’ scoffing,
and the steps and the tears were warm
as ovenbirds’ nests or the sap from ancient honeysuckles;
I never thought about impossibilities like talent, work or the limitations of nature
in short, centuries later
I don’t play the harp nor am I a ballerina,
and in parentheses, tiny cracks I infiltrate in the galleys of useless and infinite jobs
dodging foremen
I smuggle poems like this one, in a hurry, torn out of me
since I have no children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren, only a few
radiant friends
now and then I cultivate gnomes as boyfriends or disciples
and they say I’m a journalist;
these last activities precarious and temporary:
in other words, my flirtations were as rancid or green as the grapes in the fable
and the press goes on forever obtuse and deforming,
rude addictions, it’s true, but I predict
that kicking the habit is still possible for me
it’s raining inside and out
we’ve got to buy roof tiles, plug up the leaks,
before the ceiling and the masonry cave in on us
indispensable the repair of the temple and time:
if I don’t do it myself, who,
and if not now, when?
(from the Spanish)
Luisa Futoransky
all translations from The Duration of the Voyage (Junction Press, 1997)
for a bilingual reading of a few of her poems, click here
Non Lasciarmi Giammai
At the hour of truth, that night in the Alcalá Palace, the orchestra, Magdalena Bonnifaccio, poor Rigoletto and I confounded our blunders;
tears began to gather on my chin, it’s because I didn't reach that stage of analysis, but what’s for sure is that I never could put up with Gilda’s death all the way to the end, and I would wish that the people, like at soccer fields or bullrings, suddenly, five minutes before the thing is over, would disperse; but that night I didn’t split and since that wretched show in Madrid I’ve raised my grief-cracked estuary, I’ve squeezed my hands together until I injured them in order to tell myself: “this skin that hurts you so much does not resist that fellow’s voice shouting non lasciarmi giammai because it makes you speak with The Other, the absent one who functions in exact proportion to your love and who tells you to live burning your boats if there are no more americas to discover nor montezumas to love”;
but these must be the labors of hercules and now I’m getting the opera wrong and I’m coming and going between these crumpled paper sets, this galician singing as best he can to the houses of absence, the houses for reinventing love in places where the floor begins to tremble like your pulse, the great milestones or landmarks of each one’s geography, those imprecise limits always at war with the neighbors, the invaders, the local and visiting teams, but in those games Gardel assures us that you’re only loved once and how am I going to contradict him an expert leveler of nostalgia when along every highway in the world I stop to put money in the jukebox
I can see the blinking of the lights
that far away signal my return
The lights are saying that Gilda isn’t dead because they’re giving her a bouquet of flowers, some shout bravo!, she waves, perspires, smiles, in Madrid it’s snowing, someone gets in a taxi and afterwards sobs quietly into the pillow non-lasciarmi-giam-maaaii until mascara stains the sheets and later finally goes to sleep, or dies, which is the same, so that tomorrow when she drinks her daily coffee and the impartial observers arrive they can calmly assure themselves that nothing has happened here at all.
*
Vitraux of Exile
All the efficacy of the names
which the imagery laboriously built up to fascinate you
falls silent:
a rich cemetery of ashes
that, now, is your geography.
You learned at the cost of your youth
and most of your innocence
that to be alone in a forsaken suburb of the pampas
or in splendid Samarkand
holds the same dimension of oblivion or tragedy;
that the wind never took pity scattering
stones and the dead, that only the doomed tourists
take each other's photos showing off their glass beads
because to say country is to whisper barely seven letters
and through them the density of secret combinations
gravestones of strangers bearing our name
and pale photos that preserve the echo of your passage
toward love or despair.
It’s also the memory of tiring labors
or maybe some old tune
that retains the first risks of your youth.
A country is your name
and the acid violence with which a word comes
to your defenseless traveler’s mouth.
It’s a map with a river whose source and outlet
curiously unite at the exact spot on earth
that your bones wish to fertilize.
It’s daybreaks, insomnias, salutations, anger,
an arm, a shoulder, diminutives, insults,
farewells, gardens, meetings, tremors,
promises, autumns, rails, challenges,
absolute nouns that allow
no other explanation for its weight in ghosts:
these and not others.
*
Tatoong
Golden buddhas of Tatoong with their centers of balance in flames
buddhas with guardians strumming wise mandolins to help them sleep
meanwhile the interpreter strives before a shining trinity
explaining that the figures on the sides are the secretaries
but without specifying as to what faction, which cosmic party
what paperwork they have to fill out to pass from the blue
to the orange of illumination
how many incarnations at the mercy of the elements in the shacks of Yunnan
how much silk and manure and horse sweat
and yak’s milk so that the gust of silence and wind
causes me to doubt my light and shadow
but the Japanese are filming murmured sequences
of martial arts at the feet of the Contemplator
and after we go off in our buses to empty ourselves
of more dinners, more temples, more purchases
what do these tens of thousands of buddhas do at night
to be so happy and composed the next morning?
*
Robotics
Theory of the Ushebti
The ushebtis are among the various bits of Egyptian trickery that inhabit sarcophagi, populate museums, and constitute the delight of collectors, the prestige of tax-shelter foundations and, first and last, the fortune of grave robbers.
The Chinese have something similar. Clever as they naturally are, from time to time and to satisfy the insistent demands of tourism and cultural exports they unearth hundreds of well-wrought terracotta figures ranging from war lords, mounts included, to humble hairdressers, obsequious accountants or industrious poets, plus a detailed fauna omitting neither chimeras nor dragons, that accompanied the dead sonofabitch emperor and/or empress so that their relatives and overburdened people might feel relieved to think them in their normal company, unlikely therefore to return as ghosts to fuck with them as they did on this side morning noon and night.
Such monsters the Czechs call robot, and the rabbis golem.
In short, the Egyptian ushebti was supposed to replace that so-and-so in the performance of his tasks and errands in the kingdom of death, the kingdom of another breathing, or (without you) merely unbreathable.
How to Use the Automatic Teller
Let his hand grow numb on the wheel,
may his favorite thoughts, gardens,
turn to lime on his tongue.
Ushebti of my heart, make him dream of me;
as a mirage, a spider, papyrus, star-
fish or shooting stars, but make him dream of me.
So by an eternal fire brand him with the numbers of my voice,
open for him the lockless door of this chamber,
let him profane at will the words, the silence
and the pains of this body
so badly embalmed that it’s a shame.
In confidence, ushebti, man to man,
slave to servant, versa to vice,
I beg you to tell me,
which of us is the dead one.
Operation pip unauthorized pip pip. Remove your card pip. Thank you for your visit pip. Pip. Thank you for your. Thank.
Translated: snap out of it. There is neither man nor pharaoh in this story. Nor empress. Come back in another life, if you have the strength and desire, at the zero degree of writing. In the meantime: keep breathing. Asshole.
*
Circery
I changed
these men into little poems
and confined them to books and journals
because, nowadays,
it’s not worth
going about finding them acorns
or daisies for holy days.
As for Ulysses, the guy from Ithaca,
tell him my oven’s already full
of asps, toads
and mastodons like him.
Besides, the (circus) game
of resurrections
is no longer my specialty.
Now I weave.
Believe me.
*
Crema Catalana
In Gerona I deciphered the names
on old Hebrew tombstones,
I saw the thousand-year-old tapestry, profoundly impressed
by its emblematic winds and persistent blues,
I offered myself to the intimacies, ravages and refusals
provoked by the passionate contacts between visitors and hosts
with whom we exchange fleeting catalogues
of the dead that inevitably refer to still others,
more rotten, ferocious and private.
I silenced them, crossing as best I could through the perils of distorting mirrors;
I intended to drown them, eating and drinking the specialties of the house perhaps more
than I should have
and surrendered finally to the vision of the same film, cartilaginous and formless, that I
always produce in the wearisome lines of the highways.
In my hands I am left with this swollen face, scabby and withered,
where I am reflected
and with the aching and fragrant staff of the word
desconegut, unknown, throbbing in my lap.
*
Tristamrit
I checked it out: the little bird that stubbornly chirps at Masada is called Tristamrit, but they didn’t tell me why nor that the root of the word for sadness is tied up in the name.
There are also cats at Masada. At some point male and female must have gone up and stayed. A Chinese proverb states that going down is much more difficult than going up. The cats are nuisances and lazy. Who knows, maybe they jumped right off from Noah’s Ark.
Tristamrit whistles a windy tune: “No species should be alone, because they get bored and waste away; when they’re besieged, they kill themselves.”
Archeologists come here to classify sandals from the sect of Qumran, rusted daggers by the first and last names of their blood and the thickness of the wounds in the eternal grain of their blades, and also parched amphoras preserving shrivelled seeds, but what an obstinate way to live. Then proudly they descend in a service car; the city waits for them to sign receipts, buy deodorant, stock up on carbon 14 and hope to fulfill as best they can their Friday duty: to fornicate with the wife. As a reward perhaps at the full moon they will be awakened and entertained by that minx Lilith.
I say:
After taking their lives will whales keep hearing the rhythm of the waves caressing the reef? Will they still count the grains of sand that erode their bones and their soul’s flippers still coo at the winks and sighs of the North Star?
Meanwhile the landscape of Masada remains impassive and startling.
*
Time, Soap, The End
Soap, the bathtub and death maintain a greater intimacy than is generally thought. At fifteen, when one slips on the soap in the place called bathroom, the bump heals itself with a good curse. With life’s curves, bruises appear. Soap also has its importance in the final nudge which certain probable survivors count on to seize the inheritances they covet. At some point the relationship between bars of soap called Lux or La Toja and the demise of poor Aunt Jacinta or Cousin Magdaleno will have to be looked into. The fateful link between old age, soap and hip is proverbial. When the three get together, watch out! because the master of ceremonies is calling the steps for the last rigadoon.
*
The Dwarf
Quite late I understood that not only does one not continue to grow, but that one shrinks, not just in the shoulders, but all over. Someone who hadn’t seen me for a while said to me: “I thought you were much taller.” Then I began to have to stand on tiptoes to grab hold of things that I used to reach normally. Now I live in the cracks of the baseboard. To see the world from below. How to reach, the clouds, the table, his mouth’s evasion.
*
Teeth
Bloody battles, lost in advance by each
of my molars and teeth,
a map with banderillas of privations and trimmings
whose traces are lost
on the same repeated stairways
that lead to identical thrones
of apprehension, ignominy
and panic
Heaps of names, plaster casts emptied of meaning
like maxillaries canines molars,
to be left with a single basic reference:
front, back,
upper, lower,
like the first steps of Buddha
naked
in the hostile
world
Incisors of a vampire a walrus
rodents,
caricatures, first gateways revealing
power
to mankind
Breaking/ not breaking
Gnashing
the teeth
Oh, my dentists with their forceps
gauzes
syringes
bridges
crowns
false anesthesias from the world over
singular hands that yanked out
the roots of my wisdom one by one
and every so often, for lack of so many things,
prescribe tablets that put bacteria to sleep
but offer me no relief
Gums
residues
dreams
Dazzling
the colgate or kolinos smile
shines as it never has
in its permanent
unadorned
absence
*
Self-Portrait 31.12.96
papa told me that when I was barely a teenager I wanted to play the harp and then to
be a journalist;
I only remember a bitter spring dusk when I was ten
and I wanted to be a ballerina and I raged on the attic stairs against
my parents’ scoffing,
and the steps and the tears were warm
as ovenbirds’ nests or the sap from ancient honeysuckles;
I never thought about impossibilities like talent, work or the limitations of nature
in short, centuries later
I don’t play the harp nor am I a ballerina,
and in parentheses, tiny cracks I infiltrate in the galleys of useless and infinite jobs
dodging foremen
I smuggle poems like this one, in a hurry, torn out of me
since I have no children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren, only a few
radiant friends
now and then I cultivate gnomes as boyfriends or disciples
and they say I’m a journalist;
these last activities precarious and temporary:
in other words, my flirtations were as rancid or green as the grapes in the fable
and the press goes on forever obtuse and deforming,
rude addictions, it’s true, but I predict
that kicking the habit is still possible for me
it’s raining inside and out
we’ve got to buy roof tiles, plug up the leaks,
before the ceiling and the masonry cave in on us
indispensable the repair of the temple and time:
if I don’t do it myself, who,
and if not now, when?