Poems
(from the Spanish)
Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993)
from Silvina Ocampo: Selected Poems (New York Review Books, fall 2014)
Sleepless Palinurus
nudus in ignota, Palinure, iacebis harena.
Aeneid (v. 871)
The waves, the seaweed, the widening wings,
the seashells rent and resonant,
the salt and iodine, the savage storms,
the uncertain dolphins and the chorusing
of sirens weary of their melodies,
will not replace for you the gentle lands
where you used to wander with the steady gait
that distances deep ships unerringly.
Palinurus, your closed and seaward face
keeps the serene night awake.
You naked, lying in that place,
will perpetuate your deaths upon the sand,
and distracted as a stone your hair
and nails will grow among the ivy there.
* * *
Epitaph for a Tree
Like a drink of water I gave shade
in summer. My sap captured
the gold of evening and the pale
persistence of the river in the dove.
So inattentive were the glances,
that not one man in this world ever managed
to enumerate my leaves, my songs.
Now my absence occupies much space:
a flight of incessant birds marks
the place where I am missing, that grows larger.
* * *
Epitaph for an Aroma
When the dew descended yesterday,
amid future stamens and corollas,
I perished in a garden that presented
shadows in the shapes of trees, and water.
Two ribbons bound me, here they are:
longer than my petals they endured,
pale, like the ribbons of the dead.
The same implicit partnership of flowers,
the similar hands, the care,
the season and the blood of evening,
will not be able to repeat exactly
the dark tunnels of my aroma:
infinite will be in memory
the intricate paths of the perfume;
infinite, too, the deceptive
reappearance of every moment.
And though the days may want to bring them back,
and though many circumstances join together---
repetition of phrases or of people,
the same inclination of a head---
neither does that person anymore exist
for whom I was in secret destined.
* * *
In Every Direction
We go leaving ourselves in every direction,
in beds, in rooms, in fields, in seas, in cities,
and each one of those fragments
that has ceased to be us, continues being
as always us, making us
jealous and hostile.
“What will it do that I would like to do?”
we think. “Who will it see that I would like to see?”
We often receive chance news
of that creature . . .
We enter its dreams
when it dreams of us,
loving it
like those whom we love most;
we knock at its doors
with burning hands,
we think it will return in the illusion of belonging to us
mistaken as before
but it will keep being treacherous and unreachable.
As with our rivals we would kill it. We will only be able
to glimpse it in photographs. It must survive us.
* * *
Mirrors
It would be useless to cover mirrors
so that the people inside don’t get out
who have lodged there
waiting for someone to be reflected
and ominously or piously, unnoticed,
they could leave the luminous
dwelling where they live,
to attack us or protect us or pervert us.
From its earliest beginnings that I recall
a heavenly and diabolical court has attended me:
when my nanny Celestina buttoned her housecoat
(it’s true that she was dyeing her hair
and to surprise her I ventured beside her reflection)
four dragonflies fluttered about
announcing rain, one grazed my cheek and they came out
of the area where she was reflected;
they followed me always or followed her,
with her death they disappeared,
except on the eve of a storm.
When my mother got dressed to go to the ball
and fastened the band on her purple velvet belt
an angel departed with her when she put out the light
accompanied her to the car
and that’s why I believe she returned that night
in which I trembled with fear for her death.
When the ballet teacher
curtsied within the ebony frame, three people with masks
came out singing and visited me in a dream.
When the doctor ascending in the elevator
fixed his tie
fifty faces with white aprons,
which I couldn’t examine, furtively sprang out
from that small perfectly illuminated moon.
When Susana told me in the candy shop
my hair’s a mess,
she looked at herself in the lid of the compact,
imprudently I said “Let me see,”
I leaned into the shining circle:
a turbulent dialogue startled us,
three youths with necklaces,
thin, from having been cooped up in a tiny circle,
malicious,
sat down at our table.
Ever since that day they’ve all interfered
in our telephone calls.
My dog, who attentively admired himself once,
barked insistently,
shrewder he had seen a certain corporality
leaving the mirror:
a soft white rabbit visited me one afternoon.
But I won’t list the cats,
the horses, the gazelles, the tortoises,
the necrophiliacs,
the cannibals, the unborn,
the gnomes, the giants, the onanists,
that came out of the mirrors where imprudently
I glanced beside other people who didn’t see them
blinded by their own image.
Now I no longer share a mirror with anyone
because if my reflection takes the opportunity
to let them free, armies of other people,
a world too numerous
will be taking shape though it be difficult to stop
because the mirror will say “grow and multiply”
to the point of dislodging the universe
secretly hoping for that
after having repeated it so long
in water, in obsidian,
in metals and in subsequent mirrors.
Nor must we think that the whole thing is horrible.
The homeless will take shelter
inside of mirrors
(they won’t ever have lived in places so luminous)
they will come out in their turn
when those who were reflection
contemplate themselves forgetting their experience.
* * *
Vain Warnings
Be careful with your imagination.
Someplace on earth it remains, all the time it follows us
little by little turning into crude or delicate reality
what man or beast, plants or stones imagined.
The sick with fever, those who shake, those who want to and cannot speak,
in waiting rooms, amid pages of newspapers, oranges,
those who gaze at the ceiling or else the sun, injured,
those who embrace unlawfully, not knowing why
or in the blue precinct of marriage, those disfigured by hearty laughter,
the children, the slaves, the unjust, those who go shopping, handle meat,
the prisoners, soldiers, tyrants, with faces of singers,
the swimmers, the eager executioners, those who blaspheme,
those who beg or give, the missionaries, the anarchists,
the submissive, the proud, the solitary, those who don’t understand,
those who work constantly,
those who get tired after never doing anything
again don’t do anything without a break, irreducibly, the unborn,
those who carry signs in their fur, letters, drawings,
mysteries that no one has deciphered,
those who wash everything all day long like the raccoon,
the foul-smelling that scavenge for bones or excrement,
wallowing about to stink even more,
those who simply appear spiritual, or musical, or poetic,
those who devour others like them
or themselves because driven mad,
those that are streaked, with spots, with silver scales and tails,
the ferocious and the domesticated, those who love,
those who eat each other in order to fecundate,
those who live only on grass or precious milk
or those who need to eat rotten meat
those who crawl or the most beautiful, with princely feathers
those whom the water gathers among its glass, clear green or black
in the dark molds of the earth, buried,
those who take so long in dying that they do not die
and seem like plants or else stones, with the additions of time
those who barely live by a miracle, by suicide, on nothing
everything that they have imagined
and that we mortals imagine
forms the reality of the world.
* * *
Dolphins
Dolphins don’t play in the waves
as people think.
Dolphins fall asleep going down to the ocean floor.
What are they looking for? I don’t know.
When they touch the end of the water
abruptly they awake
and rise again because the sea is very deep
and when they rise, what are they looking for?
I don’t know.
And they see the sky and it makes them sleepy again
and they go back down asleep,
and they touch the ocean floor again
and awaken and rise back up.
Our dreams are like that.
* * *
A Tiger Speaks
I who move like water
sinuously
like water I know
shameful secrets.
I heard that there are dog cemeteries,
with earnest inscriptions
commemorating human friendship,
and that there are horses so stupid
they kneel before their masters,
oxen who are slaves to farmworkers,
cats who are ornaments for ladies,
like a hat or a fan,
bears who dance to the sound of a tambourine
from a man or a dwarf woman,
monkeys who flatter their owners,
elephants whom the public degrades,
abject seals who gargle
to entertain the children,
cows who let themselves be dragged along, mistreated,
who give their milk to anybody,
trained sheep
who donate their wool
to make clothing or mattresses,
snakes who caress
the head and neck of madmen.
We never managed to agree
about man’s true nature,
some fools think
perhaps in gratitude
for those who deified us
in other times
that man is a god,
but I and certain of my friends and enemies
think that he is edible.
The edible man
is always shy and trembling,
without claws and hair or with very little hair;
the man-god distributes food
with his hands, so I’ve been told,
he has a whip in his tongue and in his eyes.
In olden days, when he took up his position in the arena,
or in the desert, he wore a halo
or carried a magic wand,
he had a long mane
like a lion’s, which tangles in the teeth.
All this disturbs me:
sometimes I dream
of a rug whose coat
resembles mine, and I cry
stretched out on my own skin.
It’s strange. Inconceivable.
But there are stranger things:
Don't birds exist
who pass the time singing,
ridiculous doves, and an infinite series of fish
and beetles I’m unaware of
but which bother me?
Isn't there a poet who thinks about me constantly,
who believes that in my skin are signs revealing
man’s destiny drawn by God
in a poem?
* * *
The Pines
You didn’t listen to the beating of a tree’s heart,
couched against the trunk gazing upwards,
you didn’t see the leaves moving
with the throb of a heart,
you didn’t feel the shudder
of the swaying branches above your body,
you didn’t listen to the heart of the pines
when the wind moves them and those leaves
that are like green fragrant pins
fall, and when the clouds pass,
you didn’t see that the world was turning,
the entire world, and you didn’t feel
that the sky was drawing near,
was entering inside the pines,
and that you were disappearing, penetrating with it
inside the pines, becoming in that sky another tree.
* * *
Your Name
No one can pronounce your name.
I alone know the perfect inflection.
They lack the tenderness in which it flows
and the sweetness in the consonants.
They don't know how to distinguish the color
of the exact musical note.
That's why each day I respond
by inventing a name:
blue, bird, breeze, light.
Common words
that can be said simply
even without knowing you, without loving you.
(from the Spanish)
Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993)
from Silvina Ocampo: Selected Poems (New York Review Books, fall 2014)
Sleepless Palinurus
nudus in ignota, Palinure, iacebis harena.
Aeneid (v. 871)
The waves, the seaweed, the widening wings,
the seashells rent and resonant,
the salt and iodine, the savage storms,
the uncertain dolphins and the chorusing
of sirens weary of their melodies,
will not replace for you the gentle lands
where you used to wander with the steady gait
that distances deep ships unerringly.
Palinurus, your closed and seaward face
keeps the serene night awake.
You naked, lying in that place,
will perpetuate your deaths upon the sand,
and distracted as a stone your hair
and nails will grow among the ivy there.
* * *
Epitaph for a Tree
Like a drink of water I gave shade
in summer. My sap captured
the gold of evening and the pale
persistence of the river in the dove.
So inattentive were the glances,
that not one man in this world ever managed
to enumerate my leaves, my songs.
Now my absence occupies much space:
a flight of incessant birds marks
the place where I am missing, that grows larger.
* * *
Epitaph for an Aroma
When the dew descended yesterday,
amid future stamens and corollas,
I perished in a garden that presented
shadows in the shapes of trees, and water.
Two ribbons bound me, here they are:
longer than my petals they endured,
pale, like the ribbons of the dead.
The same implicit partnership of flowers,
the similar hands, the care,
the season and the blood of evening,
will not be able to repeat exactly
the dark tunnels of my aroma:
infinite will be in memory
the intricate paths of the perfume;
infinite, too, the deceptive
reappearance of every moment.
And though the days may want to bring them back,
and though many circumstances join together---
repetition of phrases or of people,
the same inclination of a head---
neither does that person anymore exist
for whom I was in secret destined.
* * *
In Every Direction
We go leaving ourselves in every direction,
in beds, in rooms, in fields, in seas, in cities,
and each one of those fragments
that has ceased to be us, continues being
as always us, making us
jealous and hostile.
“What will it do that I would like to do?”
we think. “Who will it see that I would like to see?”
We often receive chance news
of that creature . . .
We enter its dreams
when it dreams of us,
loving it
like those whom we love most;
we knock at its doors
with burning hands,
we think it will return in the illusion of belonging to us
mistaken as before
but it will keep being treacherous and unreachable.
As with our rivals we would kill it. We will only be able
to glimpse it in photographs. It must survive us.
* * *
Mirrors
It would be useless to cover mirrors
so that the people inside don’t get out
who have lodged there
waiting for someone to be reflected
and ominously or piously, unnoticed,
they could leave the luminous
dwelling where they live,
to attack us or protect us or pervert us.
From its earliest beginnings that I recall
a heavenly and diabolical court has attended me:
when my nanny Celestina buttoned her housecoat
(it’s true that she was dyeing her hair
and to surprise her I ventured beside her reflection)
four dragonflies fluttered about
announcing rain, one grazed my cheek and they came out
of the area where she was reflected;
they followed me always or followed her,
with her death they disappeared,
except on the eve of a storm.
When my mother got dressed to go to the ball
and fastened the band on her purple velvet belt
an angel departed with her when she put out the light
accompanied her to the car
and that’s why I believe she returned that night
in which I trembled with fear for her death.
When the ballet teacher
curtsied within the ebony frame, three people with masks
came out singing and visited me in a dream.
When the doctor ascending in the elevator
fixed his tie
fifty faces with white aprons,
which I couldn’t examine, furtively sprang out
from that small perfectly illuminated moon.
When Susana told me in the candy shop
my hair’s a mess,
she looked at herself in the lid of the compact,
imprudently I said “Let me see,”
I leaned into the shining circle:
a turbulent dialogue startled us,
three youths with necklaces,
thin, from having been cooped up in a tiny circle,
malicious,
sat down at our table.
Ever since that day they’ve all interfered
in our telephone calls.
My dog, who attentively admired himself once,
barked insistently,
shrewder he had seen a certain corporality
leaving the mirror:
a soft white rabbit visited me one afternoon.
But I won’t list the cats,
the horses, the gazelles, the tortoises,
the necrophiliacs,
the cannibals, the unborn,
the gnomes, the giants, the onanists,
that came out of the mirrors where imprudently
I glanced beside other people who didn’t see them
blinded by their own image.
Now I no longer share a mirror with anyone
because if my reflection takes the opportunity
to let them free, armies of other people,
a world too numerous
will be taking shape though it be difficult to stop
because the mirror will say “grow and multiply”
to the point of dislodging the universe
secretly hoping for that
after having repeated it so long
in water, in obsidian,
in metals and in subsequent mirrors.
Nor must we think that the whole thing is horrible.
The homeless will take shelter
inside of mirrors
(they won’t ever have lived in places so luminous)
they will come out in their turn
when those who were reflection
contemplate themselves forgetting their experience.
* * *
Vain Warnings
Be careful with your imagination.
Someplace on earth it remains, all the time it follows us
little by little turning into crude or delicate reality
what man or beast, plants or stones imagined.
The sick with fever, those who shake, those who want to and cannot speak,
in waiting rooms, amid pages of newspapers, oranges,
those who gaze at the ceiling or else the sun, injured,
those who embrace unlawfully, not knowing why
or in the blue precinct of marriage, those disfigured by hearty laughter,
the children, the slaves, the unjust, those who go shopping, handle meat,
the prisoners, soldiers, tyrants, with faces of singers,
the swimmers, the eager executioners, those who blaspheme,
those who beg or give, the missionaries, the anarchists,
the submissive, the proud, the solitary, those who don’t understand,
those who work constantly,
those who get tired after never doing anything
again don’t do anything without a break, irreducibly, the unborn,
those who carry signs in their fur, letters, drawings,
mysteries that no one has deciphered,
those who wash everything all day long like the raccoon,
the foul-smelling that scavenge for bones or excrement,
wallowing about to stink even more,
those who simply appear spiritual, or musical, or poetic,
those who devour others like them
or themselves because driven mad,
those that are streaked, with spots, with silver scales and tails,
the ferocious and the domesticated, those who love,
those who eat each other in order to fecundate,
those who live only on grass or precious milk
or those who need to eat rotten meat
those who crawl or the most beautiful, with princely feathers
those whom the water gathers among its glass, clear green or black
in the dark molds of the earth, buried,
those who take so long in dying that they do not die
and seem like plants or else stones, with the additions of time
those who barely live by a miracle, by suicide, on nothing
everything that they have imagined
and that we mortals imagine
forms the reality of the world.
* * *
Dolphins
Dolphins don’t play in the waves
as people think.
Dolphins fall asleep going down to the ocean floor.
What are they looking for? I don’t know.
When they touch the end of the water
abruptly they awake
and rise again because the sea is very deep
and when they rise, what are they looking for?
I don’t know.
And they see the sky and it makes them sleepy again
and they go back down asleep,
and they touch the ocean floor again
and awaken and rise back up.
Our dreams are like that.
* * *
A Tiger Speaks
I who move like water
sinuously
like water I know
shameful secrets.
I heard that there are dog cemeteries,
with earnest inscriptions
commemorating human friendship,
and that there are horses so stupid
they kneel before their masters,
oxen who are slaves to farmworkers,
cats who are ornaments for ladies,
like a hat or a fan,
bears who dance to the sound of a tambourine
from a man or a dwarf woman,
monkeys who flatter their owners,
elephants whom the public degrades,
abject seals who gargle
to entertain the children,
cows who let themselves be dragged along, mistreated,
who give their milk to anybody,
trained sheep
who donate their wool
to make clothing or mattresses,
snakes who caress
the head and neck of madmen.
We never managed to agree
about man’s true nature,
some fools think
perhaps in gratitude
for those who deified us
in other times
that man is a god,
but I and certain of my friends and enemies
think that he is edible.
The edible man
is always shy and trembling,
without claws and hair or with very little hair;
the man-god distributes food
with his hands, so I’ve been told,
he has a whip in his tongue and in his eyes.
In olden days, when he took up his position in the arena,
or in the desert, he wore a halo
or carried a magic wand,
he had a long mane
like a lion’s, which tangles in the teeth.
All this disturbs me:
sometimes I dream
of a rug whose coat
resembles mine, and I cry
stretched out on my own skin.
It’s strange. Inconceivable.
But there are stranger things:
Don't birds exist
who pass the time singing,
ridiculous doves, and an infinite series of fish
and beetles I’m unaware of
but which bother me?
Isn't there a poet who thinks about me constantly,
who believes that in my skin are signs revealing
man’s destiny drawn by God
in a poem?
* * *
The Pines
You didn’t listen to the beating of a tree’s heart,
couched against the trunk gazing upwards,
you didn’t see the leaves moving
with the throb of a heart,
you didn’t feel the shudder
of the swaying branches above your body,
you didn’t listen to the heart of the pines
when the wind moves them and those leaves
that are like green fragrant pins
fall, and when the clouds pass,
you didn’t see that the world was turning,
the entire world, and you didn’t feel
that the sky was drawing near,
was entering inside the pines,
and that you were disappearing, penetrating with it
inside the pines, becoming in that sky another tree.
* * *
Your Name
No one can pronounce your name.
I alone know the perfect inflection.
They lack the tenderness in which it flows
and the sweetness in the consonants.
They don't know how to distinguish the color
of the exact musical note.
That's why each day I respond
by inventing a name:
blue, bird, breeze, light.
Common words
that can be said simply
even without knowing you, without loving you.