Poems
(from the Spanish)
Tomás Guido Lavalle
Vía Aérea (Buenos Aires: Alkol, 1970)
Us
for Alejandra Pizarnik
Critical or ironical,
preferably lucid,
esthetic,
barely metaphysical and
of reasonable temper,
everything seems to conspire
for a fine death
after lunch.
But let’s have no illusions:
along with the shy discoveries
of selectivity and patience
we’ll take some herbs
that we haven’t asked for,
and that intolerant poison
will be, precisely,
life.
published in Sphinx (Paris) 1 (1984)
* * *
Matter of Friends
for Alfredo Plank
But what are friends up to, for now Fernando says Villegas says when friends are somewhere else it’s as if they were dead, he apologizes, while Guillermo speaks of earthquakes because yesterday was one of those days when all the distilleries put together aren’t enough, the same with Inés, letter dated grey anniversary of the Liberator’s death, the days are monotonous, I extract the words at random, Abel for example, in Cáceres, Spain, dear impostor you must abandon that dishonorable position of striptease and rinse your swinish heart, or Carlos and Skarpe dying in Barcelona maintain that the city isn’t bad but damned is the solitude and the latitude factor you have to get hold of it all ciao a hug, and Federico in the middle of the plaza in Tucumán, Argentina, tells me humbly of the oranges “quick shapes of quiet” incomparable friend, everything speeded up, inconclusive, obsessive, disturbing, so Michele talking about herself deduces elle rie, elle pleure, elle mange du lilas comme une vraie personne, or the ineffable Enrique who begins: desperate and necessary brother we are always scheming and we read in a trail of water where the sun rises alone, nothing to do with Guillermo proclaiming that my stupid little verses are getting ahead of him come back soon die for once, or Roberto who between laboratories and seaweed tells me of his son Leonardo (whom I call Leopoldo), this bit about fatherhood cleanses me but the important thing is you should know that we’re with you in spirit, sweet as Mimí and Eugenio with their postcards full of patriotic business beside the immense solitude of El Mono some night in Entre Ríos, I swear to you Tomás I thought I was going crazy, and Ritva from her aquatic forests, I was so happy remember me Kangsala, Finland, and Mora yet who sends me my daughter’s measurements, shoulder 27 cm., full length 48 cm., sleeve length 30 cm., so long-winded for some things and she adds something about the freeing of doves and the marshes, one lives on in the mind of the rest, dear Tomás you are not in the dark insists Ritva, while Ricardo explains: friendship is a very strange and costly thing, never have I had the goodwill to commit myself to anyone else’s goodwill, it’s like a game of legitimacies, so it refreshes me to be writing you come-what-may, oh drunken bird as Pilar says overheated in the Moscow cold, your joy is infectious, and though I still don’t handle all the cords of discovery I recognize I have a certain fluency for love, fine points from Marcelo who’s getting married in March, just the opposite for Alfredo, a stinking animal when he affirms that life is beautiful, forward dirty scoundrel poet.
May God protect us all.
published in Prairie Schooner (Lincoln, NE) 56:1 (Spring 1982)
* * *
Treinta y tres poemas (Buenos Aires: Torres Agüero, 1985)
Nameless
That bundle
and the mouth that dreams it
Gioconda
what destiny
no one is watching us
tell me
time swells
in the sea
nor do I forget you.
* * *
Tapestry
Where the spear whistles
keen
fatal.
Hushed prairie
which in the tapestry breathes.
The lowered sky
in its voyage lifts
its elusive face.
Minute landscape
which folds inward
or bounds away.
The joyful which saddens
the soft wind
the rain.
What could not be
as if it might have been.
Everything is memory
of the instant
time of grace
notion
after the chase.
* * *
Version of May
for Tato and Camila
Time passes some things break others survive
far away am I from the dream that tamed horses
better would it be to say that a raging bird shakes winter
the blue wing among the halted waters thick from the thaw.
Solicited waters
waters sometimes in a rampart’s cave.
Waters at peace again
in motion.
* * *
As If Nothing But His Own Calamity
for Skarpe
He knows no other birds of sight harsher
than his own desires, nor remembers other cats
of conduct smoother than his own senses.
Wolf thirsty for himself as well
his howling hinders the morale
of those who weep in the mind’s cathedrals.
Later he orders his wines,
turns on lights, no one knows the reason for so many lights,
speaks of when they come slitting throats.
He has the simplest visions
and does not find words easily.
Then he roars
explodes
loves his scream.
Guts through the air.
published in Temblor (North Hollywood) 1 (1985)
* * *
Baroque Meditation in Cadaqués
From freedom from rebellion
toward the lofty circles of myth
and the blind mirrors of magic
the whole vast panorama of the fetus
that smokes its memory against death.
At any rate
yesterday barely happened
and the panic is this thread of blood
that whips about in the tumult
this shred of moonlight over the sea
this mouth fuming unbreathable.
Yesterday barely happened
barely flesh and fear
trampled suckling
toss
these whitewashed walls
and harsh glitterings.
Belfry of needles
scorched by the wind
night rises to pain
with no other bandage but the salt
no other rancor
but some anonymous cries
climbing the trees.
The ash is thus
seasoned in squalls
without fury or fate
makes time into an allegory
propagates in parables
lies or invents.
Well of the mind
and trace of terror
the skin attends the eye
the eye the bone
and the beat its center.
This is the place
say the voices
this is the very place
of music.
Bodies
attired reflections
bubblings of dream
wolves like the dawn
beneath these old crevices
the clouds were founded
and now the burning frightens
the figures.
The red arrow
the bow
the face
the smooth skin which lingers
and forgets.
Time filled to the brim
place of the thicket
swollen flesh stirred
crest rearing
calmed without breaking
trembles
and returns.
Breezes
horizon of rings
the defeat all alone
has been filled with victims
and wavers desolate among the birds.
published in Polygraph (Durham, NC) 1 (1987)
* * *
Anniversary
Fine sand that’s not exactly sidereal,
but silent mania of time upon
this long superstition of words.
Everything is favorable however,
suspicions included,
for sweeping the dust from the moon
with a wise and innocent
trick.
Like Catherine in the tropics:
“I love this wind,” she cries out, “it isolates
in such a way that essential things
perforce are said.”
Or poor Bert, pissed on by the dogs,
who redeems himself in the end: “The defeated man
does not escape wisdom.”
Fine sand that’s not exactly sidereal
but lowly soot in bluish rain,
or bitten ashes lifted
by the August wind.
Everything is favorable, however, the eagerness
and the bait, even the nausea itself
that routine scatters while braiding the music.
Fine sand that’s not exactly sidereal
but remains of low clouds that stick to the ground,
roads that are slowly destroyed at dusk.
Everything is favorable, however.
Brief jaws of sand, the words breathe
a stubborn vapor against the impassable sky.
Candid whip in the modern farce.
published in Acts (San Francisco) 3 (1984)
* * *
Todo calla y nada puede callar (1994),
in Tramos (Córdoba, Argentina: Ediciones del Copista, 2005)
A Balcony Over the Sea
I.
Deceptive and admirable music
of nature, gazing
from the balcony of my house
toward the horizon,
along both arms of the bay
I can almost imagine
that I am still the same,
that despite this rock of silence
weighing upon each thing,
each gesture, each word,
born empty and desolate,
nothing apparently has changed.
II.
In the direction of Ros beach
the houses in lengthened profile
over the stain of the cliffs,
whitened by distance,
repeat the same monosyllabic song,
impelling us to go on
to the full silence
of Port Lligat,
immobile in the time
of remembered love,
with the intact music
of the stubborn tide
gently foundered
upon the astonished bodies,
the slow push of dreams
confusing the days.
III.
Toward the south the child’s drawing
of the lighthouse at Sa Bolla
white stones upon black stones,
still illuminates my heart
shining suspended in the blue air
behind the gesturing pines
on Pichot’s tiny island,
which by a distortion of perspective
seem to hold it up like a trophy,
though now that clean exaltation
which arose like a soft breeze
has changed to an unpleasant wind,
burning reddened eyes
blind from such effort to capture
a shadow, a signal in the waters,
a unique and persistent fluttering of wings
that could explain everything.
IV.
With the rising of the sun
the black pyramid of Es Cucurucú,
reverential cock’s comb
emerging at dawn
like a Mount Analogue rediscovered,
infuses through the wild surroundings
the serene enigma of its power
—Love which flies so high
life which passes so quickly--
dragging thought
far from all anger,
to the eternal region
where intricate death
is also a beautiful bird
alone, proudly raising
its powerful canticle.
V.
Amid the quiet bay,
beneath the commanding leaden sky,
perhaps to commemorate a simple
but indispensable habit of the landscape,
or maybe to convince myself as well
of the primordial beauty of the fleeting
that is reborn at each instant,
in this hour when the light
voraciously anchors onto things,
sparkles reminiscent
the white profile of a boat
lightly rocking in the evening,
brightness so much a part of the unreal
stillness of everything visible,
that distracted by a treacherous change
in the swaying space of the emotion
we have been left in the margin,
unbelieving and destitute
like expelled angels
abandoned in sudden exile.
VI.
And there in the high kingdom,
the shining father
in his carriage of swords,
with its colossal course to the west,
whom I summoned so often
with all my strength
asking for help and protection,
even in the dark night,
when in flagrant weakness
our ingenuous gods falter,
while he unruffled
in his golden armor,
burning at the antipodes,
was returning triumphant,
conqueror of shadows,
to his beneficent labors,
same as now and always,
icy December in which I pray,
voice going round,
hands held out,
anguish overwhelming,
while he covers us omnipotent
with his winged rays
caressing time.
* * *
The Cave
Abundant and turbulent meeting
of privileged objects
patiently summoned
to designate the unattainable
that dwells in every moment of desire.
Trophies and ornaments,
skins feathers necklaces little bones,
traces of our kingdom
and of the smoking pulse of others
that testify to an immediate desire,
a meticulous and astonished greed
for the hazardous splendor
that suddenly confirms us.
Letters portraits amulets
crumbs and strings,
careful rituals
for returning unscathed
from uprisen dreams,
slightest possessions and rusty
treasures which the sea’s justice
returns to us
with untiring thunder.
Bites from the south,
from the depth of cracking bones,
loose threads from an unfinished
tapestry ever faithful,
of slow sparkling blades
snatched from decline
by art
of the lovers’ amazement
that excavates its alliances from time.
Homages, wardrobes, domestic
ceremonies of heat and cold,
of presence and absence,
labyrinth of offerings
to placate the sky,
masks and parodies
in the limitless cave
hungry for miracles.
* * *
Versiones con cíclopes (2000),
in Tramos (Córdoba, Argentina: Ediciones del Copista, 2005)
Samothrace, Goodbye
I could come up with an endless number of justifications
that will ring no truer than slag and scrap
You keep going however (it's true) as mythical
and polished as a locomotive in action
The single flaming eye in the middle of its forehead
and that long terrified whistle moving away
Understand,
I am a mule that crosses the field
Breathing is difficult in this turbulent air
Only blind metaphoric glimmerings
between my goodbye and my desire
that once again the legend scatters
in an empty tunnel
Where are you going what will you do which
shall be your faces
In any case let’s be young with the sorrow
that greases these walls
I’m not proud or enthusiastic about the darkness
but I prefer to think that the only real thing is
all that we don’t know of ourselves
The irremediable doesn’t exist
or it glistens like a stone under water
What do you choose
Victory
(from the Spanish)
Tomás Guido Lavalle
Vía Aérea (Buenos Aires: Alkol, 1970)
Us
for Alejandra Pizarnik
Critical or ironical,
preferably lucid,
esthetic,
barely metaphysical and
of reasonable temper,
everything seems to conspire
for a fine death
after lunch.
But let’s have no illusions:
along with the shy discoveries
of selectivity and patience
we’ll take some herbs
that we haven’t asked for,
and that intolerant poison
will be, precisely,
life.
published in Sphinx (Paris) 1 (1984)
* * *
Matter of Friends
for Alfredo Plank
But what are friends up to, for now Fernando says Villegas says when friends are somewhere else it’s as if they were dead, he apologizes, while Guillermo speaks of earthquakes because yesterday was one of those days when all the distilleries put together aren’t enough, the same with Inés, letter dated grey anniversary of the Liberator’s death, the days are monotonous, I extract the words at random, Abel for example, in Cáceres, Spain, dear impostor you must abandon that dishonorable position of striptease and rinse your swinish heart, or Carlos and Skarpe dying in Barcelona maintain that the city isn’t bad but damned is the solitude and the latitude factor you have to get hold of it all ciao a hug, and Federico in the middle of the plaza in Tucumán, Argentina, tells me humbly of the oranges “quick shapes of quiet” incomparable friend, everything speeded up, inconclusive, obsessive, disturbing, so Michele talking about herself deduces elle rie, elle pleure, elle mange du lilas comme une vraie personne, or the ineffable Enrique who begins: desperate and necessary brother we are always scheming and we read in a trail of water where the sun rises alone, nothing to do with Guillermo proclaiming that my stupid little verses are getting ahead of him come back soon die for once, or Roberto who between laboratories and seaweed tells me of his son Leonardo (whom I call Leopoldo), this bit about fatherhood cleanses me but the important thing is you should know that we’re with you in spirit, sweet as Mimí and Eugenio with their postcards full of patriotic business beside the immense solitude of El Mono some night in Entre Ríos, I swear to you Tomás I thought I was going crazy, and Ritva from her aquatic forests, I was so happy remember me Kangsala, Finland, and Mora yet who sends me my daughter’s measurements, shoulder 27 cm., full length 48 cm., sleeve length 30 cm., so long-winded for some things and she adds something about the freeing of doves and the marshes, one lives on in the mind of the rest, dear Tomás you are not in the dark insists Ritva, while Ricardo explains: friendship is a very strange and costly thing, never have I had the goodwill to commit myself to anyone else’s goodwill, it’s like a game of legitimacies, so it refreshes me to be writing you come-what-may, oh drunken bird as Pilar says overheated in the Moscow cold, your joy is infectious, and though I still don’t handle all the cords of discovery I recognize I have a certain fluency for love, fine points from Marcelo who’s getting married in March, just the opposite for Alfredo, a stinking animal when he affirms that life is beautiful, forward dirty scoundrel poet.
May God protect us all.
published in Prairie Schooner (Lincoln, NE) 56:1 (Spring 1982)
* * *
Treinta y tres poemas (Buenos Aires: Torres Agüero, 1985)
Nameless
That bundle
and the mouth that dreams it
Gioconda
what destiny
no one is watching us
tell me
time swells
in the sea
nor do I forget you.
* * *
Tapestry
Where the spear whistles
keen
fatal.
Hushed prairie
which in the tapestry breathes.
The lowered sky
in its voyage lifts
its elusive face.
Minute landscape
which folds inward
or bounds away.
The joyful which saddens
the soft wind
the rain.
What could not be
as if it might have been.
Everything is memory
of the instant
time of grace
notion
after the chase.
* * *
Version of May
for Tato and Camila
Time passes some things break others survive
far away am I from the dream that tamed horses
better would it be to say that a raging bird shakes winter
the blue wing among the halted waters thick from the thaw.
Solicited waters
waters sometimes in a rampart’s cave.
Waters at peace again
in motion.
* * *
As If Nothing But His Own Calamity
for Skarpe
He knows no other birds of sight harsher
than his own desires, nor remembers other cats
of conduct smoother than his own senses.
Wolf thirsty for himself as well
his howling hinders the morale
of those who weep in the mind’s cathedrals.
Later he orders his wines,
turns on lights, no one knows the reason for so many lights,
speaks of when they come slitting throats.
He has the simplest visions
and does not find words easily.
Then he roars
explodes
loves his scream.
Guts through the air.
published in Temblor (North Hollywood) 1 (1985)
* * *
Baroque Meditation in Cadaqués
From freedom from rebellion
toward the lofty circles of myth
and the blind mirrors of magic
the whole vast panorama of the fetus
that smokes its memory against death.
At any rate
yesterday barely happened
and the panic is this thread of blood
that whips about in the tumult
this shred of moonlight over the sea
this mouth fuming unbreathable.
Yesterday barely happened
barely flesh and fear
trampled suckling
toss
these whitewashed walls
and harsh glitterings.
Belfry of needles
scorched by the wind
night rises to pain
with no other bandage but the salt
no other rancor
but some anonymous cries
climbing the trees.
The ash is thus
seasoned in squalls
without fury or fate
makes time into an allegory
propagates in parables
lies or invents.
Well of the mind
and trace of terror
the skin attends the eye
the eye the bone
and the beat its center.
This is the place
say the voices
this is the very place
of music.
Bodies
attired reflections
bubblings of dream
wolves like the dawn
beneath these old crevices
the clouds were founded
and now the burning frightens
the figures.
The red arrow
the bow
the face
the smooth skin which lingers
and forgets.
Time filled to the brim
place of the thicket
swollen flesh stirred
crest rearing
calmed without breaking
trembles
and returns.
Breezes
horizon of rings
the defeat all alone
has been filled with victims
and wavers desolate among the birds.
published in Polygraph (Durham, NC) 1 (1987)
* * *
Anniversary
Fine sand that’s not exactly sidereal,
but silent mania of time upon
this long superstition of words.
Everything is favorable however,
suspicions included,
for sweeping the dust from the moon
with a wise and innocent
trick.
Like Catherine in the tropics:
“I love this wind,” she cries out, “it isolates
in such a way that essential things
perforce are said.”
Or poor Bert, pissed on by the dogs,
who redeems himself in the end: “The defeated man
does not escape wisdom.”
Fine sand that’s not exactly sidereal
but lowly soot in bluish rain,
or bitten ashes lifted
by the August wind.
Everything is favorable, however, the eagerness
and the bait, even the nausea itself
that routine scatters while braiding the music.
Fine sand that’s not exactly sidereal
but remains of low clouds that stick to the ground,
roads that are slowly destroyed at dusk.
Everything is favorable, however.
Brief jaws of sand, the words breathe
a stubborn vapor against the impassable sky.
Candid whip in the modern farce.
published in Acts (San Francisco) 3 (1984)
* * *
Todo calla y nada puede callar (1994),
in Tramos (Córdoba, Argentina: Ediciones del Copista, 2005)
A Balcony Over the Sea
I.
Deceptive and admirable music
of nature, gazing
from the balcony of my house
toward the horizon,
along both arms of the bay
I can almost imagine
that I am still the same,
that despite this rock of silence
weighing upon each thing,
each gesture, each word,
born empty and desolate,
nothing apparently has changed.
II.
In the direction of Ros beach
the houses in lengthened profile
over the stain of the cliffs,
whitened by distance,
repeat the same monosyllabic song,
impelling us to go on
to the full silence
of Port Lligat,
immobile in the time
of remembered love,
with the intact music
of the stubborn tide
gently foundered
upon the astonished bodies,
the slow push of dreams
confusing the days.
III.
Toward the south the child’s drawing
of the lighthouse at Sa Bolla
white stones upon black stones,
still illuminates my heart
shining suspended in the blue air
behind the gesturing pines
on Pichot’s tiny island,
which by a distortion of perspective
seem to hold it up like a trophy,
though now that clean exaltation
which arose like a soft breeze
has changed to an unpleasant wind,
burning reddened eyes
blind from such effort to capture
a shadow, a signal in the waters,
a unique and persistent fluttering of wings
that could explain everything.
IV.
With the rising of the sun
the black pyramid of Es Cucurucú,
reverential cock’s comb
emerging at dawn
like a Mount Analogue rediscovered,
infuses through the wild surroundings
the serene enigma of its power
—Love which flies so high
life which passes so quickly--
dragging thought
far from all anger,
to the eternal region
where intricate death
is also a beautiful bird
alone, proudly raising
its powerful canticle.
V.
Amid the quiet bay,
beneath the commanding leaden sky,
perhaps to commemorate a simple
but indispensable habit of the landscape,
or maybe to convince myself as well
of the primordial beauty of the fleeting
that is reborn at each instant,
in this hour when the light
voraciously anchors onto things,
sparkles reminiscent
the white profile of a boat
lightly rocking in the evening,
brightness so much a part of the unreal
stillness of everything visible,
that distracted by a treacherous change
in the swaying space of the emotion
we have been left in the margin,
unbelieving and destitute
like expelled angels
abandoned in sudden exile.
VI.
And there in the high kingdom,
the shining father
in his carriage of swords,
with its colossal course to the west,
whom I summoned so often
with all my strength
asking for help and protection,
even in the dark night,
when in flagrant weakness
our ingenuous gods falter,
while he unruffled
in his golden armor,
burning at the antipodes,
was returning triumphant,
conqueror of shadows,
to his beneficent labors,
same as now and always,
icy December in which I pray,
voice going round,
hands held out,
anguish overwhelming,
while he covers us omnipotent
with his winged rays
caressing time.
* * *
The Cave
Abundant and turbulent meeting
of privileged objects
patiently summoned
to designate the unattainable
that dwells in every moment of desire.
Trophies and ornaments,
skins feathers necklaces little bones,
traces of our kingdom
and of the smoking pulse of others
that testify to an immediate desire,
a meticulous and astonished greed
for the hazardous splendor
that suddenly confirms us.
Letters portraits amulets
crumbs and strings,
careful rituals
for returning unscathed
from uprisen dreams,
slightest possessions and rusty
treasures which the sea’s justice
returns to us
with untiring thunder.
Bites from the south,
from the depth of cracking bones,
loose threads from an unfinished
tapestry ever faithful,
of slow sparkling blades
snatched from decline
by art
of the lovers’ amazement
that excavates its alliances from time.
Homages, wardrobes, domestic
ceremonies of heat and cold,
of presence and absence,
labyrinth of offerings
to placate the sky,
masks and parodies
in the limitless cave
hungry for miracles.
* * *
Versiones con cíclopes (2000),
in Tramos (Córdoba, Argentina: Ediciones del Copista, 2005)
Samothrace, Goodbye
I could come up with an endless number of justifications
that will ring no truer than slag and scrap
You keep going however (it's true) as mythical
and polished as a locomotive in action
The single flaming eye in the middle of its forehead
and that long terrified whistle moving away
Understand,
I am a mule that crosses the field
Breathing is difficult in this turbulent air
Only blind metaphoric glimmerings
between my goodbye and my desire
that once again the legend scatters
in an empty tunnel
Where are you going what will you do which
shall be your faces
In any case let’s be young with the sorrow
that greases these walls
I’m not proud or enthusiastic about the darkness
but I prefer to think that the only real thing is
all that we don’t know of ourselves
The irremediable doesn’t exist
or it glistens like a stone under water
What do you choose
Victory