Edwin Markham: Poetry/Poesía

She comes like the hush and beauty of the night,
And sees too deep for laughter;
Her touch is a vibration and a light
From worlds before and after.


Edwin Markham


Poesía

Ella viene como la quietud y la belleza de la noche
y mira demasiado profundamente para reír;
Su toque es un trémolo y una luz
desde mundos antes y depués.

Tr. EAC

E.  A. Costa          April 9, 2016   Granada, Nicaragua

El colibrí (sagrado para Huitzilopochtli, dios de la guerra).

En medio de las hojas esmeraldas

trompetas de hibisco de color sangre fresca

están sonando con estambres dorados.

Torneado y pulido como un dardo

el colibrí se cierne entre triángulos de gasa

zumbando como un abejorro gigante.

Por el aire fragante flota hacia atrás

y hacia delante y entonces de repente avanza

apuñalando con su florete la garganta de la flor.

E. A. Costa

The Hummingbird (sacred to Huitzilopochtli, god of war)

Trumpets of hibiscus

the color of fresh red blood

are blaring their golden stamens

over emerald leaves.

Lathed and polished like a dart

the hummingbird hovers buzzing

between triangles of gauze

like some gigantic bumblebee.

Through the scented air it floats backward

and forward—then suddenly advances

stabbing flower's throat with its foil.

(Tr. E.A.C.)

E. A. Costa     April 8, 2016    Granada, Nicaragua 

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle): Heat/ Calor

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air--
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat--
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

Calor

Oh viento, parte por la mitad

este calor, escinde el calor—

rásgalo a pedazos.

La fruta no puede caer

por este aire espeso--

no puede bajar por el calor

que la empuja hacia arriba--

que desafila la punta de la pera

y redondea las uvas.

Corta el calor--

ara a través de él

roturándolo a ambos

costados de tu pista.

Tr. EAC

E. A. Costa 3 April 2016 Granada, Nicaragua 

Vicente Huidobro: Horas/ Hours

El villorio
Un tren detenido sobre el llano

En cada charco duermen estrellas sordas
Y el agua tiembla
Cortinaje al viento

La noche cuelga en la arboleda

En el campanario florecido
Una gotera viva
Desangra las estrellas

De cuando en cuando
Las horas maduras
Caen sobre la vida.

Vicente Huidobro

Hours

Jerkwater town

A train stopped on the plain

In every pool sleep unhearing stars
And the water trembles

Curtain to the wind

Night hangs in the copse.

In the flowered bell tower

A living trickle

Bleeds the stars white.

From time to time

The ripe hours

Fall upon life.

Tr. EAC

E A. Costa      2 April, 2016    Granada, Nicaragua
____________________________________________

N.B.: A “jerkwater town” in English is a small or

insignificant village where trains drawn by steam

locomotives stopped to refill their boilers. These small

towns and villages did not even merit a water tower

and water had to be “jerked” in buckets from streams

or ponds by the tracks. The expression fits the Spanish

“villorrio” nicely, and in the poem even to its stopped train.

Huidobro was tutored by British and French governesses.

He also traveled to New York at least once in 1921,

 though that visit was a few years after he published this

work in Poemas árticos. Did Huidobro perhaps know

the English expression?

Salomón de la Selva: Carta/ Letter

Ya me curé de la literatura.
Estas cosas no hay cómo contarlas.
Estoy piojoso y eso es lo de menos.
De nada sirven las palabras.
Está haciendo frío
por unas razones muy sencillas
que no recuerdo ahora.
Tal vez porque es invierno.
Unos libros forrados
que hallarás en mi casa
explican con lucidez indiscutible
la razón de las temperaturas.
Cuando me escribas, dime
por qué hay calor y frío.
¡Fuera horroroso
morirme en la ignorancia!
Las luces Verey son
lo más bello del mundo.
La No Man's Land parece
un país encantado.
He visto mi propia sombra
alargarse al infinito.
Y me han brotado mil sombras
rápidas de los pies.
Y se han ido estirando
más veloces que un sueño;
y después han corrido
de nuevo a mis zapatos.
Todavía les tengo
más temor a las sombras que a las balas.
Aunque son un encanto
las luces: verdes, blancas,
azules, amarillas
Me he diluido en sombras
y me he ido corriendo
a más allá del mundo.
Me han parecido música
las luces. Me he sentido
el Prometeo de Scriabin.
Después me ha dado espanto.
Unos libros forrados
que hallarás en mi casa
explican con lucidez indiscutible
el por qué de los miedos.
Cuando me escribas, dime
cómo se es valiente.
¡Fuera horroroso
morirme en la ignorancia!

Salomón de la Selva

Letter

I've already got over literature.

These things—there is simply no way

to count them up or recount them.

I am infested with lice and that

is the least of it.

Words serve for nothing.

It's cold right now for some very simple reasons

which I can't remember at the moment.

Maybe because it's winter.

Some nicely bound books

which you will find at my house

lucidly and indisputably explain

the reason for different temperatures.

When you write me tell me

why there's heat and cold.

It would be a dreadful thing to die without knowing it!

The flare gun's lights

are the most beautiful thing

in the world.

No Man's Land seems a land of enchantment.

I have seen my own shadow

stretching out in length to infinity.

And a thousand Jack Flash shadows

have sprouted from my feet

and have gone stretching out

faster than a dream; and afterward--

afterward they ran right back to my shoes.

I still have more dread

of the shadows than of the bullets.

Although the lights are spell-binding--

green, white, blue, yellow--

I've been watered down and attenuated

in shadows and I have gone running

right out of the world.

The lights seem to me to be music.

I've heard the Prometheus of Scriabin.

Later on it gave me a great fright.

Some nicely bound books

which you will find at my house

lucidly and indisputably explain

the why and wherefore of  fears.

When you write me tell me

what's up with being brave.

It would be a dreadful thing to die without knowing it!

Tr. EAC 

E. A. Costa   1 April, 2016   Granada, Nicaragua

_________________________________________________________ 

N.B.: Born in Nicaragua, De la Selva studied and taught in the United States

and served with British forces in the trenches of World War I,  of which

this work is a  reminiscence. The Very or Verey was a flare gun developed

by the US naval officer Edward Wilson Very. Alexander Scriabin is a Russian

composer and pianist whose  Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, Op. 60 (1910)

featured a clavier of lights  or "Chromola"  used to execute Scriabin's

theory of musical colors.  In the translation “Jack Flash” as denoting quickness

derives from a British cartoon begun in 1949 featuring a flying boy from Mercury

with four wings on his feet. The “Jack” surely comes from the English nursery rhyme:

                                      Jack be nimble,

                                      Jack be quick,

                                      Jack jump over

                                      The candlestick.

The “Flash” obviously descends from the English idiom “in a flash”, meaning 

suddenly or quickly, first used in regard to a flash of lightning about 1800.

Putting Jack and Flash together adjectivally is a bit of an anachronism, since

it probably would not have been used in World War I, but it well fits the context

of flare guns.

The Russian Ark

                       

                      " I come with the wind,

                        flow with the water,

                        and leave with the storm.”

                                               Ivan Peev

Not in abstraction

nor in cold-eyed reflection,

nor in tears or regret or forgetfulness,

and least of all in sadness—

to hold nothing dear

but one another,

living and dying as one,

like the great animal of being,

growling like an earthquake

far underground,

coursing side by side

as Poseidon's horses,

rolling like Russian sailors

and making seafarers of us all,

children of the same sky,

creatures of the same ark,

sidewiding like serpents

over two lost legs....

E. A. Costa   31 March, 2016  Granada, Nicaragua

Federico García Lorca: Alba/ Dawn

Mi corazón oprimido
Siente junto a la alborada
El dolor de sus amores
Y el sueño de las distancias.
La luz de la aurora lleva
Semilleros de nostalgias
Y la tristeza sin ojos
De la médula del alma.
La gran tumba de la noche
Su negro velo levanta
Para ocultar con el día
La inmensa cumbre estrellada.

¡Qué haré yo sobre estos campos
Cogiendo nidos y ramas
Rodeado de la aurora
Y llena de noche el alma!
¡Qué haré si tienes tus ojos
Muertos a las luces claras
Y no ha de sentir mi carne
El calor de tus miradas!
¿Por qué te perdí por siempre
En aquella tarde clara?
Hoy mi pecho está reseco
Como una estrella apagada.

Federico García Lorca

Dawn

My crushed heart,

one with daybreak and aubade,

feels the grief of lost loves

and its dream of faraways.

Dawn's light conjures up

seedbeds of past agony

and the eyeless sadness

at my soul's very core.

The grand tomb of night

lifts its black veil only to secret away

with day its huge & spangled dome.

What will I do over these fields

gathering nests and branches,

surrounded by sunrise

and with a soul full of night?

What will I do if you keep

your eyes dead to light

and my flesh cannot feel

the warmth of your glances?

Why did I lose you forever

in that one bright, transparent afternoon?

Today my breast is parched through

like a quenched star.

Tr. EAC

E. A. Costa  27 March, 2016  Beverly Shores, Indiana

________________________________________________

N.B.: "La alborada" in Spanish means both daybreak and 

also an aubade, which includes a form about the parting of lovers

at daybreak. Aubade is also more directly "albada". Here it seems
clear enough the poet, with brilliant ambiguity, refers to both
daybreak and the poetic and musical form, a kind of serenade
--thus the translation.