Rowing Through Wyoming

           

Dedicado al estimado Señor Gilberto Lacayo Bermúdez,

hombre de una visión grande y panorámica--de las ciencias

y las matemáticas a la  filosofía y la poesía.

                 " Portraying the future is a vast and aesthetic 

                   enterprise of amassing beauties--from outer

                   space, from the human soul, from the reflection

                   of sun on water, from the stars, from clouds...".

                                                                        Ivan Yefremov

Eyes that see eons

surf the slow-moving

swells of mountains

thick with fleets of evergreen

marking years and seasons.

In dark valleys below

a mankind of coal,

of steel and steam,

of oil and gasoline,

dreaming electric lights

as stars to the moon.

Have you passed through

Wyoming under water?

Did you see the fishes in the air?

The sharks and coelacanths and water dinosaurs

gliding through the haze like ships of the main?

Did you see the crabs and lobsters?

The anemones and hydras?

As you rowed over the asphalt

in your bathysphere did you see

the trilobites?

E. A. Costa 23 August, 2015 Granada, Nicaragua

Holub (The Dove)

                             "Why not live sweetly as in the green trees?"

                                                                                (John Keats)

Who eats of this meat?
If a tree, ants and termites.
If grubs, woodpeckers.

So Mr. Fixit
is not beloved Doctor Dove
who's more the poet.

E. A. Costa  Granada, Nicaragua 23 August, 2015

Portolan

            Para hacerse baquiano hay que perderse alguna vez.
                                                                 (Spanish proverb)

It is not as if eyes did not see

the shipwreck on the horizon

of our time, yours and mine.

But what does it signify to foresee?

It was no specific reef,

for the most perilous are hidden,

nor any iceberg in the night.

Was it night itself, yours and mine,

and a mutiny in steerage,

where all our ghosts had passage?

Ghosts of every age, yours and mine,

losers of living, returned to haunt the cruise.

We have our own eyes, yours and mine

in our own age and epoch, escaping

each reproach in smile.

While misdirecting others we are safe,

for where we sail is not on any map,

and on uncharted seas we have naught

but a portolan of us.

E. A. Costa  14 August San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

Metrópoli en invierno

          "No está en mi poder reconvertir un dinosaurio reacio."

                                                             William S. Burroughs

En la cárcel

de luz artificial

regresan los presos

a sus palomares.

Microondas zumban

como picaflores.

Televisiones parpadean.

Las cloacas se inundan

con agua tibia.

Arriba enredan

contingente noche

los rascacielos,

moteando los ratones

abajo.

E. A. Costa 10 August, 2015 San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

Pablo Neruda Poema XXIV (con traducción a inglés)

El 4 es 4 para todos?
Son todos los sietes iguales?

Cuando el preso piensa en la luz
es la misma luz que te ilumina?

Has pensado de qué color
es el Abril de los enfermos?

Qué monarchía occidental
se embandera con amapolas?

Pablo Neruda (El libro de las preguntas)



XXIV

Is four four for all? Are all sevens equal?

When someone in a prison cell contemplates the light of day,
is it the selfsame daylight which illumines you?

Have you given any thought to what color April may be to the ill?

What western monarchy, with its Kings and Queens, is flagged
forever with opium and poppies?


Tr.  E. A. Costa San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua 7 August, 2015
____________________________________________________
N.B.: One has deliberately departed from literal translation to get
to the heart of the poem, which is ironic.  Quite clearly the topic is
political exceptionalism, or more generally, the golden rule, or its lack.
The last line with its reference to poppies is ambiguous--gay on the
surface but with a clear reference the Opium Wars of the British
(1839–1842 & 1856–1860), which were fought to force the Chinese
to import opium that British merchants were exporting from British India
under the Raj, and which was hugely profitable. Both the United States 
and France played marginal roles in the war against China, which China
lost. There is also clearly a reference to the wearing of red poppies to honor
British and Canadian dead from World War I, which took its origin from
the poem "Flanders Fields" of John McCrae, beginning, "In Flanders fields
the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row..." (1915) The usage
also spread quickly to the United States, where it continues today, with
artifical, paper poppies.

Sube la marea

Entre agua y arena

abren ojos vidriosos

espumando con melodías

de un mundo nuevo.

Sobre rocas viejas

al chasquido de castañetas

camina oblicuamente

el cangrejo.

Lentamente gira

en la linea de su hélice,

lentamente como un reloj,

el caracol.  

E. A. Costa  2 August, 2015  San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

Kobayashi Issa: Summer Night/ Noche de verano

Summer night--

Even the stars are whispering

to each other.

Kobayashi Issa (tr. Robert Hass)

Noche de verano

Noche de verano--

Aún las estrellas están susurrando

la una a la otra.

tr. E. A. Costa 21 July, 2015 San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua