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.