https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
 http://offcourse.org
 ISSN 1556-4975

OffCourse Literary Journal

Published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998


 

Poems in Spanish by Carlos Barbarito, with English translations by Ricardo Nirenberg.

 

Mary Hoggan

Se disipó el humo último de aquel mundo.
Pero por algún motivo –que no entiendo-
queda un olor a madera vieja, a cortina
roída por el tiempo. Respiro
ese aire, después de tantos vientos
contra los muros de casas que ya no existen.
A limpid dream –diría,
si pudiese abrir su boca sellada hace mucho.
Y yo, que sigo sentado, como entonces,
ante el mismo y descolado libro
para aprendices, le digo
- aunque ya no pueda oírme-,
con la misma torpe pronunciación de siempre:

Know what we are, remembering what we were .

A limpid dream: Edwin Muir, The Labyrinth.
Know what we are, remembering what we were. : Edwin Muir, The Horses.

 


 

Mary Hoggan

The smoke of that world is wholly gone.
Yet for some reason that escapes me,
smells of old wood remain, of blinds
tattered by time.  I breathe
this air, having breathed so many winds
that blew on walls torn down.
She’d say, A limpid dream,
had not her lips been sealed so long ago.
And I, still sitting just like then,
before the same frayed textbook
for beginners, tell her
—although she cannot hear—
with that same clumsy pronunciation:
Know what we are, remembering what we were.

 


La pregunta que ahora me hago…

...¿qué interés puede presentar una vida?
Cioran

La pregunta que ahora me hago:
¿ qué dejo tras de mí al avanzar?
tal vez no valga más,
para la razón tela de araña del universo,
que ¿por qué no desayuné esta mañana?
o ¿de qué lado de la cama está más fresco?
Pero, de todos modos,
me lo pregunto mientras es mediodía
y el eco postrero de aquel coro de niños
que oí en una plaza de piedra, una noche, en Venecia,
en el aire de este mediodía se apaga;
así, me respondo, toda estela, toda huella, toda marca.
Luego, tomo nota, como tantos otros días,
del despertar de los pájaros en el alba,
de la posibilidad de que se desate la tormenta,
del olvidado ramaje que vi ayer al borde de un sendero,
de una mujer, cuyo nombre olvidé
como la ola olvida la arena al regresar al océano,
que cepillaba su pelo frente al espejo
cuando todo para mí, incluso el sol, era nuevo.
Y, finalmente, reúno todo eso, otra vez,
y, estela, huella, marca
que dejo tras de mí al avanzar, escribo el poema.


 

The Question I Now Ask Myself

Of what interest could a life be?
Cioran

The question I now ask myself:
what am I leaving behind as I go forward?
perhaps has no more worth,
viewed from reason’s universal spider web,
than: why didn’t I eat my breakfast this morning?
or: which is the cooler side of the bed?
Anyway,
I ask myself this question now at noontime
as the last echoes of the children choir
I heard one evening amid the stones of Venice
die down into the noontime air;
thus, I reply, every wake, every footprint, every mark.
Then I take some notes, as usual:
the birds awakening at dawn,
the chances of that storm breaking out,
those branches I saw yesterday, abandoned at the trailside,
that woman, whose name I have forgotten
as the wave forgets the strand returning to the ocean,
who brushed her hair before the mirror
when all was new for me, even the sun.
Finally I gather all together, once again,
and wake, footprint and mark
I left behind while going forward, become poem.

 


Carlos Barbarito is a poet and artist living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His new book, Cenizas del Mediodía, from which these two poems are taken, is available at http://www.editorialpraxis.com

Ricardo Nirenberg is the editor of Offcourse.



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