FABLE OF THE DOLPHIN AND THE BIRD’S SHADOW / FÁBULA DEL DELFÍN Y LA SOMBRA DEL PÁJARO

Traducción al ingles de Chris Brandt para la antología bilingüe de poesía cubana, The whole island: six decades of cuban poetry, realizada por el poeta, traductor y editor Mark Weiss.
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FABLE OF THE DOLPHIN AND THE BIRD’S SHADOW
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Seated between two corpses, the bird’s shadow transformed
....................../into flight, shadow on shadow;
……seated like a wound between two corpses: beer foams up
....................../in a wave chest-high
……and by our side two corpses punching holes in the faces
....................../of conversation.
The truth is not the bird’s flight, it’s the plumage
....................../that penetrates the song’s ambiguity,
……the song like a small sound stabbed into the chest’s
....................../emptiness.
In the drinkers’ glasses, the beer foam like the voice of the
....................../child who sings between two deaths,
……it’s an excavation skirting along the crease,
……a slow penetration of plumage into the dark squalor
....................../of sound.
Here come the acrobats with the words from the last time
....................../he misspoke,
...…the last secret impulse to be blind.
Once he saw his blue laughter and the blue behind the laughter
....................../of one who knows he has received the latest news;
……it’s the scarf, the silvered star in the scarf that launched
....................../the dolphin, now it seeks in the water
....................../the depths through which it must escape,
……but the child has already stopped opening his heart,
....................../he begins to join together the fragments of the leap,
……but it’s already leapt again and the windowpane shatters,
....................../it falls like a rain of salt on the eyes.
The drinkers raise their glasses, take deep draughts of beer
....................../and of death,
……but the song has ceased, the child holds the stained glass
....................../windows to his chest,
……the dolphin has returned to leap again: the bird flies over,
……the bird’s shadow transformed into flight,
……the dolphin has returned to leap again
……and the child is lying by the water, his chest covered
....................../with dry leaves.
The bird flies over, the truth is not its shadow.
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FÁBULA DEL DELFÍN Y LA SOMBRA DEL PÁJARO
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Sentado entre dos muertos, la sombra del pájaro en vuelo convertida,
....................../sombra sobre la sombra;
……como herida sentado entre dos muertos: la cerveza espuma oleada
....................../sobre el pecho
……y a nuestro lado dos muertos punzando los rostros de la conversación.
La verdad no es el vuelo del pájaro, es el plumaje penetrando la
....................../ambigüedad del canto,
……el canto como un pequeño ruido acuchillado en el vacío del pecho.
En la jarra de los bebedores, la espuma de la cerveza como la voz del
....................../niño que entre dos muertes canta,
……es un ahuecamiento que va el doblez bordeando,
……un penetrar lento del plumaje en la oscura sordidez del sonido.
Viene el volatinero con las palabras del último golpearse,
……del último secreto impulso de estar ciego.
Todos alguna vez vimos su risa azul y el azul tras la risa del que sabe
....................../que ha recibido la última noticia;
……es el pañuelo, la estrella plateada en el pañuelo que ha lanzado el delfín,
....................../ahora busca en el agua la hendidura por la que ha de escapar,
……pero el niño ha dejado ya de abrirse el pecho, comienza a juntar
....................../los fragmentos del salto,
……pero ha vuelto a saltar y la vidriera se quiebra, cae como una lluvia
....................../de sal sobre los ojos.
Los bebedores alzan las jarras, beben largos sorbos de cerveza y de muerte,
……pero la canción ha cesado, el niño va guardando junto a su pecho
....................../los vidrios de colores,
……pero el delfín ha vuelto a saltar: cruza el pájaro,
……la sombra del pájaro en vuelo convertida,
……pero el delfín ha vuelto a saltar
……y el niño está tendido junto al agua con el pecho cubierto de hojas secas.
Cruza el pájaro, la verdad no es su sombra.
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GLASS WALLS / LAS PAREDES DE VIDRIO

Traducción al ingles de Chris Brandt para la antología bilingüe de poesía cubana, The whole island: six decades of cuban poetry, realizada por el poeta, traductor y editor Mark Weiss.

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GLASS WALLS
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In this room the light is too heavy,

……the shadows are bone-white

……and you can’t open the windows before daylight.

The saddest of girls could not dive beneath these waters,

……skirt them,

……or declare she hears music transparent and soggy.

Here there’s no impersonating an angel,

……and it’s not enough to undress.

Those who sometimes don’t listen may not sit at this table,

……there will be no dinners on white tablecloths,

……no jugglers, nor zither players, nor birds, nor fish.

The girl who will be lying down next to us

……might be naked, might be sleeping in the grass

……or nakeder still if she senses she’s not alone:

……but she could never divide herself,

……nor fly nor be troubled,

……nor hold our breast to say she dreams;

……she couldn’t dream she lives in a snail shell and sometimes loses her way.

In this room the shadows are very white,

……someday you might think they’re ours and ask them to sing,

……to fall down.One could think that sometimes we don’t sleep,

……but to talk of insomnia,

……that might impel us to say the night is the narrowest of margins

……where we can exist only by turning away.

Once at this place they spoke of stags and shapes that loosed bent arrows;

……but everyone was thinking about music,

……everyone wanted tamer animals, shapes more frozen.

One morning they brought a stone,

……and set it very high, so high that from time to time it turned;

……never again did we think of being solitary, dark,

……of our terrible desire to bite,

……a tree like that shape where at times we stayed silent.

Then we thought about selling our smile,

……but who could buy something that can disappear,

……who could die of sadness when the shadows are so white.

In this room the light is too heavy,

……turning around would be enough,

……it could be easy to dream we’re alone,

……that we open the window and no one pushes us or reminds us

……how sweet it would be to jump.

That way, drunk, we could imagine we are the least remembered

……and take off with the suicide’s heart, the musician’s box;

……then we’d be calm

……though no one would tell how we came back filthy,

……and threw down the walls, tore out the floors

……and shouted to all that the window was a sweet blue lie;

……though none would reveal that we’d been a little afraid,

……that the mirror

……was beginning to show us the darkest shadows.

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LAS PAREDES DE VIDRIO
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En este cuarto pesa demasiado la luz,
......las sombras son blanquísimas
……y no se pueden abrir las ventanas si aun no ha amanecido.
Una muchacha muy triste no podría sumergirse en las aguas,
……bordearlas,
……o decir que escucha una música transparente y muy húmeda.
Aquí no puede uno disfrazase de ángel,
……no basta desnudarse.
A la mesa no pueden sentarse todos los que a veces no escuchan,
……no habrá comidas sobre manteles blancos,
……no vendrán juglares, ni citaristas, ni pájaros, ni peces.
La muchacha que estará tendida muy cerca de nosotros
……podrá estar desnuda, podrá estar dormida en la hierba
……o estar aun más desnuda si no se siente sola:
……pero nunca podría dividirse,
……pero no podría volar o ser una muchacha turbia,
……o tener nuestro pecho para decir que sueña;
……no podría soñar que habita un caracol y que a veces se pierde.
En este cuarto las sombras son muy blancas,
……algún día pudiesen pensar que son las nuestras y pedirles que canten,
……que se dejen caer.
Se pudiese pensar que a veces no dormimos,
……pero de hablar del insomnio,
……eso puede impulsarnos a decir que la noche es un borde estrechísimo
……en el que solo se puede estar de espaldas.
Aquí alguna vez se habló de ciervos y figuras que lanzaban unas flechas muy curvas;
……pero todos pensaban en la música,
……pero todos querían animales más dóciles, figuras más heladas.
Una mañana trajeron una piedra,
……la pusieron muy alto, tan alto que a veces se volvía;
……nunca más pensamos en estar muy solos, muy oscuros,
……en tener unas ganas terribles de morder,
……un árbol parecido a esa forma en que a veces callábamos.
Entonces pensamos vender nuestra sonrisa,
……pero quién puede comprar algo que se deshace,
……pero quién puede morirse de tristeza con la sombra tan blanca.
En este cuarto pesa demasiado la luz,
……basta volverse,
……puede ser fácil soñar que estamos solos,
……que abrimos la ventana y nadie nos empuja, o nos recuerda
……lo dulce que fuera despeñarse.
Así, tan ebrios, pudiéramos pensar que somos los más desmemoriados
……y salir con el pecho del suicida, con la caja del músico;
……entonces estaríamos tranquilos
……aunque nadie contara que volvimos muy sucios,
……derribamos los muros, rompimos los pisos
……y gritamos a todos que la ventana fue una mentira
……muy dulce, muy azul;
……aunque nadie contara que tuvimos un poco de miedo,
……que el espejo
……empezaba a mostrarnos las sombras más oscuras.
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THE WHOLE ISLAND: SIX DECADES OF CUBAN POETRY / 2009.

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The whole island: six decades of Cuban poetry. A bilingual anthology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

Cuba's cultural influence throughout the Western Hemisphere, and especially in the United States, has been disproportionally large for so small a country. This landmark volume is the first comprehensive overview of poetry written over the past sixty years. Presented in a beautiful Spanish-English en face edition, The Whole Island makes available the astonishing achievement of a wide range of Cuban poets, including such well-known figures as Nicolás Guillén, José Lezama Lima, and Nancy Morejón, but also poets widely read in Spanish who remain almost unknown to the English-speaking world-among them Fina García Marruz, José Kozer, Raúl Hernández Novás, and Angel Escobar-and poets born since the Revolution, like Rogelio Saunders, Omar Pérez, Alessandra Molina, and Javier Marimón. The translations, almost all of them new, convey the intensity and beauty of the accompanying Spanish originals. With their work deeply rooted in Cuban culture, many of these poets-both on and off the island-have been at the center of the political and social changes of this tempestuous period. The poems offered here constitute an essential source for understanding the literature and culture of Cuba, its diaspora, and the Caribbean at large, and provide an unparalleled perspective on what it means to be Cuban.

Format: Kindle Edition
Print Length: 624 pages
Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (October 26, 2009)
Language: English / Spanish
ASIN: B002S0OBLY

Mark Weiss is a poet, translator, publisher, and editor. His publications include six books of poetry; as coeditor, Across the Line/Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California; and as translator, Stet: Selected Poems of José Kozer.

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MAGYAR NAPLÓ / número XXI / junio del 2009

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La revista literaria, de la Asociación de Escritores Húngaros, Magyar Napló, en su número XXI de junio del 2009, incluye una selección de textos de autores de Bluebird Editions, traducidos por György Ferdinandy, María Teresa Reyes y Szentmártoni János.

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BUT EVERYBODY IS DREAMING - PERO TODOS SUEÑAN / 2004

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Poemas de Cuba contemporánea.
Seleccionados y traducidos por Rosalind M. Gill.
Edición: Lugus Libros / 2004.
Diseño: Lugus Libros Latin America Inc.
Cubierta: Reinaldo Pagán Ávila.
Prólogo: Rosalind M. Gill.

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Rosalind M. Gill was born and grew up in St. John's, Newfoundland. She is Chair of the School of Translation, Glendon College, York University, Toronto. She teaches translation as well as French as a second language. She has published a language teaching manual (Le Français dans le village global, Canadian Scholars' Press, 1999) and she has translated two books on Quebec (Quebec Women a History, Women's Press, 1987, and A Sociocritque of Translation-Theatre and Alterity in Quebec, University of Toronto Press, 1996). She is presently working on translations of Hispanic literature, particularly Cuban poetry. She has also published her own short stories in Canadian journals, including The Antigonish Review and Canadian Fiction Magazine.

THE CITY OF BRIDGES IS COMMITTING SUICIDE,
.........putting itself to sleep.
In the house of the musicians
.........a girl, her face darkened with fear
.........has placed a shell beneath the sound;
.........but everybody is dreaming,
.........closing their eyes and dreaming that there is no need to jump,
.........to hurl yourself off the bridge
.........when there's music to fill up the labyrinths.
On the stairway, they have placed mountains of papers to stop people from going up
.........from going out on the balconies,
.........and baring their breasts
.........and the city like a witness, needs some minimal testimony
.........a piece of heart to throw off the bridge.

They have begun to share out in equal portions the bitter tea
.........and the pieces of lemon cut
.........with the sharp gesture of sadness,
.........they have begun to cut absence in two,
.........but the girl
.........does not want to remember that there was a time when she was not alone,
.........once, she could not picture solitude.

On the antique clock, everyone is eager to leave a mark,
.........a gouge in the wood that time will make bleed,
.........then, all wrongdoings will be rewarded
.........all blood spilled will be like old bitterness spilling
.........then we won't have to worry
.........about the girl flying ever so lightly off the bridge, violating the air.
The musician is a docile restless animal
.........the city is his mask;
.........he has seen the waters fill up with light and dreams,
.........but the girls have decided to cut their hair off,
.........they've decided to put on a mask so they can forget the music.

THE ANTIGONISH REVIEW 132

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The Antigonish Review / Editorial Cooperative / Winter 2003.
Poetry Editor:Peter Sanger

The Antigonish Review was founded by R.J. MacSween in 1970. It is supported by St. Francis Xavier University, with the welcome assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, Heritage Canada, the N.S. Dept. of Tourism, Culture &. Heritage, Culture Division.