Because the blogosphere needs haikus.
On Poetry and Culture Shock
Se muestran los artículos pertenecientes al tema My Poetry.
This can be a one-liner:
Calvin could always carry Hell on his pocket.
It can be an unrhyming couplet:
Calvin could always carry
Hell on his pocket.
And it can be twisted out of shape into a three-line poem. The problem with thinking that this is a haiku is not that it lacks a few syllables, it's the run-on line effect.
Calvin could always
carry Hell
on his pocket.
Still I think that it sounds a lot better in Spanish.
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Misterios de la métrica. Esto puede ser una simple frase directa:
Calvino siempre llevaba el infierno en el bolsillo.
Casi sola, te lleva hacia un pareado octosílabo sin rima:
Calvino siempre llevaba
El Infierno en el bolsillo.
Y con alguna sílaba de más se le puede dar forma de haiku, aunque el problema no son las sílabas sino el encabalgamiento:
Calvino siempre
llevaba algún Infierno
en el bolsillo.
The night lies ahead.
Cup of tea full to the brim.
The poem doesn’t come.
Toda la noche por delante.
Una taza de té llena hasta el borde.
El poema no llega.
I wrote this as a microstory for a contest. Much later on, I realised it adapted well to free verse.
In my nightmare,
the plane landed without me.
I flew on my seat,
inside the plane,
and out,
out,
Floating on the cold air.
That was how I got fear of flying.
So silly of me.
I was losing you, my love,
I was alone.
Holding on to the cold air,
with you so distant.
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Esto era un microcuento que escribí hace un par de años. Hace algunos meses me parió que quedaba bastante mejor en forma de verso libre.
En mi pesadilla,
El avión aterrizaba sin mí.
Volaba en mi asiento,
Dentro del avión,
Y salía,
Salía,
Atravesaba la pared,
Flotando en el aire frío.
Fue así como cogí miedo a volar.
Qué tonta.
Te estaba perdiendo, mi amor,
Me quedé sola.
Agarrada al aire frío,
y tú tan lejos.
Dúo solar.
Piel bronceada.
Vainilla, miel, café, chocolate.
Te comería entero. *
Células enloquecidas.
Al dermatólogo
Voy por la sombra.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Solar duo.
Suntanned skin.
Vanilla, honey, coffee, chocolate.
I'll eat you whole.
*
Cells gone mad.
I walk to the dermatologist
On my wide-brimmed hat.
Ni mar ni río
La piscina del vecino
Nos arrulla.
Neither sea or river
The neighbour's swimming-pool
is our lullaby.
Written for One Deep Breath, whose prompt this week was calm and stillness.
No es Zen
Si crees que ya has llegado
no era Zen.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It's not Zen
If you thought you had grasped it
It wasn't Zen.
One Deep Breath prompt of the week: Dirt. Haiku about getting clean, or getting muddy. In this part of the world, getting dirty means getting sweaty, and that made me think of the beach.
So very sweaty
Lying on the sticky sand
Wrapped in sun.
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One Deep Breath sugiere que escribamos haiku sobre el barro, la tierra, la suciedad. Eso me hizo pensar en sudor, y por extensión en la playa. Un haiku playero:
Tan sudorosa
Tumbada en la arena
envuelta en sol.
Hush, it's a concert:
The blackbird will sing
For those who don't know his name!
Sshh, es un concierto:
¡El mirlo va a cantar
para quienes no saben su nombre!
Poetry Thursday asks to talk about something beautiful without mentioning it. Haikus are mostly about talking about a feeling without mentioning it, just describing the thing or situation that causes the feeling, so the haiku form is perfect for what Poetry Thursday intended. I hope my attempt is successful, it's easy enough to know what/who I'm talking about.
Under the blanket
There's nothing you can see
There's only feeling.
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Poetry Thursday nos pide esta semana que hablemos de algo hermoso sin nombrarlo. El haike describe un sentimiento sin nombrarlo, mencionando sólo la situación que lo provoca, así que es, en teoría, la estrofa perfecta para el reto de la semana. Espero que os guste. Lo que no nombro queda bastante claro, ¿no?
Bajo la manta
No se puede ver nada
Sólo sentir.
Este es mi primer "fib", un poema con una secuencia silábica 1-1-2-3-5-8. En español es más difícil que en inglés, pero como "pimienta verde" son cinco sílabas, escribí el fib alrededor de esa línea. Y luego pensé que si son cinco sílabas podía hace un haiku gemelo.
Sí,
Ya,
Esto
Sabe bien
Pimienta verde
Sal, laurel, y muchos besos.
Pero también:
Pimienta verde.
Me besas en la cocina.
Esto sabe bien.
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The example above, in Spanish is my first attempt at a fib. Fibs in Spanish are hard because Spanish has very few one-syllable words, but I wanted to try because "green pepper", the spice not the vegetable, is "pimienta verde", in Spanish, five syllables. I tried to write a fib around that line, with a twin haiku. This would be the translation:
Yes,
now
this dish
is tasty
lovely green pepper
with salt, laurel, and your kisses.
Lovely green pepper.
You kiss me in the kitchen.
Yes, this is tasty.
Mi cuerpo sabe
De dónde sale esta pena.
Haz que se calle.
My body knows
the reason for all this sorrow.
Make it be quiet.
From this week's Poetry Thursday prompt.
After a long wait,
I tie up my heart’s shoelaces
To run just for fun. Pasó mucho tiempo.
El corazón descansado
Sale a correr.
Do you want the gossipy bit? Read on.
I wanted to play with the idea of "heartstrings" and I thought, what if the heartstrings were shoelaces? This haiku is from the time when my Spanish versions were straight translations with no care for rhythm or sound, or anything but meaning. The second version Spanish version, the one you can see here, still with an unorthodox 6-8-5 syllable count, was adapted about two years later.
And this is dedicated to certain little person who will not read me, and whose heart is beginning to enjoy itself.
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Si quieres cotilleo, sigue leyendo....
Yo quería jugar con una idea que no se puede traducir al español, que es la palabra "heartstrings", "cuerdas del corazón", como una metáfora muy común para referirse a los sentimientos. ¿Y si esas cuerdas fueran cordones de atarse los zapatos? Este haiku es de la época en la que yo componía principalmente en inglés y las versiones españolas eran traducciones literales. La segunda versión española que veis aquí, menos literal pero con una cuenta silábica nada ortodoxa de 6-8-5, es de dos años más tarde.
Y está dedicada a cierta personita que no me va a leer, y que tiene un corazón que empieza a pasárselo bien justo ahora.
Si escribiera
Un poema por cada nube,
¿Sería más feliz?
Desde que dije hace un mes que tenía demasiadas tareas diferentes que hacer, he acabado tres y media. Me quedan cuatro cosas de las que se pueden empezar y acabar, además de recuperar mis dos trabajos normales cuando todo esto me deje un respiro.
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If I wrote
a poem for every cloud
would I be happier?
Since I said that I had to work on too many different tasks, I've finished three and a half. There's four left or the sort that can be started and finished, leaving aside my two regular jobs, which I hope to restart as soon as the other stuff gives me a break. Everything is under control. Yeah, right.
Mi bar favorito, de momento, es uno modelno que tiene enormes pufs en vez de sillas y música variada que tiende a quedarse en el lado triste y oscuro de las cosas. Se supone que es un bar para lesbianas. Hay exhibiciones de arte de vez en cuando (ayer tenían cuadros abstractos y en un año no he visto allí ni uno solo que me guste). A veces tienen tartas por la tarde y las camareras de los piercings (una con rastas, la otra rapada) no te miran raro si pides un poleomenta en mitad de la noche.
"Llevo así un mes".
La niña de los piercings
Es toda ojeras.
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My currently favourite bar is a trendy place with huge cushions as the only place to sit and really varied music which tends to be on the dark sad side of things. It's supposed to be a lesbian bar. There are periodical art exhibitions (yesterday they had abstract paintings and in the year I've know the place, I haven't seen one paint I really liked). Sometimes they have cakes in the afternoon and a waitress with dreadlocks with and six or seven face piercings won't look down on you if you order mint tea at midnight. This is an ellaboration on something I overheard yesterday.
"I've been like this for a month"
The multipierced waitress
has grey bags under her eyes.
Cabalgata de Reyes.
Madre con hiyab,
niño riendo.
Seis de Enero.
No veo por las calles
Ni una bicicleta.
Siete de Enero.
El barrendero maldice
los caramelos.
*****************************
These haikus don't translate into English at all because they are too culturally bound. In Spain, Christmas gifts are brough on January 6th by the Three Magi. There are parades on the evening of January 5th and the morning of the 6th (depends on the town) and the participants throw candy to the watchers. The significance of the first haiku in the cycle is that the parade is a Catholic tradition and my city has been ethnically, culturally and religiously homogeneous until very recently.
The Magi's parade
Mother on hiyab,
Laughing son.
January 6th.
Not a bicycle in sight.
January 7th.
The streetsweeper curses
All this candy.
Piel imperfecta,
Estrías y arrugas.
Pero qué suave.
Me he apuntado a los retos semanales de One Deep Breath. Espero que me ayude a componer más porque últimamente estaba seca (huy, qué miedo da eso). La sugerencia que dan esta semana es "cosas envejecidas o estropeadas". He preferido que el original sea en español; mi último poema original en inglés tiene ya casi un año, y se me hace raro pero supongo que es inevitable.
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Imperfect skin,
stretchmarks and wrinkles.
Still, so soft.
I'm reading the weekly "challenges" in One Deep Breath. I hope it will help me to compose more because I'm very slow lately (that's so scary ). This week's suggestion is "weathering and aging". I've preferred to compose it in Spanish; my last original in English is about a year old, and that feels odd but inevitable.
Navideño.
Sin el abuelo.
Con mi cuñada.
Aún somos quince.
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Grandfather's gone.
A new sister-in-law.
Still fifteen guests for dinner.
The stubborn sulky silence of the phone
When I’m waiting for a call.
The endless(less) engaged tone(tone) again
When I’m calling.
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El silencio enfurruñado del teléfono
Cuando espero una llamada.
Otra(tra) vez(ez) comunica
cuando llamo yo.
The original version is the Spanish one. I realised yesterday that for the last six months or more, I only make English versions of my poems when I post them in this blog. The rest of the time they stay monolingual. I don't know if I'm sad because I'm losing ambivalence, or happy in case it means I'm more confident of my control of Spanish.
After many months
The back of the mouth
Still keeps plenty of memories.
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La versión original de este haiku es la española. Ayer me di cuenta de que hace unos seis meses que sólo traduzco poemas al inglés cuando los pongo aquí; el resto del iempo se quedan en español. No sé si eso me da pena porque estoy perdiendo la capacidad de componer en inglés, o me alegra si es que significa que ahora tengo más control de mi propio idioma.
Aún queda
Al fondo de la boca
Recuerdo.
A haiku on global warming that I composed (in Spanish) as I was driving home one evening last week. That afternoon, I smelled orange blossom that I could not see. This is, of course, dedicated to Crafty Green Poet, who is behind all of my poems with an environmental concern. ç
November.
You can't see the orange blossoms
As you drive.
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Un haiku acerca del efecto invernadero que compuse mientras conducía camino de mi casa. Esa tarde me preocupé al oler azahares. Y por supuesto, está dedicado a Craft GReen Poet, que es la inspiración de todos mis poemas sobre temas ecológicos.
Noviembre.
Desde tu coche no ves
Los azahares.
Primeras lluvias.
Turrón en el supermercado.
Mitad de Octubre.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
In my corner of the world, October rain is early rain because the heavy rains are expected in November. I don't mean rain in the early morning.
Under early rains,
Christmas sweets in supermarkets.
October nineteenth.
At first my prose was erotic, and my poetry wasn't. Of course I wrote about love, desire, longing, but even when I was writing about lust, it didn't mean my poems were erotic. I didn't keep the two things separated on purpose: it was a question of the limitations of haikus. What can you tell in two or three lines? You can describe a body, or desire, or a climax, or afterglow, but you need to choose one. And while conciseness is a very good thing, the poem is over before you have time to feel anything! That's why the first poem of mine that I considered erotic entirely, from intention to result, was free verse. And that's maybe why I keep telling different love stories rearranging the same haikus in different orders: because I cannot write erotic prose anymore, and I miss it.
These wee ones here are not a cycle. They are some of the isolated haikus that either in intention, result, or allusion have some eroticism in them. Enjoy.
An old friend, rediscovered.
Suddenly, his sweat smells good.
I like your blond skin
I want your blond smile.
I'm looking for some blonde fun.
I chew the brightness of pain with pleasure.
My body is full of you now.
Brunette and blonde hide.
No longer children.
Forbidden games are always best.
The senses tanka. after e. e. cummings.
In your slow caress,
your heartbeat makes my music.
Not just my eyes love
Your scent of salt, blood and sweat,
your pretty red chilli lips.
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Al principio mi prosa era erótica, y mi poesía no. Por supuesto que escribía sobre el amor y el deseo, pero incluso en el estado de ánimo más lujurioso esto no significaba que los poemas fueran eróticos. Yo no conservaba las dos cosas separadas intencionadamente; era sólo una cuestión de las limitaciones propias del haiku. ¿qué se puede decir en dos o tres líneas? Puedes decribir un cuerpo, o un deseo, o un momento sexual, pero necesitas escoger sólo uno. Y a pesar de que la concisión puede ser una cosa estupenda, ¡el poema se ha acabado antes de que tengas tiempo de sentir nada! por eso el primer poema que escribí que me pareció erótico de principio a fin, desde su inspiración hasta el resultado, es verso libre. Y también puede que sea por eso que cuento diferentes historias reordenando los mismos haikus de forma diferente: porque ya nome sale escribir prosa erótica, y lo echo de menos.
Estos chiquitines de aquí no son un ciclo. Sólo son algunos de los haikus aislados que en intención, alusión o resultado tienen algún rastro de erotismo. Espero que os gusten.
Antiguo amigo, redescubierto:
De repente, su sudor huele bien.
Me gusta tu rubia piel
Me atrae tu rubia sonrisa
Quiero divertirme rubiamente.
Mastico la luminosidad del dolor con placer.
Ahora mi cuerpo está lleno de ti.
Una morena y una rubia.
Ya no son niñas.
Los juegos prohibidos siempre son los mejores.
En tu lenta caricia,
Los latidos de tu corazón son mi música.
No sólo mis ojos aman
Tu olor a sangre, sudor y sal,
tus labios de chile rojo.
Next best thing to a death haiku (in which the poet foresees his / her own death with resignation), a hospital haiku. Real events from last night.
In the hospital's lobby,
the scent of flowers.
I'm breathing deeply.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
En el hospital,
el olor de las flores.
Respiro hondo.
I've had a lovely evening with Idgie W. McGregor, Fanshawe, and two people from the real world. It's awkward to meet for the first time people whose writings and lives I've read and admired/enjoyed. At some point I said something that almost fits haiku form, and it's going to count as a haiku.
I didn't choose poetry.
Prose abandoned me.
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He pasado un rato estupendo con Idgie W. McGregor, Fanshawe, y dos personas más que son del mundo real :P Es raro ver en persona por primera vez a gente que escribe cosas que me gustan. Habré dichomuchas tonterías, y en algún momento solté una frase lapidaria que tiene casi forma de haiku. Así que así queda.
No escogí la poesía.
La prosa me abandonó.
As I have said before, Spain is the second country in the world in international adoptions, which is amazing because we are not a very multiethnic country yet, so the adopters always look very different from their parents and we don't seem to mind. No, actually, we love it.
At the restaurant
I'm watched by the Chinese baby
with blond parents.
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España es el segundo país del mundo en adopciones internacionales, lo que es sorprendente porque todavía no somos un país muy multiétnico que digamos, así que los padres adoptivos suelen tener un aspecto muy distinto del de sus hijos y no parece que nos importe. No, mentira: no es que no nos importe, es que nos encanta.
En el bar
Me mira la niña china
De padres rubios.
This is part of a cycle now, but I don't want to post the whole thing. I composed it about a month after Martyn Bennett 's death.
I think that the definition of cancer as cells which have forgotten how to die was made by a Spanish researcher, but I had it from my mother, a doctor. This means that my bleakest line is stolen from a scientist.
Worse than loneliness,
There’s frailty and fear
When cells forget how to die.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ahora esto es parte de un ciclo, pero no lo quiero poner entero. Lo compuse más o menos un mes después de la muerte de Martyn Bennett. Creo que la definición del cáncer como células que no saben morirse la hizo un investigador español, pero yo la conozco a través de mi madre, que es médico. En cualquier caso, eso significa que el verso más deprimente que tengo se lo he robado a un científico.
Peor que la soledad,
La fragilidad y el miedo.
Células que se olvidan de morir.
I know, I know , I’m obsessed and I’ve already exhausted the topic. But still.
The poet’s natural tendency is to edit once and again. My natural tendency is to edit the cycles and the poems' order rather than their words (they have too few words: change one word and you have a different poem!). Most of my haiku cycles are the result of recycling individual poems. The Hands Cycle used to be called “Four Lovers, Four Hands” and I thought of it as four completely separate vignettes. Now that I have one sad poem about hands, I have added it to the cycle and changed the order so that it tells a story.
I’ve said that initially this was about four lovers; for those of you that want a bit of gossip, the inspiration for the first and fourth poems were fantasies on strangers; the second is how I think someone used to feel about me (the hands are mine); the third and fifth are autobiographical, on different people.
1
Cream on my coffee.
Silver on his hands.
Who could give him all those rings?
2
I look at your wrist.
Pink veins through transparent skin.
A road map to love.
3
Old feeling made new,
Hands firm on my back.
They show anything’s possible.
4
Five rays of light shine,
Your fingers on my cream skin.
Too much of them stings.
5
Our tangled hands are dry
but they hold a slippery love,
Too fragile to last.
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Ya lo sé, ya lo sé, he agotado el tema, pero me da igual. Más poemas sobre manos.
La tendencia natural del poeta es reescribir, reeditar. My tendencia es editar los ciclos y el orden de los poemás más que sus palabras: ¡los haikus andan bastante cortos de palabras, y cambiar una palabra es cambiar el poema entero! Casi todos mis ciclos de haikus son resultado de reciclar y agrupar poemas que en principio eran independientes, y eso es lo que pasa con éste. Antes se llamaba "Cuatro Amantes, Cuatro Manos" y eran cuatro viñetitas totalmente independientes. Pero más adelante, escribí (no: la vida escribió para mí) un haiku triste en el que salían manos, así que lo añadí al ciclo y cambié el orden para que los cinco contaran una historia.
Para los que quieran cotilleo, la inspiración de las estrofas primera y cuarta fueron perfectos desconocidos. La segunda es cómo creo que se sentía alguien por mí (las manos son mías). La tercera y la quinta son autobiográficas.
Nata en mi café
Plata en sus manos.
¿Quién le habrá regalado todos esos anillos?
Miro tu muñeca.
Venas rosas, piel transparente.
Un mapa de carreteras del amor.
Un sentimiento antiguo, renovado.
Manos firmes sobre mi espalda.
Todo es posible.
Cinco rayos de luz brillan,
Tus dedos sobre mi piel de nata.
En exceso, queman.
Nuestras manos secas
sostienen un amor resbaladizo,
demasiado frágil para durar.
Creo que este microcuento en verso libre sería mejor si tuviera menos sílabas, si pudiera encajarlo en la estructura del tanka. Pero así se va a quedar.
Bares. Ginebra.
Alguien comparte conmigo
un poco de tiempo y saliva.
A la vuelta,
Lo mejor de la noche:
Un búho blanco,
Posado sobre un ceda el paso.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This microstory in free verse would probably improve if I managed to twist it into Tanka shape. But this is the way it's going to stay.
Bars. Gin.
Someone to share with me
A little time and saliva.
On the way back home,
the highlight of the evening:
a white owl,
perched on a traffic sign.
Esa sonrisa.
Esa sonrisa tuya.
Esa sonrisa.
Alan Spence tiene un haiku que dice:
Cae la lluvia
Cae la lluvia
Cae la lluvia.
Yo quería hacer algo así de obsesivo y repetitivo desde que leí el de Spence, y de eso hace tres años. Por fin salió. A lo mejor es que tenía que encontrar la sonrisa adecuada.
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That smile.
That smile of yours.
That smile.
Alan Spence has a haiku that goes:
The sound of the rain
The sound of the rain
The sound of the rain
And I wanted to write something as repetitive and obsessive as it since I read it, three years ago. It came out of my head at last. Maybe I had to meet the right smile.
Pure living skin
Zuel is shimmying
The desert longs for him.
Zuel is an oriental dancer based here in Sevilla, and occasionally, my teacher.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Pura piel viva.
Zuel está vibrando.
El desierto lo añora.
Zuel es bailarín de danza oriental aquí en Sevilla, y a veces, mi profesor.
I once told you about list poems ; they're easy to write but it's hard to make a good one. Sei Shonagon, queen of the list poem, had a list of things that improve on a painting; this is a little homage to her.
Things that look good on a photograph.
Other people on the act of taking a photograph.
Babies.
Tattoos.
Flowers, especially if their colours are bright.
The ground through shallow water.
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Una vez puse un post sobre poemas en forma de lista; esa clase de poema es fácil de escribir, pero es difícil que queden muy bien. Sei Shonagon, la reina del poema-lista, escribió entre otras la lista de cosas que mejoran cuando se pintan (en un cuadro). Y este es un pequeñísimo homenaje a esta autora, más un boceto que un verdadero poema.
Cosas que quedan muy bien en foto.
Otras personas en el momento en que hacen una foto.
Bebés.
Tatuajes.
Flores, sobre todo si son de colores brillantes.
El fondo, bajo la superficie de agua poco profunda.
This was inspired by an actual woman I am not attracted to (at least, not sexually). My dance teacher does have the tattoo I describe, and she brought some peaches to class the other day. I doubt she'll find her way here, and I'd be kind of embarrassed if she knew about this poem.
The softest peach,
my love, and her tattoo
of spiky, thorny branches.
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Este poema lo inspiró una mujer de verdad, pero por la que no me siento atraída (al menos, no sexualmente). Mi profesora de baile tiene ese tatuaje que describo, y el otro día nos trajo unos melocotones a la clase. Dudo que ella llegue hasta aquí, y la verdad es que si lo hiciera me daría un pelín de corte.
Suave melocotón:
Mi amor, tatuada
de ramas espinosas.
Compuse un haiku para regalárselo a Fanshawe y en vez de ponerlo aquí se lo mandé en una postal, porque él sacó el tema. Ahora que la postal ya le ha llegado puedo poner el haiku aquí sin estropear la sorpresa. Fue el último de un ataque de inspiración en el que salieron casi solos diez haikus en cinco días, más o menos.
Lo que se pide.
Lo que se desea en silencio.
Lo que se obtiene.
I composed a haiku for Fanshawe and instead of posting it here I sent it to him in real-world mail because his post on postcards inspired me. Now that I'm sure the letter reached him I can post it here. It's the last of a ten-haikus-in-five days frenzy I had earlier this month.
What we ask for.
What we silently desire.
What we're given.
Mis palabras te tocan,
hablo,
hablamos,
y mis palabras se enredan entre tus dedos.
No sé qué tienes que me hace hablar.
No sé qué haces que me tiene presa.
Es algo rojo y suave,
frágil,
es algo que cambia cuando lo describo
(si hablarte es tocarte,
si mis dedos te tocan, te cuentan un cuento)
My words touch you,
I talk,
we’re talking,
and my words get tangled between your fingers.
I don’t know what you have that makes me talk.
I don’t know what you make that has me enthralled.
It’s something red and soft,
fragile,
it’s something that changes as I describe it.
(if talking to you is touching you,
when my fingers touch you they tell you a story).
This poem should be in the archives but it has vanished for some reason. It's probably the densest collection of allusions I've ever managed. Most of them are too small or obscure to be noticeable.
Maruja, this is the poem I told you about yesterday. The one that steals from you the word "ajedrez". It was a question of syllable count, nothing personal (and I know your living room does have books).
Tankas are a type of poem, historically earlier than the haiku, with a syllable count 5-7-5-7-7. I have composed a handful of those.They're easier than haikus but it's necessary to consider very carefully if you really, trully need the two extra lines.
Madre moderna:
un colegio bilingüe,
ajedrez, tenis.
En el salón sin libros,
colección de bonsais.
A modern mother:
Bilingual education,
chess, sports and ballet.
In the book-less living-room,
a collection of bonsais.
I have the feeling that something's connecting a certain Poet and me.
Last night I had to chase a blackbird out of my living-room. The stupid thing wouldn't leave the room: chased towards a door it would perch on top of furniture. This went on for about half an hour, until I could let a piece of cloth fall on it and I left it outside in the garden.
This morning I could hear an extremely loud chirping. Not a song. Eek-eek. It was very obvious that it was a baby blackbird saying it was hungry: that was why last night's bird wouldn't go. She couldn't leave her baby behind. It took a long search to find the wee one hidden behind a pile of books. Two thirds grown, all the adult feathers on the wings but not yet on the body. It was very easy to wrap it on the same cloth and throw it out on the quietest corner in the garden. A very black blackbird (a male, therefore) immediately flew to the center of the garden and sang very fast and very loud. In a matter of seconds, at least three birds had taken the baby with them, helping it into a bush so that it could hide. I didn't know that territorial animals could be so cooperative.
Classical haiku material.
Catorce madres:
Mirlas al rescate
del pollito caído.
Fourteen mothers:
blackbirds come to the rescue
of the fallen chick.
I haven't written a two-line haiku in ages. Ages. I would really appreciate opinions on this one (I don't know if it's too flat and dry, rather than bleak as I want it to be). It is partly inspired in a love poem by Juliet Wilson.
Jamás pudimos compartir musa.
Ni cama tampoco.
We could never have shared a muse.
Or a bed, either.
The autobiographical bit: there is actually a bank in the place where a café used to be. But I have lovely memories attached to the place and I can't translate my sense of loss into a haiku.
En tu bar favorito
el que yo odiaba
han abierto otro banco.
A new bank has opened
in your favourite bar,
the one I used to hate.
This baby probably is my most classically-themed poem.
Snowdrops on the ground,
White lilies on pots:
Will you live forty-two months?
Azahar en la rama,
camelia en un jarrón:
¿vais a vivir cuarenta y dos meses?
Edited to add Jose Angel 's suggestion.
Frágil
Vulnerable
Delicado
Endeble
Desvalido
Débil
Qué asco de diccionario
Demasiados sinónimos para mi cobardía.
Vulnerable
Delicate
Weak
Brittle
Fragile
Feeble
Fucking Thesaurus
Too many synonyms for my cowardice.
I was going to call this "fairy tale tanka" because I like my fairy tales bloody. But that doesn't sound right.
Cuando miras
Debajo de la cama
Y no hay un monstruo
Ten muchísimo cuidado
Mira bajo la almohada.
When you look under the bed
And there's no monster
With extreme care
look under the pillow.
I’m repeating a poem I only posted a month ago, I know. This little baby is, against my custom, sincere. It is maybe the first poem I ever write and don’t destroy in which I use the first person to talk about my own feelings. That’s why I didn’t like it at first and also why I thought it was cliché.
I don't like to give so much interpretation of my own poem, but in case anyone is reading me in it, I don't find this feeling a negative one. Not at all.
Algo me falta;
Me siento como un ritmo
buscando melodía.
There’s something missing.
I feel I’m a rhythm
in search of a melody.
This might be part of a cycle, eventually; I don't know if it captures the mood of something loving and gentle but limited and unresolved.
Dos horas aquí.
Verte en esta burbuja
es viajar a un país exótico.
Here for two hours.
Meeting you in this bubble
Like travelling to distant lands.
Lujuria y gula.
Eres distinto del chocolate
porque ver chocolate no basta
pero no necesito de ti
más que saber que podrías ser mío.
Lust & Gluttony
You're not like chocolate at all
because it is never enough to see chocolate
but I need nothing of you
beyond the certainty you could be mine.
For those of you interested in creative process gossip, this is absolutely autobiographical. The thing is, it is not my body that has been ill. Those of you that know me in the real world probably know what I'm talking about. It's inspired by a classical, Japanese one I'll post soon.
Convalecencia
con el cuerpo casi nuevo
poquito a poco.
Convalescence
With my body nearly new
Baby steps.
This is dedicated to Maruja, even though she doesn't like poetry. Thanks for the tea and everything else.
Bang. Bang. Ipon.
No jewels like beads of sweat.
No music like a body against a mat.
Bang. Bang. Ipon.
Ninguna joya más hermosa que el sudor.
Ninguna música más hermosa que el impacto.
Saidi is my favourite dance rhythm. It belongs to Egyptian folk music and it is intrinsically happy. I think the rhythm of the Spanish version of this haiku is closer to it than the English one.
The world would be a much better place if more things happened to a Saidi beat.
dum-TAK, dum-dum TAK
A veces la Tierra gira
con ritmo Saidi.
dum TAK dum-dum TAK
sometimes the world can spin
to a Saidi beat.
Today is the first day of spring, and International Poetry Day; this one is something I didn't know until today. The truly approppriate thing would be a poem on the beginning of spring, and there are thousands, my favourite being Alan Spence's
First warmth of spring
I feel as if
I have been asleep.
That one doesn't count because I have posted it loads of times. So I'm giving you one of mine instead, a bit of erotism to wish you happy spring loves.
The senses tanka.
In your slow caress,
your heartbeat makes my music.
Not just my eyes love
Your scent of salt, blood and sweat,
your pretty red chilli lips.
El tanka de los sentidos
En tu lenta caricia,
Los latidos de tu corazón son mi música.
No son sólo mis ojos los que aman
Tu olor a sangre, sudor y sal,
tus bonitos labios de chiles rojos.
Algo me falta;
Me siento como un ritmo
buscando melodía.
There's something missing.
I feel I'm a rhythm
in search of a melody.
The most visible consequence of global warming in this corner of the world is that orange trees are in bloom a month too early.
Such simple beauty,
orange blossom, perfect scent.
Your flavour’s subtle.
What a miracle it would be
to hear you sing!
Belleza simple,
azahar, perfecto aroma.
Tu sabor, sutil.
¡Qué milagro sería
que nos pudieras cantar!
I'm a bit sorry to have said so loud and so recently that all poets are thieves and liars, including me. It screeches next to what I'm going to say next.
I composed this yesterday, because my grandfather, Zifra' s father, and my future, are all in the same place. With all my love to anyone who understands how this feels.
Agua somos.
En la Bahía de Cádiz,
Todas nuestras cenizas.
To water we return.
In the Bay of Cadiz,
Lie all our ashes.
This one is not really supposed to be taken seriously. I think I have a handful of poems that I see as humorous, or at least ironic, about love or rather erotism.
For those of you interested in the composition proccess, or just the gossipy bit, the whole poem is built around the first line. Someone said it to me in all seriousness, as a part of their seduction strategy. It didn't work, but I stole the line. I already told you that every poet is a thief and a liar and I'm no exception.
Primera impresión.
Con esos labios no puedes ser mala.
Esa cintura dice siempre la verdad.
Tienes caderas de buena persona.
Tus rizos son los más sinceros,
y tienes la piel más simpática.
Andas muy cariñosamente,
y es una lástima que no nos conozcamos.
First impressions
You can't be bad, with such lips.
Your waist always tells the truth.
You have kind, gentle hips.
Your curls are the most sincere,
and your skin, the friendliest I've seen.
It's a pity that we don't know each other.
Yesterday I did that poet thing that looks so terribly pretentious: At the meet of my town’s bloggers, as we were spreading over the sofas of a bar, I asked for a pen because I just needed to write down a poem. Yes, very exhibitionist of me... the poem involved a lot of tweaking and polishing, it wasn’t just a spark of sudden inspiration. Here it is.
Stiffness on my back.
Your warm hand hugs me
Three seconds longer than I expected.
Mi espalda, tensa.
Tu abrazo ha durado
tres segundos de más.
I live in the heat and the dust.
Will you change my endless summer
for your occasional spring?
Los siete puentes
abrazando la ciudad,
a todos nosotros.
Our seven bridges
Hugging the city,
hugging us all.
The mantra goes:
Alamillo, Barqueta, Chapina, Triana, San Telmo, Delicias, Quinto Centenario.
A harp, a leap, a ship, a dance, a park, a road, a tower.
To Gran’s, to bars, to walk, way back, to class, to park, and trucks.
I find it very frustrating that I cannot translate this one into Spanish.
This haiku is dedicated to Zifra , because I think he likes this sort of thing.
A haiku has three lines,
seventeen syllables,
and one idea.
Un haiku: tres versos,
diecisiete sílabas,
una idea.
Wilson Pickett, the singer of soul classics like In The Midnight Hour, has just died. January 30th is the first anniversary of Martyn Bennett 's death. Wilson Pickett was the sort of artist whose work everyone knows, but whose name is only known by his few dedicated fans. Martyn Bennett, on the other hand, was too brilliant and original for his own good and never got the success he deserved. I knew he was diagnosed with a nasty type of cancer in the year 2000, and I suspected he was depressed, and we had emailed occasionally in the three vyears or so before his death. I'm still mourning him in the same way other people mourn family members or "real" rock stars.
This is my only poem in free verse in which the English version came before the Spanish one. It mixes my own feelings for Martyn with my memory of having to study in the hospital on my grandfather’s last days: I had an oral exam the morning after his death, and I pretended to be strong about the whole thing for a few days. And I stole an idea here and there from Jeanette Winterson, who has a novel, Written on the Body, that you should go and read right now.
A hospital is not a library.
A needle’s not a pen.
We sit and wait as your blood is replaced by ghosts.
As I think of your inky hair,
Most beautiful when sweaty,
Long wet tendrils falling over us.
Ink.
Ink’s the key.
I used black ink to write poems about you,
As you mocked me (people use computers these days,
You know).
Your body is still waging war on itself,
And not
all
the
hospitals
in
the
world
will
HELP.
So,
I’ll write poems about you
until the future gives up and makes you immortal.
Un hospital no es una biblioteca.
Una aguja no es una pluma.
Nos sentamos a esperar mientras los fantasmas sustituyen tu sangre.
Y pienso en tu pelo entintado,
Precioso cuando sudabas,
Largos tirabuzones húmedos sobre los dos.
Tinta.
La tinta es la clave.
Tinta china para componer poemas sobre ti,
Y te burlabas (eso se puede hacer a ordenador,
Por si no lo sabías)
Tu cuerpo sufre un golpe de estado,
Y
ningún
hospital
del
mundo
entero
va
a
enviar
AYUDA.
Por eso,
voy a escribir poemas sobre ti
hasta que el futuro se rinda y te haga inmortal.
After fooling around for a week with the idea, I'm not sure this catches the sensuality of the situation. The Spanish version comes first because it is the original one.
Los hombros de la violonchelista,
Curvas blancas.
No recuerdo la música.
The chellist's shoulders,
White curves.
I don't remember the music.
Y tu mirá
se me clava en los ojos
como la voz de Lole.
No os preocupéis, no me he vuelto Neosurrealista de repente (al menos eso espero). Este haiku no se puede adaptar de verdad al inglés porque está demasiado relacionado con la cultura española. ¿cómo le explico a un extranjero quién es Lole?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
And your gaze
pierces my eyes
like Lole’s voice.
Don’t worry, I haven’t suddenly become a Neosurreal poet (I hope and pray). This haiku cannot be properly adapted into English because it is too culturally bound. Lole was a flamenco singer, popular when I was a wee child, and her most famous song said “And your gaze pierces my eyes like a sword”. A normal way of saying “stare” in Spanish is “to stab/pierce with your eyes” so the image is not as absurd and violent as you think.
In Spain, Christmas gifts are traditionally given on January 6th. The Three Wise Men, not Santa Claus, bring them. Some time ago I spoke about list poems; they are a good way of writing poetry when you think you can’t write, for lack of inspiration or anything else. The previous entry is a list poem I like a lot. This is my Christmas 2005-06 letter to the Three Wise Men.
Secret Wish List
A pink car.
Pink hair, extensions, a beauty salon voucher
including manicure.
Jeff Buckley’s second studio album*
and tickets to a Martyn Bennet concert*.
A plane ticket to Glasgow.
Or maybe New york instead.
No, to Glasgow.
Inspiration to finish everything I’ve started writing.
A Powerbook.
An ipod, with every single audiobook by Neil Gaiman,
and read by Ian McKellen.
A nicer accent when I speak in English.
Lots of rain,
and one thunderstorm.
* That might be hard, as they’re both dead.
I think this melancholic little thing still counts as haiku, even though it has four lines.
So free.
Not a poem in weeks.
Not a lover in months.
So empty.
Qué libre.
Semanas sin componer.
Meses sin un amante.
Qué vacío.
For those of you who cares about the biographical, gossipy bit, I have many poem beginnings around the idea of how long ago I last wrote something I found satisfying. Those little poem seeds rarely grow into real poems. Everything in this one was written around the second line.
This haiku is dedicated to my friend Suzanne Guthrie. The Spanish version is the original, and the English one the translation.
Café fuerte.
Pies en alto.
Suplemento dominical.
Strong coffee.
Putting feet up.
Sunday papers.
En la pantalla,
tu piel de pixels,
inalcanzable.
On the screen,
Your skin, made of pixels,
out of my reach.
I'm feeling more and more comfortable about composing haiku in Spanish, even though up to a couple years ago I thought that it was impossible to twist my native language into haiku shape.
I love birds, especially urban ones.
This entry is dedicated to Luc , for cheering me up.
Birds for all seasons
Spring
Hush, it’s a concert:
The blackbird will sing
For those who don’t know his name!
Summer
Swallows flying high.
Summer trickles down my back.
No one cools me down.
Autumn
Hundreds of sparrows!
Dead ashes floating
in the evening’s burning sky.
Winter
Snow melts in the air.
Under her coat, she shivers.
Seagulls around us.
Pájaros para las cuatro estaciones.
Primavera
Sshh, es un concierto:
¡El mirlo va a cantar
para todos los que no saben su nombre!
Verano
Las golondrinas vuelan alto.
El verano me gotea espalda abajo.
Nadie me relaja.
Otoño
¡Cientos de golondrinas!
Cenizas muertas que flotan
En el cielo en llamas de la tarde.
Invierno
La nieve se funde en el aire.
Bajo su abrigo, ella tirita.
Gaviotas a nuestro alrededor.
Different cultures have different types of list poems. I have seen long series of verses, free verse, and even sonnets that were simply lists. The easiest list-poem is the imitation of Sei Shonagon’s lists: Sei Shonagon was a lady at the court of a Japanese emperor, and she wrote short sketches of court life, together with lists. For example, “Things that always seem to be dirty”; “things that look better on a painting”. I have a few of those, and this is the only one that’s not erotic. It's not realy a poem, more like the seed of one.
Cosas que me causan una profunda sensación de nostalgia:
Que un hombre que conozco de toda la vida se afeite. De repente su piel tiene el mismo tacto que hace quince años.
Un parque con hiedra y helechos en vez de césped.
El rock español de los 80.
Un día gris, muy gris, sobre todo si no hace frío.
Things that make me feel very nostalgic:
A man that I have known all my life when he shaves. Suddenly his skin feels like it did fifteen years ago.
A park with ivy or ferns instead of grass.
Spanish rock music from the eighties.
A very grey day, especially if it’s not cold.
Saudade is a Portuguese term which means, roughly, "homesickness of what never was; longing for what never will be". I find it very fitting because it's odd to say that I'm homesick of places that were never home.
The first haiku is Alan Spence's. The second is mine. It's a work in progress, I'm not completely happy with the rhythm nor with the Spanish translation. It's a true anecdote, and I composed it while stuck in a traffic jam.
400 miles from my friends
the apples they gave me
for the journey
A 500 kilómetros de mis amigos,
las manzanas que me dieron
para el viaje. Morning e-mail!
Photos of red leaves
from an American friend.
El e-mail de hoy:
fotos de hojas rojas
de un amigo americano. I rescued a feeling from three years ago to compose this one. Writing haiku in Spanish is becoming easier and easier; I cannot judge if they are better than the ones in English, if the rhythm is bad, if the syllabic count is less correct. I used to think that haiku in Spanish would be bad, flat poetry because the language and the form are simply incompatible. Maybe when I said that I wanted my poems to follow too many rules.
Sigo buscando.
Al fondo de tus ojos,
sólo hay tristeza.
I keep on searching
deep into your eyes,
there’s only sadness. ·Los Planetas are a Spanish rock band. The singer is awful, he has the worst nasal voice in the universe, and he can’t vocalise. The music is stolen from older, better bands and the lyrics are often bad and vague. But I still like Los Planetas. Corrientes circulares en el tiempo, “Circular time currents” is yet another song of hate and need for a woman who has abandoned the singer. These guys have filled all quotas of break-up songs, seriously. I don’t have enough hate haiku, so I’m stealing their ideas to compensate for so many poems about hands and clouds and pretty things.
Es mi venganza:
Tu mente espiral,
Girando a mi alrededor.
I want this revenge:
Your spiral mind
Spinning around me.
Zifra gave me that cute little button on the sidebar that takes you to
my other blog, the one about belly dance. And it was his birthday on Tuesday, so I told him I would give him a poem as a bithday gift. Considering what I know about him, a poem that hints atheism on the author might be to his taste.
Technical nota: this is a Ghazal. It is a Persian-then-Arabic form with a series of 6 to 12 couplets. Lines 1 and 2, and all even lines, end with the same word. Lines should all be the same lenght. The author must mention herself (either by name, "Nia says, Nia does", or in the first person). Everything else can be nearly free. Scroll down for the English version.
Luz refractada da color al cielo.
Del negro al rosa, misterioso cielo.
Demasiada luz roba las estrellas,
Las ciudades se han quedado sin cielo.
Posponer los problemas tomando el sol,
Prohibida la pena si está azul el cielo.
Gris plomo de nieve, gris claro de lluvia:
No hay otro destino escrito en el cielo.
Si existe un Dios, nos mira desde lejos.
No es un consuelo imaginar el cielo.
El granjero no ve ninguna nube.
A sus plantas secas las mata el cielo.
El exiliado ve las constelaciones.
Alumbran su casa desde otro cielo.
Los aviones vuelan de aquí al futuro.
Yo no los alcanzo, mirando al cielo.
Refracted light gives its colour to the sky.
Black down to pink, mysterious sky.
Too much light steals the stars.
Cities have lost their sky.
Put off your problems and sunbathe.
Banish all sorrow if there is blue in the sky.
Dark grey for snow, light grey for rain:
Don’t read any other destinies from the sky.
If there is a God, He’s so far away.
No comfort from an old man in the sky.
The farmer looks in vain for a cloud.
His dry plants are killed by the sky.
Exiles gaze at the constellations.
They light up his home on a different sky.
Airplanes fly from here to the future.
I cannot reach them as I stare at the sky. A lazy poem about a lazy Muse for a lazy day. And I have a
dance lesson this evening! All I want to do is go back to bed. It's all
Zifra's fault.
The Muse is on holidays,
The Muse is on sabbatical,
The Muse is on sick leave.
The Muse is on strike.
The Muse is uncooperative,
The Muse went AWOL,
The Muse went out for a packet of cigarettes,
The Muse is scared of commitment.
The Muse left me for the Next Big Thing,
Who dares saying all poets are thieves and liars?
From the muse we learn to be so.
La Musa se fue de vacaciones,
La Musa se ha cogido un año sabático,
La Musa se dio de baja.
La Musa está en huelga.
La Musa no quiere cooperar,
La Musa está desaparecida en combate,
La Musa se fue a por tabaco,
La Musa tiene miedo al compromiso.
La Musa me ha dejado por otro.
¿Quién tiene el valor de decir que los poetas somos ladrones y mentirosos?
De la Musa aprendemos a ser así. I haven't given you haikus in weeks, so here's a handful.
Intertextuality is the technical name to refer to quotes and allusions from one work of art in another. The texts don’t need to be written down: for example, Boticelli’s Birth of Venus is inspired by Ovid, and movies copy each other all the time. Every poet is a thief, me included, and sometimes I steal bits that I like from other writers. These are most of my poems that contain a quote straight out of someone else’s work. Naturally, almost all my poems are inspired by someone else's; these are only the ones with textual quotes.
The autobiographical bit: I wrote “Stirring memory and desire” and “Don’t give in without a fight” because those lines had seven syllables each, something unusual in either Spanish or English poetry. “Giving up laughter” came out of my fascination with Old English’s capacity to create compounds: “morning-ceald” expressed effectively something that I can only say with a clumsy phrase like “as cold as the morning”, and it doesn’t even refer to cold: in the original context it means “with a desperation and sadness as bleak as the cold of the early morning”. And the gorgeous understatement: “giving up laughter” in its original context didn’t mean “the end of happiness”, it meant death! Less is more. Then I wrote the graffiti one because the Chapina Bridge area is one of my favourite places in Seville and I like to see the kids skating in the park that’s covered in graffiti. Finally, “How can we know the dancer from the dance” was born after two years trying to finish a cycle about going out dancing on weekends, what is now
The Friday Cycle, together with my intention of writing a poem about dancing for somebody else to see.
Beowulf.“Giving up laughter”,
river-misty, “morning-cold”,
Monday begins.
“Poniendo fin a la risa”,
Como río neblinoso, “mañana fría”,
empieza el lunes. Wiliam Butler Yeats. “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
Do I dance better if you watch?
¿Cómo distinguir el baile de la bailarina?
¿Bailo mejor cuando me miras?T. S. Eliot.Tenderness has died.
Two fierce young bodies,
“Stirring memory and desire”
La ternura ha muerto.
Dos cuerpos jóvenes y feroces,
“Removiendo el recuerdo y el deseo”Pink Floyd.Leaf clings to the tree,
Chill autumn.
“Don’t give in without a fight”
Una hoja se aferra a la rama.
Otoño helado.
“No te rindas sin oponer resistencia”. Graffiti anónimo en el puente de Chapina /Anonymous graffiti on Chapina Bridge. “Presos del suelo”,
Me envidian si patino.
¡Mira cómo vuelo!
“Prisoners of the ground”
they envy me when I skate.
Watch me fly!Lyrical Neosurrealism is the predominant style for the current generation of Spanish young poets. In Spanish I call it "Neosurrealismo inimista"; "intimista" is a very hard word to translate because the intimacy it refers to has nothing to do with sexual intimacy, so "lyrical" it will have to be. The label is mine and I doubt it will ever catch on, because these poets like to consider themselves very new, very post-everything.
Elusive Poet agrees with me, though, in the definition.
I don't have anything particular against the style apart from the fact that it is a default mode: as I have said before, a whole generation of people want to be fresh and original and at the same time sincere, and they all end up as photocopies of Lorca and Pedro Salinas (and in terminal cases, Bécquer, bleh).
Since this style is everywhere, and I adore its wonderfully rich early-20th-century sources, I have used it occasionally. This is my first piece of creative writing ever; early spring, 2000. A professor asked us to do an experiment with automatic writing, that is, writing the first thing that comes to mind, or rather, writing without thinking. The Surrealists liked that.
I never forgot the piece; later, I wrote it down in several slightly different versions. A couple of phrases, and the person I was talking about, belong to my teens. Later on, I have come
to despise any writing that is confessional, intimate, or with a strong look of having been improvised, but the first poem is like the first love, isn’t it?
The original is Spanish; scroll down for the English version.
Tengo frío. El frío me sale de dentro cuando Ángel me mira. Cuando está con las demás, Ángel se ríe, pero conmigo no, cuando está conmigo me hace preguntas, o quizá son preguntas que yo oigo aunque él no las haga, y las contesto y hablo sin parar hasta que las palabras sólidas que salen de mis labios forman una cadena, una espiral alrededor de mis caderas, con púas que me obligan a seguir hablando.
Los ojos de Ángel son telarañas pegajosas que me enredan, y yo lucho, pero no sirve de nada, estoy atrapada y siento cómo me observa, soy su presa. Los ojos de Ángel son espejos de mercurio resbaladizo. Me gustaría entrar en ese lago de mercurio gris venenoso, ahogarme, y poder olvidar este frío.
Pero a Ángel le gusta que yo pase frío.
I´m cold. I feel cold comes from the inside out when Angel looks at me. When he’s with the other girls, Angel laughs, but not with me, when he’s with me he asks me questions, or maybe those are questions that I hear even if he doesn’t ask them, and I answer them and talk incessantly until the solid words that come out of my mouth make a chain, a spiral around my hips, with thorns that force me to keep on talking.
Angel’s eyes are sticky spiderwebs that tangle me, and I struggle, but it’s useless, I’m trapped and I feel ho he stares at me. I’m his prey. Angel’s eyes are mirror of slippery mercury. I would like to walk into that lake of poison, drown and forget this cold.
But Angel likes me to be cold.
One of my favourite bloggers (the link is in Spanish) is being naughty; he mentions anal sex in a blog entry just to say that he isn't going to be around much in the next few days. A bit of search engine magic later, he will have masses of people visiting his blog. Not that he needs them, but anyway. I discovered the power of porn words when I did
a merciless review of Inga Muscio's Cunt and my readers tripled in a few days.
Well, now that I have lured you here with promises of free sex, porn and dirty words I'll give you something to read. This is one of my earliest poems; I had it printed on a red tank top and whenI'm at home, in Spain, no one realy notices what it says even though it is bilingual. A few weeks ago, when I was still living in the States, I wore it often and it made my male friends giggle.
I chew the brightness of pain with pleasure.
My body is full of you now.
Mastico la luminosidad del dolor con placer.
Ahora mi cuerpo está lleno de ti. Snowflakes on your eyelashes.
Precious, wet diamonds.
Not at all like tears.
Copos de nieve en tus ojos.
Diamantes húmedos,
En nada se parecen a lágrimas.
Excusatio non petita, inculpatio manifesta is Latin for “Unasked apology, evident self-accusation”. I have a few poems or stories that are ironic because they work on that principle: if you need to say you are not in love, hey, I never asked you. I'm too deep inside this one to judge if I was successful, but the intention here was to show that the speaker is trying to ignore the pain of the person with snowy eyes.
Specially for Martin, a poem out of the Glasgow Cycle, another one from Birds for all Seasons and another one from the
Song for a River North to South. I will post the first two cycles sometime soon.
Sun coming through my eyelids,
Glaswegian kiss
As I lie on the grass.
El sol me atraviesa los párpados,
beso en Glasgow
tumbada en la hierba.
Swallows flying high.
Summer trickles down my back.
No one cools me down.
Las golondrinas vuelan alto.
El verano me gotea espalda abajo.
Nadie me relaja.Los siete puentes
abrazando la ciudad,
a todos nosotros.
Our seven bridges
Hugging the city,
hugging us all. Swaying in the breeze,
Feather-leaved jacaranda:
it dreams it’s a bird.
La jacaranda de hojas plumosas
se mece en la brisa:
sueña que es un pájaro.
It is a relief that after one week at home, shuffling my books and reading half a page out of at least ten or fifteen of them in five days, I’ve composed my first back-home poem.
Hojas caídas,
se parecen a lápidas.
La acera llora.
The fallen leaves,
resembling tombstones.
the sidewalk weeps.
It is my first haiku in three months! It wasn’t a real, scary writer’s block, only the need to be in familiar surroundings so that I could process a feeling that had been sitting there for very long.
For anybody interested in the gossipy, autobiographical bit: I’m thinking of dull brown autumn leaves in Seville, not bright red Ithacan leaves. The tombstones are the ones in St Machar’s Cathedral in Aberdeen (North Campus), whose grounds weren’t very well kept. The feeling is not simply sadness, but mourning.
Ginkgoes are beautiful trees. I love them since I was surprised by one in Aberdeen’s botanical gardens. They have perfectly elegant leaves, but the branches grow anarchically. A lot like free verse.
There are many ginkgoes in Collegetown and in the Cornell campus. There is also one in my garden at home, in Spain.
And this is dedicated to Stephanie; thank you for a beautiful day.
Along my streets,
The ginkgoes spread their branches.
They greet me, my friends,
Elegant ladies with fans.
Children throwing arms for hugs.
En estas calles mías
los ginkgos extienden sus ramas.
me saludan, estos amigos míos,
elegantes damas con abanicos,
niños que quieren abrazos.
No, it's not "I love Google". It's I google love. Let's sing the praises of Google, and its glorious incorporation into postmodern love.
Tien Tran from Cornell's MFA program in Creative Writing wrote this tiny beauty last autumn:
So I googled you.
I'm not obsessed I swear.
And a bit more than a year ago, I wrote:
Feeling fresh and new.
She thought she'd never need him.
Now she googles his name.
Un sentimiento nuevo.
Ella pensó que nunca lo necesitaría.
Y ahora busca en Google el nombre de élNo, it's not autobiographical. I've no idea if Tien's poem is or not, and I don't care. The point is not whether Tien or I are stalkers, but the fact that we could be if we wanted to, and also, that two poets with drastically different cultural backgrounds wrote such similar poems.
Google is here to change the way we deal with the end of any relationship. No ex-lover will ever be really, truly, definitely over and gone, because you know that if you wanted, you could just google for him (or her). And they never have to know about it, which is the best part.
Confess. You are dying to google someone's name right now.
Go ahead.Mi amor, tan bella,
No está hecha de versos.
Es imperfecta.
My lovely lady
Is not made out of verses.
And she’s not perfect.
The Spanish version goes first, because I composed it first. Exceptionally, both of them scan (if I’m maiming Shakespeare, I might as well do it with care).
I chew the brightness of pain with pleasure.
My body is full of you now.
Mastico la luminosidad del dolor con placer.
Ahora mi cuerpo está lleno de ti.
It is easier to write about desire than about its opposite. Peace of mind. Fulfilment. Happiness. There is nothing left to say after “And they lived happily for ever after”.
The classic Japanese haiku comes from Zen thought, and much of it takes the absence of desire as a premise. Years ago, when I had just started to write poems, the Elusive Poet (*) recited to me from memory one that was something close to “I chew the brightness of plain boiled rice”. I forgot the author, but I liked the synaesthesia. "Chew" corresponds to one sense and brightness to another; outside poetry, feelings aren’t sweet and flavours aren’t bright: that is synaesthesia. I thought the image was very powerful so I stole it for a haiku about fulfilment of desire, rather than its absence.
(*) The Elusive Poet talks about the fact that he writes but he hardly ever shows his work to anyone, hence the nick.
No English translation this time, since the English original of these poems don't make sense as a history. You will find a paraphrase in English at the end.
Historia de un desamor en diez haikus:
Era un nadador,
Se convirtió en piraña.
Fue culpa mía.
La ternura ya ha muerto.
Cuerpos feroces,
Puro deseo.
Nieve y cielo azul.
Las rosas se han quemado.
No las cuidaste.
Venga, dímelo,
¿quién te regaló
todos esos anillos?
¿Me necesitas?
Sí, como el tigre;
Necesitas tu presa.
Eres Septiembre,
La lluvia tras el calor.
¡Qué traicionero!
Memoricé tus besos.
Flores fantasmas,
Jarrón vacío.
Beso a escondidas.
Cualquier hombre servía.
Yo lo negaba.
El mundo gira.
El centro hierve.
Y yo soy fría.
Si te recuerdo,
mi voz es tan cortante,
que me hace sangrar.
It's all the woman's voice or point of view. Guilt, loveless sex, four reproaches to the man, longing after it's definitely over, promiscuity with others, loneliness, hatred. The actual break-up doesn't have a haiku all for itself; it happens between haikus 6 and 7.
She has forgotten patience,
Her voice has a jagged edge.
It will make her bleed.
Se ha olvidado de tener paciencia.
Su voz tiene un borde de sierra.
La hará sangrar.
Si te recuerdo,
mi voz es tan cortante,
que me hace sangrar.
I have often written poems that were very obviously about me, simply changing all pronouns to She or Us. I have noticed in Cornell’s literary magazines that the tendency is the opposite: whatever these poets say, I don’t care if autobiographical or not, is in the first person about 80% of the time. It just doesn’t work for me that way.
So, I wrote the first poem, the one in English, in the spring. No romance there, just talking about trying unsuccessfully to be calmer. To finish the Spanish haiku cycle, I again put the love component into a poem that had nothing to do with it.
The world spins around hot metal,
Not around the ice crystals inside me.
El mundo gira alrededor de metal al rojo,
Y no alrededor de los cristales de hielo dentro de mí.
El mundo gira.
El centro hierve.
Y yo soy fría.
I wanted to write a poem that said something like “the world doesn’t spin around me”. I fought with it for days. There was a song by the Spanish pop band Amaral that you could not avoid then, because it was on TV and on every radio station, and I was doing a class project with Amaral’s biggest fan. Amaral sucks, and I couldn’t escape the raspy voice of the singer whimpering She Was Nothing Without Me. But she sang that her world was small and there were little ice crystals in her heart. I tweaked a bit her words here and there, and they fitted. Voila. No one has spotted the allusion yet, which surprises me.
I learnt your kisses by heart.
The memory of flowers on an empty vase.
Me aprendí de memoria tus besos.
El recuerdo de las flores en un jarrón vacío.
Memoricé tus besos.
Flores fantasmas,
Jarrón vacío.
Written during the same warm October as “September love”. An exercise on writing about feelings that I was very familiar with, but that I did not have at the moment.
This September love is warm but rainy.
Your actions betray your words.
Este amor de Septiembre es cálido, pero lluvioso.
Tus acciones traicionan tus palabras.
Eres Septiembre,
La lluvia tras el calor.
¡Qué traicionero!
This is biographical, but not AUTObiographical. It sums up the feelings of a friend of mine for someone she used to date; she prefers the second Spanish version, I prefer the English one. Written on an unusually warm October.
Cream on my coffee.
Silver on his hands.
Who could give him all those rings?
Nata en mi café
Plata en sus manos.
¿Quién le habrá regalado todos esos anillos?
Venga, dímelo,
¿quién te regaló
todos esos anillos?
I’ll tell you a secret. I knew this guy that I didn’t fancy, the typical one that makes you think, yes, he IS cute, but he’s just not your style. He was very suntanned (not naturally dark: tanned) and he wore chunky silver rings. His hands were my muse for a while for poems that had nothing to do with my real feelings for him. At first flirty, I had to make the second Spanish version angry to fit into the cycle.
Again: the first one is an original, the second one is the literal Spanish translation, the third one is a Spanish adaptation that scans, from a haiku cycle that tells the story of a break-up.
Blue sky, blinding snow.
A lovely orchid withered
Left out in the cold.
Cielo azul, nieve cegadora.
Una orquídea preciosa se marchitó
Cuando la dejaron a la intemperie. Nieve y cielo azul.
Las rosas se han quemado.
No las cuidaste.
I have said before that the English version is the closest I have come to a poem about my teenage years. Being a teenager was no fun; bullied for two or three years and being generally ignored for the rest. One of the highlights was a skiing trip that went better than any other school activity of the previous seven years: that’s were the blue sky and the snow come from. The other two lines are anachronistic, since they refer to the time that came before. The second Spanish version turns it all into a reproach for a neglectful partner that has nothing to do with the initial conception.
I was thinking of the orchid in the photo, one of
Mapplethorpe masterpieces; the metaphor of woman-as-orchid is as evident as the teeth of pearl and the hair of gold, but thankfully it is not as overused.
The first one is an original, the second a literal translation and the third a less literal translation that fits the haiku pattern.
Tenderness has died.
Two fierce young bodies,
“Stirring memory and desire” (T. S. Eliot).
La ternura ha muerto.
Dos cuerpos jóvenes y feroces
“Removiendo el recuerdo y el deseo”
La ternura ya ha muerto.
Cuerpos feroces,
Puro deseo.
It was that little line that reconciled me with T. S. Eliot, about four or five years after my first introduction to him. It makes sense that the line came back to haunt me, since memory and desire make three quarters of my creative writing. I composed the original one, the English haiku, while I was driving to class. I had been thinking for weeks about writing a haiku around the quote. There is something in the tediousness of driving along the jammed A49 highway that switches my head off the road and on more creative things. Another reason why it took me long to write it was because my initial approach was nostalgic. I wanted to write a poem about remembering an old love when it’s completely over.
I think the second, shorter Spanish version is superior to the more faithful translation.
Today it's the birthday of my wonderful cousin-and-friend Irene, who saved my life once or twice. Really. I can't say she's my "best" friend because that somehow diminishes some of my other very good friends.
Anyway, the poetry. These are all the poems I've written that are directly inspired by her. The gossipy note for those who need it: number 1 is one of my earliest, I sat with the idea of writing about Irene, but didn't know exactly how. When we were children, she was blondish, I was dark, and we liked to play with dolls together until we were way too old for them. The "forbidden" bit was that we were supposed to entertain her little brother, but keeping him out was part of the fun. I know, I know, the result looks like lesbian erotica. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily. Number 2 is a simple description of what happened when she came to visit me in Aberdeen, one month of may in which snow fell from a clear sky. Number 3 is another simple description of me locking myself out of the mountain refuge where ten of us wer spending a weekend.
1
Brunette and blonde hide.
No longer children.
Forbidden games are always best.
Una morena y una rubia.
Ya no son niñas.
Los juegos prohibidos siempre son mejores.
2
Snow melts in the air.
Under her coat, she shivers.
Seagulls around us.
La nieve se funde en el aire.
Bajo su abrigo, ella tirita.
Gaviotas a nuestro alrededor.
3
Alone, out at dawn.
The icy wind wraps me up
While my friends sleep.
Salgo sola, al amanecer.
El viento gélido me envuelve
Mientras mis amigos duermen.
You are my inspiration. /Eres mi musa.
1
Love is a bad poet
and sleepless, writing haiku
about your shoulders.
El amor es un mal poeta
e insomne, que escribe haiku
sobre tus hombros.2
Love is a bad poet.
Unconvinced? Come closer,
I will show you why.
El amor es un mal poeta.
¿no te lo crees? Acércate más
y te enseño por qué. 3
Love is a bad poet
who turns your hair into words.
Never trust a poet.
El amor es un mal poeta
que convierte tu pelo en palabras.
Nunca te fíes de un poeta.4
Love is a bad poet.
It never edits a draft,
Unlike resentment.
El amor es un mal poeta
Nunca corrige sus borradores,
al contrario que el resentimiento.Insomnia is a wonderful poetic theme. There is so much to say about it. I can’t remember any names right now, but I think there’s a handful of Spanish classic poems about sleeplessness.
I actually wrote the first three poems during a sleepless night. The fourth came a couple of days later; I have more than ten haiku cycles and this is the closest I’ve come to have the idea of a cycle before grouping the poems. On the other occasions, I have picked here and there for enough poems on the same theme to get a cycle together, sometimes composing only one or two to fit the others. It is also my only composition with a refrain so far.
This cycle is the more mature, restrained, mysterious older sister of “
Heart on a tray”: another refusal to shove my feelings down the reader’s throat (we already have Bécquer to make us sick with his self-indulgence, so no need for the rest of us to make the paper dirty with tears and snot).
About two years ago, I wanted to send a haiku cycle to a contest but they only accepted submissions much longer that what I had managed to write in Spanish until that moment, long enough to become a book. It didn’t matter, because that forced me to lose my fear of composing poetry in my first language. I had to start by trimming stuff out of the translations of poems in English (that’s always a good rule: when in doubt, simplify). I ended up with a break-up story of sorts, but not a stoy with a beginning and an end. Something like a catalogue of feelings related to a break-up.
Since I started from my poems in English, these poems have three versions: the original English one, the first Spanish translation, which is very faithful to the original content, and the Spanish version that tries to fit into the syllabic pattern of haikus, so the content is no longer so faithful. I'm going to post each threesome individually, and in the hope that the series is interesting for readers who don’t understand Spanish, I will go beyond the usual “this is not autobiographical” disclaimer and explain a bit about how each poem came to be.
Rose became snow became naked branches.
Swimmers turned into monsters.
Rosa se convirtió en nieve se convirtió en ramas desnudas.
Nadadores que se volvieron monstruos.
Era un nadador,
Se convirtió en piraña.
Fue culpa mía.
It was hard to put all I wanted into one poem. This one is autobiographical, for a change. I lived for a year in a house that had a lovely plot of orange roses when I moved into it in September. The snow that fell in winter looked pretty for a short while (this was Aberdeen, where it snows often but it melts quickly). For many depressing months, the bushes were black and leafless. They looked dead. The succession of a burst of beauty followed by something still good but more discreet, followed by misery, was exactly what was going on in my life at the time.
So I wrote another micro-story. The third one. And like the other two, it is a break-up, so I have a story of loss and longing, a story of hate, and a story of bittersweet redemption. Estoy empezado a cogerle gustillo a esto de escribir sobre romper parejas. Here you have it:
Contigo aprendí que pasada una cantidad de velas encendidas, no importa cuántas más haya en una habitación porque la penumbra no va a resultar más luminosa. Mi amor para ti era un cuarto lleno de velas: daba igual cuánto me esforzase, porque siempre necesitarías más luz. ¿Verdad que fue una suerte que me diese cuenta antes de consumirme del todo?
You taught me that after a certain amount of lit candles, it doesn’t matter if you add any more because the light is not going to be any stronger. My love was to you like a room full of candles: no amount of effort on my part would ever be enough. Wasn’t it lucky that I realised before I was burnt out?
I thought I had more poems with questions on them, but there’s just fivenull. It is just a coincidence that they are all love poems (well, love: jealousy, loneliness, contempt, arrogance, and insecurity). It is probably not a coincidence that two of them are tankas: haikus have to go straight to the point and they don’t have time to ask questions!
Cream on my coffee.
Silver on his hands.
Who could give him all those rings?
Nata en mi café
Plata en sus manos.
¿Quién le habrá regalado todos esos anillos?
Sofas at right angles.
You sit on the other one,
We’re drawing an L.
L for “leather”, “love”, or “lust”.
Maybe for “lonely”, instead?
Sofás en ángulo recto.
Te sientas en el otro,
Y formamos una L.
Nos une el cuero, el amor y la lujuria,
O tal vez la soledad.
He has everything.
The women describe his smile,
Remember his name.
But, who loves someone who eats
Alone in a public place?
Lo tiene todo,
Las mujeres describen su sonrisa
Y se acuerdan de su nombre.
Pero, ¿quién quiere a alguien que come
Solo en un lugar público?
“How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
Do I dance better if you watch?
¿Cómo distinguir el baile de la bailarina?
¿Bailo mejor cuando me miras?
Killed by your beauty,
Little tag hanging from my lips:
Coffee “or something”?
Tu belleza me ha matado.
Una etiquetita cuelga ahora de mis labios,
Y dice “¿Quedamos para tomar café, o algo?”
Five months ago, when this blog had a different location and an fussy, ugly template, I made this list of things I wanted to write poems about:
1. a haiku about flying over olive tree groves. The familiarity of landscapes from a plane.
2. a haiku about winter that is very sunny, very cold, very green. The coldest makes the light brighter.
3. A poem (is this idea too big for a haiku?) or even a short story: do we want to stay friends after having broken up without hard feelings?
This last idea intimidates me because I haven´t written half-decent prose since June 2004, and I haven´t written decent prose with a plot in a year or a bit more. In my experience, even having a complete plot from beginning to end doesn't mean I can write the story. Patience, patience, it will come back, it has to come back.
It scares me a bit to realise I'm still not writing prose. Since then, I have written four microstories, and bits and pieces that don't get anywhere, just wee little sketches. I've written nothing on the first idea although I'm sure that when my plane lands on Spain in July I should be in the right mood for it. I had forgotten about the second idea, which shows that it wasn't interesting enough.
And I have one haiku for the third one, showing that no, it was not too big.
Like frozen flowers (paralysed beauty),
the friendship of ex-lovers.
Como flores congeladas (belleza paralizada),
la amistad de antiguos amantes.
Snowdrops on the ground,
White lilies on pots:
Will you live forty-two months?
Azahar en la rama,
nardos en un jarrón:
¿vais a vivir cuarenta y dos meses?
This is mi first poem on the classic collige, virgo, rosas topic (a variation on Carpe Diem: “pick up the roses before it’s too late”). It is a good example of how translation needs to take liberties sometimes. The first flower is the first of spring and it grows in the streets. The second flower smells really sweet. Both are white. But the American version gets American flowers and the Seville version gets Seville flowers.
And it's dedicated to MP,with thanks for the friendship, the patience, the rides, the CD's, and of course, the daffodils.
Here it is, my elegy to Spanish tortilla de patatas. An elegy is not just a poem for death,but a melancholy meditation.
Para una niña, la tortilla es la cena,
comida caliente y barata,
tres personas y mucha mayonesa.
La niña crece y la tortilla es camping,
bocadillos enormes,
dos personas, el deseo de un beso.
Se deja de ser niña, y la tortilla es recuerdo,
querer volver a casa,
una mujer sola que habla por teléfono.
For a little girl, frittatas mean dinner.
Cheap homemade food,
three people, lots of mayonnaise.
For a bigger girl frittatas mean picnics,
big, thick sandwiches,
two people, the longing for a kiss.
No longer a girl and frittatas are a memory,
homesickness,
one woman alone talking on the phone.
It has looked as if it's just about to start to rain for three days now, and it's cold. I put this haiku cycle together about two months ago, and I'm still doubting whether to call it "Come in from the Cold" or "November Snapshots".
For those of you that like the creative-process-is-it-autobiographical bit, I composed the first poem more than a year ago when I was locked out of a little mountain refuge very early in the morning, when my friends were indeed still asleep. The third one I wrote very soon afterwards,but in a very urban setting, after a long, long struggle with the Pink Floyd line. The little boy and girl in the second poem are my brother and I, age 8 and 6; that, and the Elegy to a Fritatta, are my only poems to date inspired or about my brother (I'll post the Elegy sometime soon). The last one is the most recent one: I wrote it in late November 2004. In February 2003, I spent a week in Limerick, Ireland, with two of my best friends who were living there. I loved the look and feel of frosty grass and I remembered it with nostalgia until I went back to live in a cold climate, this school year. Like all my weather poems it has a bit of Alan Spence in it.
1.
Alone, out at dawn.
The icy wind wraps me up
While my friends sleep.
Salgo sola, al amanecer.
El viento gélido me envuelve
Mientras mis amigos duermen.
2
Two fiery dragons:
Boy and girl in raincoats,
Their breath of steam.
Dos feroces dragones:
Un niño y una niña con impermeables,
Su aliento de vapor.
3
Leaf clings to the tree,
Chill autumn.
“Don’t give in without a fight” (Pink Floyd)
Una hoja se aferra a la rama.
Otoño helado.
“No te rindas sin oponer resistencia”.
4
Glittery with frost
The grass puts on a costume:
a late Halloween.
Con purpurina de escarcha
la hierba se disfraza:
Un Halloween tardío.
The only shade of green Cornell misses:
Dull silver of olive trees.
El único tono de verde que falta en Cornell:
Plata mate de los olivos. I haven’t written enough haiku about trees, considering how much I identify the landscape of towns with the local trees (or their absence). I can’t like a town that doesn’t have plenty of trees.
This was the first poem I wrote in Ithaca. It took me many weeks to let the impressions of the new place rest for long enough to write poems about them, and then I started writing frantically about people instead of landscapes.
Etiquetas: haiku
The micro-short story is a very demanding genre. A microstory should not seem a chunk from a bigger thing. It should not have a “suspense end” as if it was missing one sentence. It is acceptable to begin as if something was missing from the beginning of the story, but ideally, the beginning should not be abrupt. When I wrote prose fiction, I wrote little vignettes to work on interesting sentences that I couldn’t weave into proper stories, but I never tried to compose real microstories back then. This is my second one. According to my own rules, it’s not very good; ¿do you think it needs a couple of sentences in the beginning to explain “This man and woman had an affair and then broke up”?
It is dedicated to a friend of mine, who often writes about infidelity, absence, and break-ups. I think he’d rather stay anonymous, but he knows who he is.
Six months later, he said “I wrote a poem about you, back then”.
She answered, “oh, that’s alright. I also write about people I know”.
It was exactly then that he decided that what he felt for her was not tenderness for an old lover, but despise. What a relief.
Seis meses más tarde, él le dijo: “Escribí un poema sobre ti, aquellos días.”
Ella contestó: “Ya, yo también escribo sobre gente que conozco”.
Fue justo entonces cuando él decidió que lo que sentía por ella no era ternura por una antigua amante, sino desprecio. Qué alivio. Etiquetas: microstory, Wordsworth
It was only a matter of time until the haikus blended with the culture shock and I started to write comedy of manners in verse. Wow.
Killed by your beauty,
Little tag hanging from my lips:
Coffee “or something”?
Tu belleza me ha matado.
Una etiquetita cuelga ahora de mis labios,
Y dice “Quedamos para tomar café, o algo?”“Would you like us to go out some time?” is a date. “Would you like to go out for a coffee?” might be a date or might be friends going out together.
“D’you wanna g’ out for a coffee
or s’mthin’?” is the last resource of the too shy to ask for a date, too impatient to wait to be asked, and too nervous to get a sentence straight without a tag hanging from it. I sincerely believe that asking people for a “coffee or something” brings bad luck.
I’d love to have an illustration for this one, something like a dead body lying on an autopsy table or a morgue with a sheet up to the shoulders and a tag hanging from the mouth instead of from a toe. Wow, I can be morbid sometimes.
Etiquetas: Coffee, commedy, of, manners
Los siete puentes
abrazando la ciudad,
a todos nosotros.
Our seven bridges
Hugging the city,
hugging us all.
The mantra goes:
Alamillo, Barqueta, Chapina, Triana, San Telmo, Delicias, Quinto Centenario.
A harp, a leap, a ship, a dance, a park, a road, a tower.
To Gran’s, to bars, to walk, way back, to class, to park, and trucks.
I think I’ve made myself very clear. If you know any towns where the North is to the left, of course.
A poem to order you to go out, have fun, and find love. I don't want to hear how many exams or papers you have to prepare.
1.
Dance with your eyes closed.
The smell, the music, the heat
Are all you need to see.
Baila con los ojos cerrados.
El olor, la música, el calor
son todo lo que necesitas ver.2.
I like your blond skin
I want your blond smile.
I’m looking for some blonde fun.
Me gusta tu rubia piel
Me atrae tu rubia sonrisa
Quiero divertirme rubiamente.3.
“How can we know the dancer from the dance?” (W. B. Yeats)
Do I dance better if you watch?
¿Cómo distinguir el baile de la bailarina?
¿Bailo mejor cuando me miras? 4.
Dawn sets the sky on fire.
Day comes to stop all parties.
Survivors crawl out.
El amanecer prende fuego al cielo.
El día llega para acabar con todas las fiestas.
Los supervivientes se van, arrastrándose.
I think that
Aurora said once that she liked to be as inside as possible the creation process of other writers, so for her and anyone else who wants gossip this is the biographical note of these little babies. The only one of the four poems that didn't just come tome as a flash of inspiration was number 4. Numbers 2 and 4 came first chronologically; Number 2 I actually composed (that is, I made it up, but I wrote it down the morning after, of course) during an alcohol-soaked party and it does express the way I felt about the friend of a friend. The mutual friend, Virginia, helped the morning after with the translation, mostly with word order. Number 4 mixes the exhausted feeling after that party, which was in Limerick (Ireland), with a photograph of the sunset over Aberdeen (Scotland) and it is my attempt to turn
Björk's song Pluto into a haiku. Number 1 I composed while I was dancing in a bar in Granada with my oldest friend, Irene francés; that one had been waiting to come out for ever and ever because I do dance with my eyes closed, at least when I'm really happy and relaxed. This happened a whole year after the original two party haikus, ad since I already had three I shuffled them a lot trying to compose a fourth to balance a party cycle. The answer came nearly a year afterwards, not at a party but at a Belly Dance class recital, the first time I ever danced for others to see. I composed the poem a few days afterward, and the "you" is the only friend of mine who came to see the recital. I didn't really steal the quote from Yeats, but from an analysis of him by the philosopher Paul de Man. After that it was only a question of arranging them in the order that nights out usually take: Dance, lust, dance and lust put together, home.
I first posted this haiku sequence in December. It is still called “The Friday Cycle”, a title I wasn’t too happy with. I’m still trying to get used to it. Any suggestions for a change?
Corazón en bandeja.No,
no voy a poner mi corazón en un poema.
No,
No en un poema como en una bandeja.
Pues entonces
ese pedacito de mí –quizá tuyo
lo leerán otros,
y otros se lo contarán a alguien.
Mi corazón que empezó mío
y luego fue tuyo
acabará repartido.
Cortado con tenedor y cuchillo.
Todos podrán compararlo con los que ya conocen:
Los otros corazones puestos en bandejas,
Pinchados sobre un panel,
Intimidades que otros incautos (no yo)
Pusieron en un poema para compartirlo.
Yo no,
prefiero no ponerlo.
No.
En un poema, no.
No es en un poema donde puedo darte mi corazón.
Heart on a tray.
No,
I’m not going to put my heart into a poem.
No,
Not into a poem as if on a tray.
Because then
That piece of me –maybe yours
Will be read by others
And others will tell someone else.
My heart initially mine
And then yours
Will end up spread
Cut up in little pieces with knife and fork
Everyone will be able to compare it with others they know
The other hearts set on trays
Pinned onto a board
Innermost thoughts that the naïve (not me)
Put into a poem they would share.
Not me,
I’d rather not.
No.
Not in a poem.
It’s not through a poem that I will give you my heart.
So this is what I wrote when I wanted to put into a poem what now I call "
The Therapy Effect". The initial intention was to satirise a very dominant style among the poets in my hometown, maybe in my country as a whole, a certain melancholy-surreal mode. The effect was not exactly what I had planned.
One tree in the desert,
A tall man waiting.
He has never seen the flowers.
Un árbol en el desierto,
Un hombre alto que espera.
Nunca ha visto las flores.
Flower woman asks an innocent question.
A green smile and no answer.
Mujer-flor hace una pregunta inocente.
Una sonrisa verde, y ninguna respuesta.
Two of my oldest haikus. They were not meant to go together, although they are about the same man.
Raíces
No sólo los árboles tienen raíces.
Es raíz lo que te sujeta.
Raíz lo que apoya.
Raíz, origen.
Hasta los números tienen raíces,
quien diría que algo tan frío
tiene un principio.
También los dientes tienen sus raíces.
Algunas
sólo se pueden recordar cuando duelen.
Cuando no se tienen.
Si las rompes.
Si se van.
Decido separarme de mis raíces, marcharme, y dejarlas aquí.
Que les vaya bien.
Roots
Not only the trees have roots.
Root is what supports you.
Root what holds you.
Root, origin.
Even numbers have their roots,
who would’ve thought that something so cold
has a beginning.
Teeth are born from roots too.
Some
are remembered only when they hurt.
when you lose them.
When broken.
When gone.
I decide to sever off my roots, go away, and leave them here.
Fare them well.
I wrote this one very soon before coming to Ithaca. I still don’t know it is good enough to compensate for being so self-indulging.
Curse your uniqueness.
After you left me,
Each passing face looked like yours.
Maldita seas, por ser distinta.
Desde que te fuiste,
Cada cara que pasa se te parece.
Heh. This one was a tanka, which means it was twice as long. It was an embarrassing mess that no shuffling about of synonyms would mend (desperation in poems, à la Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, is a very poisonous thing). It took me quite a lot of drafting and ruthless criticism from someone else (thanks, Jhoe) to realise that the problem was that the speaker should hate the beloved. No ambiguity there.
After knowing that the atmosphere in Mars is less that 1% as dense as the Earth’s, so even the fastest winds can hardly be felt at all.
Wild, fast and pointless.
Looking for a cheap love cure.
Like the winds in Mars.
Cuando supe que la atmósfera de Marte tiene menos del 1% de densidad que la de la Tierra, por lo que los vientos huracanados ni se sienten.
Rápido, salvaje, sin sentido.
Buscando un vulgar remedio amoroso.
Como los vientos de Marte.
Some time ago I said that "last summer I attended a sort of conference for poets, which publishers and other interested people attended too". Actually, I lied. I didn't attend the conference, I was only there because I won a prize in a poetry by text message competition and I'll give you that poem on another occasion (you find a fraction of it if you google my full name, Eugenia Andino Lucas, but I hate that website's layout). Anyway, there was a dinner and I had the chance to talk with a few professionals, amateurs like me, and publishers, and someone quite ruthless said a way of telling apart the bad amateurs from the promising ones:
Lots of young people write poetry. They are easy to sort out because the mediocre ones stop writing when they get into a steady relationship.
That fits nicely into the usual male-oriented explanations of the creative impulse as something nearly sexual. There is the Sheherezade model: being creative makes you sexy. There is the Sublimation model: you put into creating the energies that you'd put into sex if there was an available partner. There is the Oedipal model, the idea that you write because you want to beat your influences (your influences are your ather and Art is your mother: apply Oedipus to the triangle)
I haven’t had the opportunity to see if that critic's theory applies to me, but I doubt it. Not because I believe I am above mediocrity, but because I think I write faster and better when I have an audience. I think it's very funny (in the "strange" and in the "amusing" senses) how some of my most creative spells, the ten-poems-a-week fits, have taken place in that bubbling ground at the very earliest stages of relationships. I am curious about whether, if I ever have a steady relationship again, that person (or me getting lazy and comfortable) will kill my Muse. I hope not.
By the way, is anybody interested in a post about the Muses? Any fans of obscure mythology reading this?
Our tangled hands are dry
but they hold a slippery love,
Too fragile to last.
Manos entrelazadas,
Secas aunque sostengan un amor resbaladizo
demasiado frágil para durar.Hmmm... this one doesn’t say everything I want it to say. It should be more ambiguous, or more sensuous, or both.
Etiquetas: Eugenia, Andino, Lucas
A flame, a firework,
Red fans, a surprise.
Banana tree in a garden.
Una llama, fuegos artificiales,
Abanicos rojos, una sorpresa.
Una platanera en un jardín. I love trees. A childhood in an industrial town without trees makes you appreciate them better later. When I came back to Spain from my first trip to Scotland, I summarised my misery as “
No cherry trees here and no palm trees there”. Later, I have learnt to enjoy living in two or three countries at once, but I still associate certain trees (bananas, citrus, palm trees) with home.
So imagine my happiness when I saw that a beautiful garden in Cornell had a banana tree.
I have a week of holidays and I'll be in Washington until Wednesday, so don't expect any updates in a few days. These days are important in my hometown, so rather than talking about the hows and whys here you have (again) a poem about it.
El Río de Norte a Sur (para ciudades que tengan el norte a la izquierda).
1.
“Presos del suelo”,
Me envidian si patino.
¡Mira cómo vuelo!
(Grafitti anónimo en el puente de Chapina)
“Prisoners of the ground”
They envy me when I skate
Watch me fly!2.
Sobre el río, paz verde,
Cruzan tres flechas.
Piraguas blancas.
On the river, green stillness,
Three arrows crossing.
White kayaks. 3.
Los siete puentes
abrazando la ciudad,
a todos nosotros.
Our seven bridges
Hugging the city,
hugging us all. 4.
Jardines del Cristina.
Mi abuelo no está.
Pero yo sí.
Cristina Gardens.
My grandfather’s gone.
But here I am.5.
Niebla y gorrillas.
Siete de la mañana,
Lunes de frío.
Beggars on heroin.
Fog, seven a. m.
As cold as Mondays can be. Like frozen flowers (paralysed beauty),
the friendship of ex-lovers.
Como flores congeladas (belleza paralizada)
la amistad de antiguos amantes.
I don’t know if I like this one, because it is too “me”. Succinct, ambiguous, sentimental but impersonal. It refuses to say if the friendship of ex-lovers is a good or a bad thing, and it is so detached there is not even an “I”. Still, better a poem like an icicle than line after line of exhibitionism, ewwwww.
Cinnamon shoulders,
your waist is a reed.
You can't be snapped by the wind.
Hombros de canela,
tu cintura es un junco.
No puede romperte el viento. Me: I couldn't write poetry even if I tried.
Him: Oh yes you can.
I wrote a haiku about him, to prove him wrong. And then another. And another. He might deny his responsibility, but he was the one that made a poet of me, my own personal
Erato-and-Polymnia in male form.
English is easier for haikus because the words are shorter. I translated the first few just because my readers were Spanish. To me, the “real” version was the original one, the Spanish one just a crutch for readers. About six months and twenty poems later, I wrote my first translation that was not a gloss to the English haiku; by that time, I was already considering the English and the Spanish versions of each poem as a pair that should not be broken.
Hay una sola palabra: “primavera”,
Pero no hay una sola primavera.
Yo conozco dos.
Necesitamos dos palabras para las dos primaveras.
Una primavera fría,
Esquiva,
Primavera que muestra pero no da.
Beatrice, Dark Lady, Laura, Stella, Elisa,
De blanco cuello blanco que no puedes besar.
Primavera de escalofrío y lluvia,
Una flor al día.
Cada tierno brote una semana de anhelo,
Cielos azules que prometen brisa suave
Pero engañan.
Cuatro meses de súplica y diez días de calor,
Conozco primaveras (¿o eran mujeres?) así.
Y otra primavera ardiente,
Colores que estallan,
Toda entregada entera,
Flores y fruta y luz,
De golpe.
Y de repente te trae el verano,
Ahogo, sofoco, bochorno, treinta y siete grados,
Exigencias.
Te dio placer y te hará sudar.
Conozco primaveras (¿o eran mujeres?) así.
There is one word: “spring”,
But there isn’t just one spring,
I know two of them.
We need two words for two different springs.
A cold spring,
Aloof,
Spring that shows but does not give.
Beatrice, Dark Lady, Laura, Stella, Eliza, Daphne,
With a white neck white she won’t let you kiss.
Spring of chills and rain,
A flower a day.
Every tender new leaf after a week of desire,
Blue skies that promise a soft breeze:
They lie.
Four months begging on your knees and ten days of warmth,
I have known springs (or were they women?) like this.
And a hot fiery spring,
Colours that burst,
All for you, completely,
Flowers and fruit and light,
At once.
And suddenly she brings summer,
Stifling scorching sweltering thirty seven degrees*,
Demands.
She gave you pleasure, she’ll make you sweat.
I have known springs (or were they women?) like this.
This poem is a lot longer than I had planned at first! Sometimes I think I’m writing free verse because I’m losing the discipline to stick to haiku constraints. Maybe in a few days or weeks I’ll be able to take all these ideas into fifteen syllables (and I will probably prefer that version to this one).
I wrote this one after a whole day of walking on slush, looking at the tiny grey shoots that will become leaves on the trees on campus. If this weather was a woman it would be The Teaser From Hell, some sort of Renaissance protagonist of a sonnet.
* 37º C = 100º F.
The night lies ahead.
Cup of tea full to the brim.
The poem doesn’t come.
Toda la noche por delante.
Una taza de té llena hasta el borde.
El poema no llega.
Let' say this again: Every artist that has stopped to theorise about
Art in the abstract, about
What Art Ought to Be, reaches a simple and easy conclusion.
Art ought to be what I do. I am, of course, no exception. What I like and dislike is dictated by what I do or can’t do.
So: If I say that haikus offer the perfect balance of form and freedom, it means that what I can and cannot write gives me that opinion. First of all, I love haikus because they don’t rhyme. Rhyme is an unnecessary constraint that forces the poet to look for a word that fits form instead of meaning. Rhyme for its own sake, especially when it is difficult as in Spanish rap, is an interesting device. In poetry, is often superfluous, and what’s worse, distracting. And the most important thing: para rimar tiempos verbales, mejor no escribas. That is, you’d better not write at all if you intend to rhyme grammatical suffixes or particles.
Good. We have one principle: use excellent, original rhyme for its own sake, or don’t rhyme at all. Now, the distinction between poetry and poetic prose is in rhythm. Of all the non-rhyming traditional poetic forms, haikus are interesting because they must be concise: you cannot waste a syllable. Forms that don’t have a line count run the risk of heading straight into explanation. “This is what happened” slipping into “and this is the way it made me feel”. A haiku is the photograph of a feeling, not its description.
The last question is why not free verse. Free verse is the hardest of all because there are no rules and that makes mistakes so much easier. The balance is no longer between form and meaning but between freedom and self-indulgence. The old saying “
master the rules before
breaking them” applies. A good poem is one that is fresh and original even if it sticks to the rules. But, what makes a good free verse poem? Nobody knows. Yet.
Etiquetas: Array
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