Literature in Translation |
“Bulletin and Elegy of the Mitas”
“To Melchor Pumaluisa, son of Guápulo, / whose testicles they severed with a butcher knife / on the hacienda’s patio. / And kicking him, they made him walk / before our tear-filled eyes. / He erupted from the blows in jets of blood.”
Literature in Translation |
“Belgium,” “Patterns,” “Poland,” “Hooligan” & three untitled poems
“A young girl is embroidering in her chamber. / On the canvas, patterns of spears and crosses. / The girl stitches dead soldiers on a meadow / With red flowers on their chests.”
Literature in Translation |
“Attenborough”
“I imagine how nice it would feel to cool off in the aquarium installed for the penguins and have a dip in the ice-cold water of the pool whose glass wall lets you observe the tiniest movements up close. “
Literature in Translation |
“Chaïm Soutine’s Obsession”
“That his rage was in a painting did not suffice to appease his rage against the painting. He kept taking back his works from those who had bought them, to destroy them.”
Literature in Translation |
“The Bird’s Birth,” “The Bird (II)” & “The Old Woman’s Song of Herself as a Young Girl”
“this is the bird / in whose one eye / there is the last leaf of fall / and in whose other eye / there is the news / of the spring baby’s hasty birth”
Literature in Translation |
“This Is A Humane Country”
“Once I got to the hotel, a man visiting from the inland said to me, “Your Spanish is a little too good. We don’t trust anybody who doesn’t speak a bit of our local lingo because they might pull one over on us. Know what I mean?”
Literature in Translation |
from The Number on Your Arm is Blue Like Your Eyes
“I’ve never met anyone younger than I with a number on his or her arm, but what would be so special about that? Those who try to sensationalize the memory of the Shoah or heap superlatives onto it trivialize the suffering of victims or veer into kitsch.”
Literature in Translation |
“Pankow”
“We’re fleeing and forget that after the war a whole country was fleeing – from itself, from the Russians, from guilt, from terror, from pain. The country fled into affluence, gluttony, repression, hedonism, anti-fascism, escapism.”
Literature in Translation |
from Lonespeech (Ensamtal)
“the smoke goes into the eye / the eye into the smoke / also they have / only that grave”
Literature in Translation |
“That the Song May Return to Sinera One Day” & “The Governor”
“I have stopped time / and cling to memories I love / from past winters. // But you will laugh / since you see how Catalan lips / stay sealed.”
Literature in Translation |
from A Gap in Time
“today i held / a seminar on surgery / online / we discussed thyroid cancer / where are those sufferers now? / recently / we’ve had hellishly good luck / since the bridge was blown up / our village / is no longer of importance to the military”
Literature in Translation |
“The Stranger,” “Nobody” & “He Can”
“… the mere presence / of his breathing / in this world is poison. / He can have a sky and a road / sewn out of doves and roses.”
Literature in Translation |
from Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death, or Language Haunted by Sex
“Retired Lieutenant Dostoevsky, age twenty-seven, for having taken part in criminal designs, having circulated a personal letter filled with impertinent expressions against the Orthodox Church and the sovereign power and for having attempted, together with others, to circulate works against the government through means of a private printing press, is condemned to death.”
Literature in Translation |
“The Missionary”
“It was pointless to warn him about the perils of crossing the sea and the dangers of the continent noir, the newly branded missionary would hear none of it. He left as if off to his honeymoon …”
Literature in Translation |
from The World and Varvara
“I once read that it was so cold at Lenin’s funeral that the musicians had to wipe their instruments with vodka so their lips wouldn’t stick. That’s about how chilly it was on the January day some eighty years ago when Varvara entered the world.”