Ada Zapata-Arriarán

Indran Amirthanayagam

El Sueño del Mundo (Dream of the World): Ada Zapata-Arriarán, translated by Indran Amirthanayagam

El Sueño del Mundo

Las luciérnagas en tus manos
Devorando los días

La tortura en la barca del cuerpo

Nada es terrible
Todo ha sucedido

El sueño sin cabeza
Era una montaña imposible
Los perros ladrando en la oscuridad

Se debe morir para poder morir
Dijo con ansiedad el sueño

Así solo así
Olvidar la sombra que vuela

La familia atrapada en la casa oscura

Todos esos días

Esos días

Esas noches
Interminables

El niño que fuiste corre por el patio
No sabe que estás muerto

Eres me dijo

El imposible
Viaje
De una estrella

Y los recuerdos siguen jugando
Saltando precipicios

Dos veces
Para poder morir

Como dijo aquella tarde el sueño del mundo

Sus cabellos rojos sobre la mesa de la cocina

El sonido inaudible
Invadiendo cerrando colinas

Y la oscuridad
Cubrió mi cabeza

The Dream of the World

Fireflies in your hands
devouring days

Torture on the body’s boat

Nothing is terrible
Everything has happened

The beheaded dream
Impossible mountain
Dogs barking in the darkness

One ought to die to be able to die
said the dream anxiously

Thus and only thus
To forget the shadow that flies

The family trapped in the dark house

All those days

Those days

Those interminable
nights

The child you were runs on the patio
He does not know that you are dead

You are he told me

The impossible
voyage
of a star

And memories keep playing
leaping precipices

Twice
to be able to die

As the dream of the world told you that afternoon

Your red hairs on the kitchen table

Inaudible sound
invading closing hills

And darkness
covered my head

Ada Zapata-Arriarán (Bolivia) is a writer, essayist and cultural journalist, and a graduate in Literature from UMSA, the public university in La Paz. She has published Fragmentos en el Aire (Fragments in the Air). As a film critic she coedited the book Apuntes de Cine (Film notes). She is curator of the journal Ablucionistas, and since 2002 to date she is editor of the art digital journal Palabras Más, of which she is also co-founder. She has published articles in several newspapers and journals. Her work is in several anthologies such as: Algo por el estilo, UMSA (Something of the kind), Memoria de lo que Vendrá, Ed. Nuevo Milenio (Memory of things to come), Más de cien escritores bolivianos, ed. Kipus (More than one hundred Bolivian writers). Antología Latinoamericana Pachamar, Poetas Allende los Mares, Antología del Festival Internacional de Poesía José María Heredia, Antología XXll Enero en la Palabra, Escandalo en tu Barca 2018, Antología del Encuentro Internacional de poesía de Zamora, 2019. She has participated in various poetry festivals.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes poetry in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He is the author of twenty five books of poetry and poetry in translation, including Seer (Hanging Loose Press, 2024), The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil, 2024), Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia, Blue Window (Dialogos Books) The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press 2020),Coconuts on Mars (Paperwall, 2019), Uncivil War (Mawenzi House (formerly TSAR), Canada, 2013), and the Paterson Prize-winning The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose, 1993). Amirthanayagam is a 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Arts fellow in poetry, and a past fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com), edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly; curates the reading series Poetry at Beltway Editions, He serves on the Board of DC-ALT. His blog is http://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com