Poetry in Translation Issue
Volume 16:3, Summer 2015
The Setting of the Planets
There’s no one in the street, its humid sounds, in the lifting of the leaves
and my steps want to start again on the wooden rungs of adolescence.
But everything is abandoned; there is nothing here that would side with us,
no unsuspecting air, no scent of liberty. Only habits grinding down our memories.
“It has been good,” we said.
Gods of fire, gone, of the goodness of dawn, of our making, our music, our sole
incoherent passion–sovereign of this street where touches and impressions
made a universe.
The shadows still caress the sidewalks. Your own name and gesture
are a nocturnal form in a constellation and it turns and grows and is able
to put a face to our guilt.
And everything ends with a hope, with a delay–”it has been good”–,
or in a yawn, or in another place where courage is imperative.
El ocaso de los dioses
No hay nadie en la calle, en los ruidos húmedos, en el vuelo de las hojas y mis pasos quieren reiniciar las maderas de la adolescencia.
Pero todo está abandonado, no hay nada que pueda favorecernos; ningún aire de inconsciencia, ningún reino de libertad. Sólo hábitos tolerantes haciendo crujir nuestra memoria. “Ha estado bien”, decimos.
Dueños de incendio, de la bondad del crepúsculo, de nuestro hacer, de nuestra música, del único amor incoherente; soberanos de esa calle donde los tactos y la impresión hicieron su universo.
Las sombras acarician aún sus veredas, tu mismo nombre y tu gesto son una forma nocturna que en esa constelación crece y sabe enrostrar nuestra culpa.
Y todo termina con una esperanza, con una dilación –”ha estado bien”–, o en un bostezo, o en otro lugar donde es menester el coraje.
Julia Leverone holds an MFA from the University of Maryland, teaches in Texas, and is an ABD PhD candidate at Washington University in St. Louis. Leverone is Editor of Sakura Review, a DC-based literary magazine. Her translations have appeared in Blue Lyra Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Poetry International.
Francisco Urondo (1930–1976) was an Argentine poet and militant who was killed at the start of the Dirty War. He was Minister of Culture in Santa Fe and director of the department of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. Urondo produced 18 works of poetry, fiction, testimonial writing, and essays, along with plays and scripts for the stage and screen.