Thirst, its golden circumstances

11406459_910571338991780_8962253701621530478_oDobel_HeadshotFive poems by Carlos Pintado translated and introduced by Hilary Vaughn Dobel. 

Reading Carlos Pintado’s Nine Coins (winner of the Paz Prize for Poetry from the National Poetry Series; available from Akashic Books) in its original Spanish is an almost otherworldly experience. The poems have a timeless quality, mixing formal sonnets with free verse and prose, addressing universal themes: love and wanting, light and dark, dreams and sleepless nights. They are beautiful machines that make you feel things.

And so I fell in love with the poems, with their meaning and their music. The meaning, I think I was mostly able to bring across into English. The music, though, was difficult. Because English is so rhyme-poor and because many of Carlos’ poems are rhymed sonnets, I worked instead with meter and settled for occasional slant rhymes and sight-rhymes. Even if you’re not a Spanish speaker, I urge you to read through the originals just to get a sense of their sound.

There were other times during the translation process when, despite the deeply emotive quality of the poems, I almost felt that voice of the poet had become depersonalized, like an oracle channeling something larger than the self. I hope I was able to bring this oracular nature across, as well—to capture that same feeling of a prophetic “I” speaking somewhere out of time. 

—Hilary Vaughn Dobel

Postal para Elizabeth Bishop

by Carlos Pintado

where the shadows are really the body

                                    —E.B.

 

He tenido en un sueño las horas de la noche:

sus altas horas siempre, sus ruinosos silencios,

sus ecos, sus penumbras, sus fatales contornos

he tenido. La noche ha hecho en mí su casa.

He soñado mi cuerpo como una sombra entrando

en otra sombra, cuerpo de mí o de la noche,

como un fuego en tinieblas despacio devorándome.

He soñado mi muerte como un país lejano,

como un anillo de oro hundiéndose en el agua.

Acaso el sueño acerca inevitablemente

al muerto con su muerte, al vivo con su espejo.

Yo he sentido ese horror que ciega y me confunde

con la imagen del otro: una sombra que en mí persiste,

animal de la noche rompiéndose en la noche. 

Postcard to Elizabeth Bishop

by Carlos Pintado

where the shadows are really the body

                                    —E.B.

 

I’ve been dreaming of the night and all its hours:

its small, late hours, of course, its crumbling silences,

its echoes, and its half-light; its deadly contours,

I’ve dreamed as well. The night has made its home in me.

I’ve dreamed my body like a shadow entering

another shadow, my body or else the night’s,

devouring me slowly like a fire in the dark.

I’ve dreamed my death like some far-off land, like

a golden ring as it sinks into water. 

Perhaps the dream will come inexorably close

to dying with its death; to life with its mirror.

And I have known the horror that blinds and bewilders

with the image of the other: a shadow that persists in me,

a creature of the night gone to pieces in the night. 

translated from Spanish by Hilary Vaughn Dobel
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Other World, M.C. Escher

by Carlos Pintado

Otro mundo me espera: soy la forma

que, en el cuadro sin centro, busca un ciego

orden de cosas que es también trasiego,

donde no hay ley, ni causa, ni hay la norma.

Otro mundo me espera: los flotantes

cuernos perduran, giran, se deshacen.

¿Sabré yo acaso con qué metal se hacen,

si mientras más cercanos, más distantes?

Otro mundo me espera: la ventana

en su mitad se alza, y mi prodigio

será quedar del lado de las cosas.

Otro mundo me espera: la mañana,

como un umbral de luz, hará el litigio

de la noche que muere con las rosas.

Other World, M.C. Escher

by Carlos Pintado

Another world awaits me: I’m the form

that, in the picture with no center, seeks

an order, blind but also bustling,

where there is no law or cause, no norm.

Another world awaits me: the buoyant

horns persist and linger, turn and shatter.

Can I learn what metal makes them,

whether they draw closer or more distant?

Another world awaits me: the window

lies half-open, and my miracle will be

to stay here in the realm of the material.

Another world awaits me: the morning,

with the dawning of the light, will stand

against the night that dies with all the roses. 

translated from Spanish by Hilary Vaughn Dobel
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Paisaje con sombra y casa
que da a la noche

by Carlos Pintado

Huid, niños, de la muerte.

Jueguen. Apártense de mí.

No quisiera yo compartir la infinitud de una plaza,

ni la risa que abre en el aire su más deseable rosa.

Enfermo de enfermas cosas estoy.

Soy una casa oscura

que da a la noche, una casa

habitada tan sólo por los muertos.

 

Huid de mí, niños de la muerte.

Soy yo quien cierra una ventana a ustedes.

Soy yo quien pasa como un cadáver

ante el asombro de todos.

 

Yo esperaba al ángel de ojos afilados.

Yo esperaba al ángel.

Y las ventanas se abrieron a la noche,

y yo no fui más.

Yo no fui

yo. 

Landscape with Shadow and House
Overlooking the Night

by Carlos Pintado

Fly, children, from death.

Play. Keep back from me.

I would not want to share the infinity of a plaza,

nor the laughter that unfurls its most coveted rose

into the air.

I am sick with sick things.

I am a darkened house

that overlooks the night, a house

where none dwell but the dead.

 

Fly from me, children of death.

It is I who bar a window against you.

It is I who walk about like a corpse

to the astonishment of all.

 

I was waiting for an angel with keen eyes.

I was waiting for an angel.

And the windows opened to the night,  

and I was no more,

I was not

Me.  

translated from Spanish by Hilary Vaughn Dobel
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Regresos

by Carlos Pintado

Deambulo por tu sueño y soy

tu propio sueño, dormido.

Bestias de la noche, venid a mí.

Ángeles hermosos, bebed mi sangre.

Yo he sido breve

al cruzar por los espejos,

breve como un golpe de sol

sobre las aguas muertas.

Yo he sido breve.

Largo es el camino

y mis pasos breves.

¿Qué amor me habrá salvado?

¿Qué labio injurió al viento

como si fuera mi nombre

el susurro levísimo de la mies en los campos?

¿Soy yo el que regresa?

Soy yo? 

 

Returning

by Carlos Pintado

I wander through your dream and I

am your own dream, asleep.

Creatures of the night, come to me.

Gorgeous angels, drink my blood.

I have been brief

on crossing through the mirrors,

brief as sun striking

on dead waters.

I have been brief.

Long is the road

and my steps are brief.

What love can save me?

What lip tarnished the wind

as if my name

were the softest whisper of grain in the fields.

Is it I who returns?

Is it I?

translated from Spanish by Hilary Vaughn Dobel
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El desierto

by Carlos Pintado

Doradas circunstancias de la sed

figuran los baldíos espejismos

donde todo perece; en ese abismo

un hombre muere solo con su sed.

Los sucesivos rostros de la luna

han de otorgarle un único consuelo:

soñarse devorado en aquel suelo

y en aquel suelo despertar. Ninguna

salida habrá: el mar de las arenas

repetirá incesante la figura

de un muerto que recorre la llanura

que los dioses negaron terminar.

Porque también eterno es aquel mar

de polvo, sueños, soledades, penas.

The Desert

by Carlos Pintado

Thirst, its golden circumstances,

renders vain mirages where all

must perish; a man in that hell

may die alone with just his thirst.

The moon’s successive faces have

bestowed this single solace: to dream

oneself devoured by the ground

and on that ground awaken. Nothing

will have gone: the endless sea of sand

will still repeat a dead man’s shape

as it travels through the plains—plains

the gods refused to end. For it, too,

goes on forever, that sea of dreams

and dust, of solitudes and shame.

translated from Spanish by Hilary Vaughn Dobel
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