Después

by Idea Vilariño

Es otra

acaso es otra

la que va recobrando

su pelo su vestido su manera

la que ahora retoma

su vertical su peso

y después de sesiones lujuriosas y tiernas

se sale por la puerta entera y pura

y no busca saber

no necesita

y no quiere saber

nada de nadie.

Later

by Idea Vilariño

There is another

perhaps there is another

the one going to recover

her hair her clothes her manners

the one that now measures again

her height her weight

and after sessions luxurious and tender

she goes out the door whole and pure

and does not seek to know

does not need or want to know

anything about anyone.

translated from Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval

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Idea Vilariño (18 August 1920 – 28 April 2009) was an Uruguayan poet, essayist and literary critic and a well-known member of the literary and intellectual group, the Generation of ’45, that included Juan Carlos Onetti, Mario Benedetti, Amanda Berenguer, and, as an ex-officio, Argentinian member, Jorge Luis Borges. She was a high school literature teacher from 1952 until the military dictatorship in 1973. After the restoration of democracy until her death, she was a professor of literature at the la Universidad de la República in Montevideo. She was the author of twelve books of poetry; among the best known are Nocturnos (1955) and Poemas de amor (1957). Her collected poems Poesía completa was published in Uruguay in 2009. She was also the author of five books of essays and literary criticism.

Jesse Lee Kercheval’s poetry collections include Dog Angel (University of Pittsburgh Press), World as Dictionary (Carnegie Mellon University Press) and a Spanish language poetry collection Extranjera (Yaugarú) published in Uruguay. Her translations of the Uruguayan poet Circe Maia have appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, the Boston Review, and American Poetry Review. The University of Pittsburgh Press published Invisible Bridge/ El puente invisible: Selected Poems of Circe Maia in August, 2015. She is also the editor of América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets which is forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press. She is the Zona Gale Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is also Director of the Program in Creative Writing.

Circumference

Poetry in Translation

Después

Later