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

Carlos Pintado is a Cuban-American writer, playwright, and award-winning poet who immigrated to the United States in the early 90s. He received the prestigious 2014 Paz Prize for Poetry for his book, Nueve monedas, awarded by the National Poetry Series and published in a bilingual edition by Akashic Books in New York. His book, Autorretrato en azul, received the Sant Jordi’s International Prize for Poetry, and his El azar y los tesoros was one of the finalists for the Adonais Prize in 2008. He also contributed to The Exile Experience: A Journey to Freedom, coordinated by Cuban-American music producer Emilia Estefan. His poetry has been set to music by Tania Leon and Ileana Perez-Velazquez, and his writing has appeared in Spanish-language Vogue.

Hilary Vaughn Dobel is the translator of Nine Coins by Carlos Pintado (Akashic Books, 2015), winner of the 2014 Octavio Paz Prize, and The Clouds (Open Letter Books, forthcoming). She is also the author of two poetry manuscripts, Hot Cognition (finalist, Brittingham Prize) and He Imagined Himself Laughing (finalist, Colorado Prize for Poetry). She holds an MFA in poetry and literary translation from Columbia University and is the recipient of fellowships from Columbia and the University of Chicago. She lives in Boston and at hilaryvdobel.wordpress.com.