Cuarto solo

by Alejandra Pizarnik

Si te atreves a sorprender

la verdad de esta vieja pared;

y sus fisuras, desgarraduras,

formando rostros, esfinges,

manos, clepsidras,

seguramente vendrá

una presencia para tu sed,

probablemente partirá

esta ausencia que te bebe.

Single Room

by Alejandra Pizarnik

If you dare to frighten

the truth out of this old wall—

and its fissures, its gashes

that form shapes and sphinxes

and hands and clepsydras—

surely a presence

for your thirst will emerge,

and no doubt this absence

that drinks you dry will leave you.

translated from Spanish by Yvette Siegert

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Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972) was a leading voice in twentieth-century Latin American poetry. Born in Avellaneda to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Pizarnik studied literature and painting at the University of Buenos Aires and spent most of her life in Argentina. In 1960, she moved to Paris, where she was influenced by the work of the Surrealists and participated in a vibrant expatriate community of writers that included Julio Cortázar and Octavio Paz. Known primarily for her poetry, Pizarnik also wrote experimental fiction, plays, a literary diary, and works of criticism. The poems in this issue are from her collection Los trabajos y las noches (Works and Nights), published in 1965. She died in Buenos Aires, of an apparent drug overdose, at the age of thirty-six.

Yvette Siegert is a poet and literary translator. She has edited for the United Nations and The New Yorker, and currently teaches comparative literature at Baruch College, The City University of New York. Her writing has appeared in Chelsea, Stonecutter, 6×6, Aufgabe, Guernica, St. Petersburg Review and other places, and her translations of Alejandra Pizarnik’s collected works, which received support from the New York State Council on the Arts, are forthcoming from New Directions and Ugly Duckling Presse.

Circumference

Poetry in Translation

Cuarto solo

Single Room