I, III [Como el primer cigarillo]

by Luis García Montero

Como el primer cigarillo,

los primeros abrazos. Tú tenías

una pequeña estrella de papel

brillante sobre el pómulo

y ocupabas la escena marginal

donde las fiestas juntan la soledad, la música

o el deseo apacible de un regreso en común,

casi siempre más tarde.

Y no la oscuridad, sino esas horas

que convierten las calles en decorados públicos

para el privado amor,

atravesaron juntas

nuestras posibles sombras fugitivas,

con los cuellos alzados y fumando.

Siluetas con voz,

sombras en las que fue tomando cuerpo

esa historia que hoy somos de verdad,

una vez apostada la paz del corazón.

Aunque también se hicieron

los muebles a nosotros.

Frente a aquella ventana—que no cerraba bien—,

en una habitación parecida a la nuestra,

con libros y con cuerpos parecidos

estuvimos amándonos

bajo el primer bostezo de la ciudad, su aviso,

su arrogante protesta. Yo tenía

una pequeña estrella de papel

brillante sobre el labio.

I, III [Like the first cigarette]

by Luis García Montero

Like the first cigarette,

the first embraces. You had

a small paper star

shiny on your cheekbone

and you occupied the marginal stage

where parties joined with loneliness, music,

or the gentle desire for a common return,

almost always later.

And it was not darkness but those hours

that turned streets into public decorations

of a private love.

Our possible fugitive shadows

dared together,

smoking with upturned collars.

Silhouettes with voice,

shadows in which history took shape,

the history that today we are,

once wagered the heart’s peace.

Yet furniture

also did this to us.

In front of that window—which never closed well—

in a room that looks like ours,

with books and with bodies

that could be ours,

we loved each other

beneath the city’s first yawn, its warning,

its arrogant protest. I had

a small paper star

shiny on my lip.

translated from Spanish by Alice McAdams

Luis García Montero has written over forty books of poetry, novels, and essays, and is the recipient of the Adonáis Prize, the Loewe Prize, the Spanish National Literature Prize, and the Spanish National Critics Prize. Along with his active work in the literary sphere, he is a prominent voice of Spain’s political left and recently helped found the party Open Left (Izquierda Abierta). He has been writing and publishing in Granada for over three decades.

Alice McAdams is a current Master’s student at Middlebury College in Madrid and will begin a PhD in Spanish literature at the University of Michigan in the fall of 2014. She began studying and translating García Montero as part of her senior thesis at Oberlin College. Her translations of García Montero’s poetry have been published in Typo and Asymptote and are forthcoming in Mid-American Review. When not in Spain, she lives in Madison, Wisconsin.