Translation of La Tinta del Sur IV

Ink from the South IV

La Tinta Del Sur IV

“I always dreamed of going South and starting over”
The man who ran after the wind

Interpretations of Carpe Diem

Today’s society is us, living poets
Do not allow the life to happen to you without your living it
– Walt Whitman

Months ago I met a couple of drunks
Submissive to the social opulence of a guild.
It was a couple of hours.
I did not need more to lift the mat from his inert whereabouts
maintained based on a white powder of illicit jungle
that tinanciaban with the accumulated intellect of the years,
and the juggling of a scalpel thirsty for organic time.
A couple of decades invested in the knowledge bank
in the search for the South American dorado
to become vampires of dreams
that brought new light to their patients. but darkness for their spirits.
I remember them as a pair of tireless bigmouths in front of me,
a man from town.
Sitting by his side,
he listened as they devoured turns to fill the foundations of his
status,
were not to exclude them from the wealthy link that was now yielding
bills
and eat shit again,
feeling “once again the popularity of its origins.
To show the eyes of the smallest,
-and more stupid-.
He did not live life in his retinas,
half yertas,
like anguished meat
that cracked and resurrected robotically

under an inhospitable light
in claustrolobic salons heartless by reputation,
where I had long ago evicted empathy
to house the opinions of his greed.
Its procedure is only one of codes and coordinates insensitive to the
happiness.
Happiness that installed in air castles and on occasional ski passes in
Deluxe class to make yourself feel more human.
Empire that proudly exhibited his friend, and clan mate,
in its brand new Silicon Valley technology.
He also boasted of the collection of skirts that attracted his wealthy robe
when walking the clinical corridors,
detailing that more than one of her legs trembled at the perception of her aura.
His pulse did not tremble, especially his soul, when he looked at his patients.
At the same time,
the other butcher laughed, and the game followed him like a good henchman,
putting on the table his last big orgy.
Story he described while holding the ring on his ring finger.
Immersed in a sea of ​​tequilas I ventured to ask them about their
conscience
The most stupid,
He commented that it was one of those nights that he would pay to be called
Lifetime
-I imagine so that, at least, in his name it would harbor a loophole
humanity-
Embraced in body – but not in spirit – this pair of idiots
I grabbed the drink and with hand up
repudiating his smiles scalpel
I toasted for a long life
despising each one of the pillars of his asqueróso Carpe Diem.

If you don’t understand it, look it up! It’s worth knowing.

Murio en Diciembre

Melancholy is the joy of being sad.
Victor Hugo

I do not know if it’s the mist that comes through the chimney
when in our kitchen it still smells like your laughter.

O the euphoria of a love simmered, gradual, secret,
like good sex,
but with a Woody Allen ending.

The tango of you would have and we would have learned in a
Montevideo
and that I did not know how to interpret in other trips after your death.

Life in a bottomless drawer
where we used to write down the list of our outbursts
to avoid the reproaches of the good morning of the last Monday of the month.

A shelf photograph that holds the pillars of your absence
and that supported by esparto tunovela
refuses to the cliffs of amnesia.

The collection of Maghreb shoes that were left without your feet.

The writing of a tickle handbook for our gray days
that powders and wears since I do not move your waist.

Breakfasts and dinners that still know the maturity of a romance
When I set the table and nobody takes over your cutlery.

A hollow guitar -as you left my body-
where the nostalgia is now scattered,
and that I can not find a way to refine when December returns.

Anyway,
a post-feeling without rancor that drowns in the mornings, without reaching
kill the will to live.

You have to understand that life is composed of agitations of the soul,
and that melancholy has those qualities,
that does not understand deaths, nor feeble hearts,
not to overly depreciate it.

Because like the vines of an unattended yard
it spreads stealthily down the slopes of the marrow
until you hit the memory interlinings
where the most precious fantasies and memories come together,
those. No wonder in the markets of forgetting I have no pretext for me
to forget.

Soulmate

It is so cute
Knowing that you exist

Mario Benedetti

I found it in the development of our passions,
disheveled by the mischievous sunset of a recent Patagonian past_
His face shone when he put his coffee smile to use
that hardened her chin and stretched her eyebrows in a loving way_
His wise and pointed nose
where he exhaled the smell of beauty.
His mouth cracked by the salt of the southern seas.
His arms sunburned by the will of the heavens of the world
They were holding an Andean leather pouch that looked light,
but that hid an anthology of jars full of handfuls of
other lives.
Behind him a halo of hope balloons gave color to the
platforms of your dreams,
dreams that were similar to mine.
He did not flinch in tourist class, he was born in it.
It got on trains, cars and carts, unknown agents
that opened his appetite for continuing to breathe.
Eternized the curiosity of the whys and why
to give a sense to the direction of the invisible before the eyes.
With carboncíllo stamped memories on ocher leaves
that signed in verse
He hung in his wandering rooms to enlighten other travelers.

Barefoot throbbed Earth wounds
going through the years of the towns and their fields,
and with words and silences it illuminated the exile of those who believed
forgotten
My traveling soul, was not always an expert,
I was also sensitive to pillow fears,
I had outstanding scars to cure
and even I recognized to run the curtains some sunrises to avoid
the sadness of the West.
And I cried, believe me I cried for their sins and weaknesses,
I cried until I blushed the iris of their green almonds.
I have to say that, in a way that I still do not know,
untangling the amygdala and flattening the road to resilience.
Disarmed, not sunken,
he painted his lips with the brush of the bougainvillea of ​​the Mediterranean,
and he threw himself into the street without plans or ties,
again on the road,
where I found it,
willing to tattoo his memory with another trip
and to fill new jars with the knowledge of the world and its people.

My soulmate,
my traveling soul,
my partner.

In the valley of. An

To the sea (us)

Your hands named lifesavers.
rescuing the shipwrecks of my lonely afternoons.
The silence of the moles on your back.
Your smile like a Cove,
(prelude to your chest lit between my hands).

We have learned to wait for the rain as something good,
to share a candle,
to hold the music between your fingers,
to light the incense that rests in a blink.
And we grow every day like a garden, between seeds, books and photographs. ‘

My hands named lifeguards,
Rescuing the shipwrecks of your lonely nights.
The waves of my hair where we both inhabit.
My hands that are a bowl where I keep your teachings
And they are white thread that repairs your wounds.

We merged slowly into fleeting ports,
Freeing our shoulders of a weight that we carry on our backs,
and the notes of a past that hurts your ways and mine.
We are ocean and sea bordering coasts,
With that sound that diluted fears and absence.

I discover myself by your side every day,
on the high seas, with its waist full of maritime foam.
And I always see your eyes as a beacon,
fairy where the air that escapes from my mouth goes.

You discover yourself by my side every day,
making your voice a work of art,
making your walk poem,
and you see me knitting ñores to decorate my breasts,
as we grow each day as a garden,
between seeds, books and photographs.

I give you a movie …

Some enigmatic images show a badly wounded whale the surface of an unknown sea while a voice in off utters the sickening words: “Once I saw a whale with three calved harpoons and it still moved. It took an entire to die. We meet the bellena again. We had never been closer. He was weaker because of the harpoon that had fired at him. And covered with scars from all the battles I fight.”

We do not know where we are or who is the narrator. The we will find out more adclanlc. For now, outside of that scene inaugural, the story officially begins with the arrival of two boys to a remote place, the island of Bastoy, located in the fjord of Oslo, Norway. There reigns a disturbing peace where the cold, the fog and the sound of the waves and the wind tend to silence the voices of their forced tenants. Or maybe it is not only the wind, but we do not advance events. Well, in this land area of ​​one square mile stands a reformatory for young misfits that lasted more than fifty years since its opening at the beginning of the 20th century.

As in other narrations of a prison nature (and this one is), the first minutes are intended for introductions into this microcosm, in that place where time seems to have stopped in its tracks and in, the one that flies over a calm that is nothing but the prelude to the disturbing, realities that are sheltered there. The inmates there have been held stripped of their names and their daily work alternates physical works with
lessons in classrooms. The treatment of workers and vigilantes who are in charge of maintaining the correctional is a reflection of that confrontation between oppressors and oppressed often dismissed not only by the extreme rigor of the context, but also by that tendency (painfully human) to the army of power over queines are  onsidered inferior on the social scale.

Except for a few facts, we ignore Erling’s notebook, two young people who have just entered the center and about which the story begins to direct their attention. Erling, unlike the rest of the reprobates, who have internalized the rules of the game and behave like automata. Rapidly highlighting an indomitable character that leads him to be subject to harsh penalties. This composition calls the attention of one of the convicts of Bastoy. Olav, who, after having been there for six years, has completed a model of institutionalization in such a way that only a couple of weeks remain to be reinserted into society. The price has been high. Olav has had to keep silent, obey the orders of his superiors and ignore the injustices that have been testified. But something inside seems to have been removed after witnessing the unyielding Erling temperament and, in fact, despite the initial rivalry, will be producing between them a solid friendship. Throughout this journey, the camera registers with meticulousness the persistent glances of Olav, who assists admired again and again to the indiscipline actions of his commiffer. This friendship begins to shine as it becomes a denim light of the hopeless stage that welcomes them, a sign of humanity in a scenario dominated by sadness. While the relationship between the two boys evolves, the new convict will need help to write a letter addressed to his sister. It tells a strange story about his past experiences as a sailor… and about a hardy whale that refused to perish.

The question is that an exchange in the roles established by the narrative, because who we thought was a Secondary character (Olav) will initiate a gradual but moving process Transformation until seize the role of the film. This in this way, we are witnesses of an individual in whom the flame of the indignation, the nonconformity, the courage. . . , to the extreme of give up that longed for exit that, in the initial phases of history, A destination impossible to change. Many things passed between them, a revolt spurred by Olav himself after checking that the preceptor who had raped one of the boys in his barrack. Driving him to suicide, he has been reinstated in his position. Per, suffocated the Insurrection, the main character now will be the only inmate that achieves Evade the reformatory. Yes, unfortunately it will not be accompanied.

Events seem to have come to an end; but it is then when we return to those enigmatic images with which the story. And we guess its nature. These images, now we know, are mental projections of Olav from the marine narrations dictated by his old partner. We deduce that these recreations are have sedimentznlo in the memory of the character and tend to reappear over and over again in your imagination knowing that a portion of your current idiosinerasia was forged thanks to the example of that figure that instilled in him the seed of nonconformity. What we contemplate, therefore, it is nothing other than the internalization of an alien story, now integrated into the consciousness of another person. A prolonged ellipsis we moves to the present. Olav, as an adult, wakes up from his rest when, In the fishing vessel where you work, you are informed that you are Approaching the region to which the island of Bastoy belongs. Olav goes out on the deck and is reunited with the unmistakable sea that surrounded that prison where he spent a good part of his adolescence. And it’s here, with a noticeable pang of emotion, when those who return to their memory Mementos where he had no choice but to leave Erling behind, accidentally engulfed by the waters of an icy fjord, and travel with a wounded leg that snowy desert in search of his freedom.

The island of the forgotten ones (Marius Holt, 2010)
Jose A. Plans Pedrefio

New Translation of Pablo Neruda’s poem “The Dead Woman”

La Muerta, or The Dead Woman, was written by Pablo Neruda. I was reading a bilingual edition of this book at El Cafe de Otraparte and didn’t like the translation so have transcribed my own below on the right side, linked to where other translations are below and then explained why I think my translation is preferable to theirs.

Si de pronto no existes,
si de pronto no vives,
yo seguiré viviendo.No me atrevo,
no me atrevo a escribirlo,
si te mueres.Yo seguiré viviendo.Porque donde no tiene voz un hombre
allí, mi voz.

Donde los negros sean apaleados,
yo no puedo estar muerto.
Cuando entren en la cárcel mis hermanos
entraré yo con ellos.

Cuando la victoria,
no mi victoria,
sino la gran Victoria
llegue,
aunque esté mudo debo hablar:
yo la veré llegar aunque esté ciego.

No, perdóname.
Si tú no vives,
si tú, querida, amor mío, si tú
te has muerto,
todas las hojas caerán en mi pecho,
lloverá sobre mi alma noche y día,
la nieve quemará mi corazón,
andaré con frío y fuego
y muerte y nieve,
mis pies querrán marchar hacia donde tú duermes, pero seguiré vivo,
porque tú me quisiste sobre
todas las cosas indomable,
y, amor, porque tú sabes que soy no sólo un hombre
sino todos los hombres.

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall live on.I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.I’ll keep living.For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.

Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be without energy.
When into prison my brothers go,
I am with them.

When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory
comes,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come
though I am blind.

No, forgive me.
If you don’t live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall on my chest,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with cold and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to march to where you sleep, but
I’ll stay alive,
because you wanted me above all things indomitable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all humankind.

Why My Translation is Better

Where my translation differs from the other versions is as follows.

In the third stanza seguiré should read as a statement of commitment to life rather a phrase that a book with some sort of platitudinous title on coping with grief would tell you to repeat over and over again in a mirror until you start to feel that you are “back amongst the land of the living” and thus no longer “trapped in the past/in death”.

The fifth stanza I’ve changed for the following reasons. First, the other translators incorrectly attributed the Castilian meaning of the word rather than the Chilean. While generally sensible, any Spanish speaker that’s travelled know that there is a wide variety regional dialects and meanings. Here’s an screenshot of a Chilean Spanish Slang Dictionary:

If that’s not enough to convince you why my iteration is better, consider this – while “not being dead” may sounds poetic, it doesn’t imply the same sort of implication of commitment to ameliorating racial oppression that was a major component of Neruda’s politics. Pablo Neruda was an ardent Marxist, a member of the Communist Party and was a politician and diplomat under President Salvador Allende. The lines as they were slightly obfuscated something that Pablo Neruda would have been highly attuned.

As it was worded,
it suggested that the “I” of the poem – which is later on characterized as indomitable – respond to racial oppression merely by oneself not succumbing to death. Using a dictionary definition rather than an informal one thus loses the implied need for material commitment to oppressed peoples liberation evidenced in my rendition of “I cannot be without energy”. People in perilous situations that require great physical endurance to survive are able to exert themselves past the point they would normally collapse because of the importance of their actions. My rendition captures this, and for similar reasons the next two lines of the stanza is also lacking verisimilitude to what I believe to be Neruda’s intent.
Embed from Getty Images

As it was,  the “I” of the poem implied a commitment to revenge seeking or some kind of adventurism. That’s not, however, the case as Neruda would be very familiar with the concept of solidarity. Now I understand and even appreciate why it’s rendered that way, for the sake of sound, but I also think it’s important not to declaw the meaning behind the words of a poet who was assassinated by the government of General Pinochet with the assistance of the C.I.A.

Marchar en Chile

In the eight stanza I changed “breast” for “chest” as pecho is both and. Following that I think the translation is again playing fast and loose for the sake of sound. Neruda uses the word marchar, to march, and in the translation it’s replaced with walk, or caminar. While one certainly walks in a march, the collective sense implied in the Spanish word is lost in the old translation.

Lastly, I changed the last line from “all men” to “all humankind” as the gender specificity within Spanish nouns need not apply to the English rendition given the alternative which more accurately symbolizes socialism’s aspiration for universal solidarity.

“Don’t do with love, what a child does his balloon, that having ignored it, then loses it crying.”

Buy yourself a copy of Neruda.