The Empty Country of Wooden Frames
Understanding mathematical vibrations as the effect of a metaphor.
Considering the strange fact that a wild hedgehog is a lovely and pointless secret.
Given that it’s easy to name one thing for another and change out the site of meaning.
Dreaming eight hours a day without ever returning along the same path.
Knowing less than some trees, less than some birds and fish.
Going from one place to another as if in some other place something essential and exact existed.
Accepting the pendulum of the physics of spheres and the atom’s boat
When the fish rides in the hay wagon and there’s a clock in the middle of the road.
Most certainly due to the uncertainty of the airport of knowing tomorrow will no longer be it.
Here, accepting the pause of time of the cat that will now forever be called Verlaine.
Spinning in the wooden carrousels like a crazy butterfly.
Climbing up to the roof of blue eyes where the Jewish poets live.
Counting out syllables for the nightingale’s and the iambic pentameter’s superstition.
Going out in the night with my friends burning beneath the splendor of stars.
At last, alone in the behaviors of the terrible night.
Alone on dawn’s railway platform, in the empty country of wooden frames.
***
El país vacío de los bastidores
Entendiendo las vibraciones matemáticas como resultado de una metáfora.
Considerando hecho insólito que el erizo silvestre sea un hermoso secreto bizantino.
Siendo como es fácil decir una cosa por otra y cambiarle de sitio el significado.
Soñando ocho horas diarias sin regresar nunca por el mismo camino.
Sabiendo menos que algunos árboles, menos que algunos pájaros y peces.
Yendo de un lado para otro como si en otro lugar hubiera algo imprescindible y justo.
Aceptando el péndulo de la física en las esferas y la embarcación del átomo.
Cuando en el carromato de heno va el pez y hay un reloj en medio del camino.
A ciencia cierta por lo incierto del aeropuerto del saber que mañana dejará de serlo.
Aquí, aceptando la espera del tiempo del gato que ya siempre se llamará Verlaine.
Girando en los carruseles de madera como una mariposa enloquecida.
Subiéndome al tejado de ojos azules donde viven los poetas judíos.
Contando las sílabas para la superstición del ruiseñor y el endecasílabo.
Saliendo por la noche con mis amigos abrasados por el resplandor de las estrellas.
Finalmente sola en la conducta de la noche terrible.
Sola en los andenes de la madrugada, en el país vacío de los bastidores.
***
Translator’s Bio:
Jeremy Paden is a professor of Latin American literature at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky and he is on faculty at Spalding University’s low-residency MFA. He is a literary translator and has published translations of contemporary Argentine, Colombian, Chilean, Mexican, and Spanish poetry. He is also a poet who has published three chapbooks and two full-length collections. The latter two are: world as sacred burning heart (3: A Taos Press, 2021) and the bilingual Self-Portrait as an Iguana (Valparaíso USA, 2021). Self-Portrait, written originally in Spanish, was named co-winner of the inaugural Poeta en Nueva York Prize. His bilingual and illustrated children’s book Under the Ocelot Sun/Bajo el sol del ocelote (Shadelandhouse Modern Press, 2020), on the migrant caravan crisis, won a 2020 Campoy-Ada Prize awarded by the North American Academy of the Spanish Language for Children’s Literature in Spanish.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
