We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.

 

Was there a Garden or was the Garden a dream?
Amid the fleeting light, I have slowed myself and queried,
Almost for consolation, if the bygone period
Over which this Adam, wretched now, once reigned supreme,

Might not have been just a magical illusion
Of that God I dreamed. Already it’s imprecise
In my memory, the clear Paradise,
But I know it exists, in flower and profusion,

Although not for me. My punishment for life
Is the stubborn earth with the incestuous strife
Of Cains and Abels and their brood; I await no pardon.

Yet, it’s much to have loved, to have known true joy,
To have had — if only for just one day —
The experience of touching the living Garden.

Translation by Genia Gurarie

We present this work in honor of St. Martin’s Day.

 

Liberty, ascend to your throne
Of glory on the buckler,
Waving noble palms,
Crowned with laurel.

Like the beautiful flower
With a gathered calyx,
That opens at the explosion
Of the destructive lightning,
The Fatherland, at the hoarse roar
Of the lightning of war,
In May gave to the earth
Its aroma and splendor.

Slave Buenos Aires
Moaned in disconsolation,
When the sun shone in the sky
Of freedom,
And among floating clouds
The star placing,
She said, surrounding her temple:
“Look at my flag!”

Liberty, ascend to your throne
Of glory on the shield,
Waving noble palms,
Crowned with laurel.

Giving the alarm cry
With a powerful echo,
The generous people
Bared their swords;
And destroyed chains,
And tore down crowns,
And conquered laurels
in opposite zones.

Liberty, ascend to your throne
Of glory on the shield,
Waving noble palms,
Crowned with laurel.

The heroes with their blood
Sealed the victory,
Falling with their glory
Beneath the sacred altar,
And the grateful people
Remember their names,
Which the May sun gilds
In the burial urn.

Raising green palms
Woven with the lily,
Glory and martyrdom
Receive your ovation;
And raising patriotic hymns
That fly through the air,
Raise Buenos Aires
Its undefeated flag.

Liberty, ascend to your throne
On the buckler of glory,
Waving noble palms,
Crowned with laurel.

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.

 

Coffee and apples on an afternoon in June.
In a lukewarm civiliesed corner
my senses take in a faintly abstract situation.
The world has become hospitable,
like a truce in the middle of history.
The apples give off a yellow radiance,
the coffee offers up its intimate steam.
In terms of my failure as a contemporary individual
all this seems sufficient,
the inner chill of apples,
the unstable heat of coffee,
two details from nature that escape my dominion.
So here am I with my sprawling backside
in some chamber adequate to my social class.
Gentle things put in a safe place,
Shut away from the general tumult.
But at times a bomb explodes on the ground floor
and the police show up to find out who is who in this world.

Translation by Richard Gwyn

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 120th birthday.

 

You who go every Sunday to the Botanical Garden
and while away hours in silence, contemplating
the sumptuous colourings of flowers
that you will never have in your own little garden ;
you who ask fascinating things so ingenuously
and explain to me the fantastic ambient of your dreams ;
you who love like a child the leaves of the mint
for the clean memories that its scent awakens;
you who talk about the glittering enamels
of exotic insects that blossom in the air;
you who tell the life of Jean-Jacques, and know
that under a clear sky he cuts herbs at close of day;
you who dress in white for the Month of Mary
and people the silence with images of peace:
because you were my beloved you will lay on my tomb,
when I am dead, lilacs of dark splendour.

Translation by Richard O’Connell

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 150th birthday.

 

Fathomless and full
as two brief, graceful immensities,
your eyes inhabit your countenance
like lords;
and when from their depths
I see dallying and rising
the flame of a radiant soul,
it seems that the morning is rising from sleep,
shining, over there between sea and sky,
where that drowsy line rocks
between two blue empires,
the line where our hearts pause
to caress it with their hopes,
to kiss it with their glance;
when our being meditates,
drying its tears,
and, silently,
throws itself open to all the breezes of Life;
when we glimpse
the ashes of days gone by
floating in the Past
like the dust of all our pilgrimages
left behind at the last turn of the road:
Eyes that open like mornings
and, closing, let evening fall.

Translation by Paula Speck

We present this work in honor of May Revolution Day.

 

ON MAY 25, 1850

Roses! Roses! a genius without a second
He formed your strange destiny at his whim:
After Satan, no one in the world,
Like you, it did less good or as much damage.

Aborted from a crime, you have wanted
May your works be twinned with your origin;
And, never repenting of the crime,
Only the hours of stillness afflict you.

With the flames of Tartarus lit
A cloud of blood surrounds you;
And throughout the horizon of your life
Blood, barbaric! and blood, and blood smokes.

Your hand will move like lightning
The foundations of a temple, and suddenly
From the altar the idols of May
They poured blood from his broken forehead.

Justice is approaching religious
To call at the tomb of Belgrano:
And that immortal dead man opens his slab,
Raising his helpless hand to the sky.

Freedom escapes with glory
To hide in the crevices of the Andes;
Claiming memory from the ice
From those times when they were great.

Idols and time disappear;
The radiant lights go out,
And in immaculate blood they turn red
The fragments of pyres and altars.

Glory, name, virtue, Argentine homeland,
Everything perishes when your foot stamps,
Everything turns to dust, in your ambition of ruin,
Under the helmet the foals of your pampa.

Well, Rosas, later? such is—heed—
The question of God and history:
That after you accuse or defend
In the ruin of a town or in its glory.

That fatal afterward that challenges you
Over the corpse of my country,
In my inspired poet’s voice,
The tremendous voice of the one who lights the day.

Speak, and, in pursuit of destruction, respond:
Where are the works that thy hand sprouted?
Where your creation? The bases where
A great idea or a vain thought?

What mind was there in your bloody insomnia
That you were so driven to so much crime?
Move away, move away, abortion of the devil
What are you doing wrong to enjoy crying!

The human race is horrified to see you,
Indus hyena transformed into a man;
But woe to you, that one day when I understood you
He will not hate you, he will despise your name!

Time has offered you its moments;
Fortune has touched your head;
And, barbarian and nothing more, you have not known
Neither gain time, nor gain greatness.

You overthrew a republic, and your forehead
With an imperial diadem you do not elevate ledo;
Freedom died, and, omnipotent,
Slave you live by your own fear.

You want to be king, and you fear it will become
In the crown of Milan yours;
You want to be great, and your soul is not right
How to rise from his sphere.

Your kingdom is the empire of death;
Your greatness, the terror of your crimes;
And your ambition, your freedom, your luck
Open graves and form outcasts.

Wild gaucho of the rough pampas,
That is not glory, nor value, nor life;
That’s only killing because it strips
They gave you a fratricidal sword.

And, great criminal in memory
Of the whole world, of your full crime,
You will be a reptile that will step on history
Disgusted by your form and your poison!

Nero sets fire to Rome, and contemplates it,
And there is I don’t know what is heroic in such a crime;
But you, with a soul that the devil tempers,
How much do you do has your misery written on it.

No Atreus when in danger hesitates,
And you, more than them for evil, trembled;
And bloodier than bloody Attila,
You never looked at the blood of the fight.

In all those eagles that grabbed
Humanity and, in carnage fever,
With their metal claws they wounded her,
There is some virtue: even courage.

But your heart only overflows
Of miseries and crimes and vices,
With a stupid and rabid thirst
Of doing evil and inventing torture.

You don’t even owe yourself fate
With which you have quenched your thirst for blood;
Tiger you met on the way
A wounded lion that you have devoured.

Spirit of evil born to the world,
You have not been good even to yourself;
And you will only leave an unclean name
When descending into your first abyss.

Mothers will name you for their children
When you want to scare them in the crib;
And they, trembling and fixed on your image,
They will fall asleep dreaming that they saw you.

The troubadours will pay tribute
To the stories that your memory invents;
And execrating your fruitless crimes,
Rude and vulgar History will call you.

Ah, that I bless almost your crimes,
Faced with the anger of my country,
Why do you suffer such a barbaric punishment?
As long as the light of day shines!

Because as long as the sun shines in El Plata
You will suffer that punishment eternally;
Never to your name the thankless memory:
Never curse your tender breast;

And finally scourge of your luck,
You will see when you breathe out that it rises
Beautiful and triumphant and powerful and strong
The town that you outraged with your plant.

For there will not be in it, from your delicate hands,
More than just a stain on the neck;
That you don’t know, vulgar tyrant,
Nor leave the mark of your chains.

We present this work in honor of Malvinas Day.

 

Come here,
my mother sweetly told me one day;
(I still seem to hear
the heavenly melody in the air of her voice).

Come, and tell me what such strange causes
draw that tear from you, my son,
which hangs from your trembling eyelashes,
like a curdled drop of dew.

You have a pity and you hide it from me.
Don’t you know that the simplest mother
knows how to read her children’s souls
like you do the book?

Do you want me to guess what you feel?
Come here, urchin,
with a couple of kisses on the forehead
I will dissipate the clouds from your sky.

I burst out crying. Nothing, I told him;
I do not know the cause of my tears,
but from time to time my
heart is oppressed, and I cry.

She bowed her forehead, thoughtful,
her pupil became troubled,
and, wiping her eyes and mine,
she told me more calmly:

– Always call your mother when you suffer,
she will come, dead or alive;
If it is in the world, to share your sorrows,
and if not, to console you from above…

And I do it this way when harsh luck,
like today, disturbs the calm of my home:
I invoke the name of my beloved mother,
and, then, I feel that my soul expands!

We present this work in honor of Dia de la Memoria.

 

Hummingbirds buzz
in the morning’s red branch. Wonder of wonders!

Today, young gravedigger, I buried
a hundred days and nights like dead birds.
I yank this yoke of hours from my shoulders.
And today, unfleeing heart, my hand destroys a hundred dawns
withered as herbs pressed in your daybook.

An inscription scatters
on the tomb of time.

This morning strands of road
whip-cracked under my drunken heels.
I come from night: like two green fruits
my eyes dangle over the world.

Bell-ringer of distances: underfoot
a path, faded away and avoided, sprouts
like a fugue tree.
And taut as a slingshot, it shoots
pebbles from sleep into the fragile air.

Today the first morning of the world
has risen between two nights.
Who woke that lark, time harvested,
that slept on your dry branch?

Oh, heart, red bobbin
undone in the dripping day’s palm:
a door, as yet unopened, creaked!
And a king happier than the word sun
fills our shoes with blue coins.

Happiness!
A girl drinks up all the sky in the well.
Her wind apron unclad her…

A spider-thrush appeared and tangled the whole hill
in the threads of its songs.

There, where the iron stirrups are kept,
Life! sang the reed-colored men…

My happiness escapes
and trembles the light’s fresh branch.

Bare-heeled boy riding the flank of morning,
my happiness, that digger of silence, will shake
the tree that sprouts the most birds.

Ah, it is taller, the air’s dome,
and it coins our voices, free-timbred, unique.
My nerve-tree is end-rooted in morning.

I am the test of the unfledged world.
My hands, fused to rudders of sun,
guide this day under tender skies.
My steps tie this net of roads.

Hand of the sling-shooting god,
you were tossed like the nimblest stone from his sling.
Long scream in the bracketed silence;
companion of the curving night’s road, that is how you rise.

Wordless friend,
let your voice unravel the oldest face.

My hands, hollowed by the rudders of sun,
guide this day through the wind.
I arrived from morning: like two green fruits
my eyes dangle over the world.

I have seen distance on its knees
like a god to whom no one brings gifts,
and death, gentler than a llama skin,
molds itself to the shape of our dreams…

Hunter of happiness:
I tie a hundred bleeding birds to my waist.

 

When shadow forms itself within you;
when you snuff out all your stars;
when you’re swimming in the mud, most fetid, most infected,
most miserable, most macabre, mostly made of mostly death,
most bestial, most arrested,
you have not fallen yet,
you have not rolled to the deepest depth, yet…
if in the cavern of your chest, most overlooked, most remote,
most secret, most arcane, darkest, emptiest,
meanest, and demoted
psalms of sadness there be sung,
biting down on anguish and heartache,
one part still pulses, moans an angel, chirps a nest of blushings,
and you feel a knot of anxiety.
Those who are born tenebrous;
those who are and will be larvae:
those who are hindrance, danger, contagion. Those who are Satan,
the damned, and those who never stopped short, never always,
never same, never never—
will not regenerate,
do not auscultate themselves in their nights,
do not weep for themselves…
they who present themselves commanding, satisfied—as rules,
as molds, as a stud to bolt things down, as standard unit of weight,
as load-bearing beam—
And they do not feel the desire,
for that which is healthy, for that which is pure
not one wretched moment, not one wretched instant,
in their arcane brain.
To him who “Tsks” his shadows,
to him who taciturn wanders;
to him who bears upon both his backs—like an unavoidable weight,
like the punishing weight of a hundred cities, for a hundred years;
of a hundred generations of delinquents—
his stubborn obfuscation;
to him who suffers night and day—
and through his sleep still suffers—
like the grace of a spiked belt, like a bone stuck in the throat,
like a nine-inch nail inside the brain, like a ringing in the ears,
like a relentless callus,
the notion of his own miseries,
the great burden of his passion:
to him I bow my head, I bend my knee;
I kiss the bottom of his feet; I say: God save you…
Dark Christ, stinking saint, Job within,
infamous cup of pain!