We present this work in honor of the 85th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Your slow desolation, you coal
of delirium, puts my soul
into mourning. Yet a phrase
of black notes transforms my sigh
into a heavenly butterfly.

The taste of fresh rose petals
intoxicates my arid tongue,
and moistens my song unsung:
my naïve happiness in the loss above
only to find the lips of my love.

Themes of love, my humble flute
will sing in praise.
I am pale yet happy all my days,
and in the evening, as the piragua sails,
marking the water with childlike nails,
my sweetheart will sing the same salute.

Translation by John H. Reid

We present this work in honor of the 55th anniversary of the poet’s death.

How many poems of love, sung in vain!
Oh, how old becomes my soul
when I recall the ancient
absurd story of yesterday.

How many poems of love, moaned in vain!
First you were a flower, I, the Bee.
Then my heart found in your window
the bitter snow that drove me old.

How many poems of love, lost in vain!
Today, my windows are wide open,
there is sunshine… many flowers, and it’s summer…

But it’s sad to see by my doorstep,
among so many dead butterflies,
so many poems of love cried in vain!…

Translation by Octavio Corvalán

In honor of Argentina’s National Flag Day, we present this work by one of the most cutting-edge Argentine poets.

I am left with only a few friends and those here
are usually far and I am left
an aftertaste I keep within close reach
as if a firearm. I will use it for noble things:
for defeating the enemy—God
willing—, for speaking modestly
about threatening possibilities.

I hope bitterness won’t intercept
forgiveness, that distant wind
of affections I am trying to describe: I hope the rigor of this
will not convert into the thick glass
of the dead, though I am curious to know the things
they’ll have to say of me, after my death:
to know which were your versions of love,
of those tangential meetings,
because my friends tend to be signals
of my life, by tragic luck, giving me all
that isn’t here. Prematurely, with one foot
on each lip of the crevice that opens
before me, at the feet of glory, I salute you all,
hold my nose and let the abyss surround me.

Translation by Julia Leverone

We present this work in honor of the 35th anniversary of the poet’s death.

It simply happens I have become immortal.
The city buses respect me,
they bow before me,
like lap dogs they lick my shoes.

It simply happens I am no longer dying.
There’s no angina worth anything,
no typhus, cornice, war, or cannon,
cancer, knife, or flood,
no Junín fever, no vigilantes.
I’m on the other side,
Simply, I’m on the other side,
from this side,
fully immortal.

I move among Olympus, gods, ambrosias,
I laugh, or sneeze, or tell a joke
And time expands, expands like a crazy foam.
How marvelous existing
like this, immortal
celebrating birth every five minutes,
being a million birds,
an atrocious leavening.
What a scandal, caramba!
this swarm of life, this plague called by my
name, excessive, increasing,
fully immortal.

I used to suffer, sure, from flus, fears,
budgets,
Idiot bosses, indigestion,
homesickness, solitude,
bad luck…
But that was a century ago,
twenty centuries,
when I was mortal.
When I was
so mortal, so stupid and so mortal,
that I didn’t even love you,
you have to understand.

We present this work in honor of the 90th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Bandoneon of the slum,
old deflated bellow
I found you like a baby
that a mother abandoned,
at the door of a convent
without plaster on the walls,
under the light of a little lamp
that at night it illuminated you.

Bandoneon,
because you see that I am sad
and I can no longer sing,
you know
that I carry in the soul
branded a pain.

I took you to my room,
I cuddled you against my cold chest,
I was also left abandoned
in my digs.
You have wanted to console me
with your rasping voice
and your painful note
increased my illusion.

Translation by Alberto Paz