What do you think?
Rate this book


148 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, of water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings?
JLB on poetry (1977)
Yo temo ahora que el espejo encierre
El verdadero rostro de mi alma,
Lastimada de sombras y de culpas,
El que Dios ve y acaso ven los hombres.
Now I fear the mirror may disclose
The true visage of my soul,
Bruised by shadows and guilt,
The face God sees and perhaps men see too.
(from “El Espejo”, “The Mirror”)
Sabía que el presente no es otra cosa
que una partícula fugaz del pasado
que estamos hechos de olvido
He knew the present is nothing but
a fleeting particle of the past
that we are made of oblivion
(from “G. A. Bürger”)
Caja de Música
Música del Japón. Avaramente
De la clepsidra se desprenden gotas
De lenta miel o de invisible oro
Que en el tiempo repiten una trama
Eterna y frágil, misteriosa y clara.
Temo que cada una sea la última.
Son un ayer que vuelve. ¿De qué templo,
De qué leve jardín en la montaña,
De qué vigilias ante un mar que ignoro,
De qué pudor de la melancolía,
De qué perdida y rescatada tarde,
Llegan a mí, su porvenir remoto?
No lo sabré. No importa. En esa música
Yo soy. Yo quiero ser. Yo me desangro.
Music Box
Music of Japan. Parsimoniously
from the water clock the drops unfold
in lazy honey or ethereal gold
that over time reiterates a weave
eternal, fragile, enigmatic, bright.
I fear that every one will be the last.
They are a yesterday that comes from the past. But from what shrine,
from what mountain’s slight garden,
what vigils by an unknown sea,
and from what modest melancholy,
from what lost and rediscovered afternoon
do they arrive at their far future: me?
Who knows? No matter. When I hear it play
I am. I want to be. I bleed away.
Las Causas
Los ponientes y las generaciones.
Los días y ninguno fue el primero.
La frescura del agua en la garganta
de Adán. El ordenado Paraíso.
El ojo descifrando la tiniebla.
El amor de los lobos en el alba.
La palabra. El hexámetro. El espejo.
La Torre de Babel y la soberbia.
…
Cada arabesco del calidoscopio.
Cada remordimiento y cada lágrima.
Se precisaron todas esas cosas
para que nuestras manos se encontraran.
The Causes
The sunsets and the generations
The days and none was first.
The freshness of water in Adam’s
Throat. Orderly paradise.
The eye deciphering the darkness.
The love of wolves at dawn.
The word. The hexameter. The mirror.
The Tower of Babel and pride.
…
Every arabesque in the kaleidoscope.
Each regret and each tear.
All those things were needed
So our hands could meet. *