The Longing, Remembering the Sway of the Primal Guide, Translation of Carlos Bousono's Poem

Carlos Bousono’s poem : Recordando a pastora imperio for Damaso Alonso (Poem published in the collection : Metaphora del desafuero, 1988, and dedicated to Damaso Alonso, who exerted on Carlos Bousono an avowed influence and patronage, concludes my own present tribute to the Maître. I confess I had not read Bousono’s poems – I may have glanced at a couple of poems when I first bought the Espasa-Calpe anthology some years ago – before I began translating them on October 16, 2013.) I have always thought that in the state of sudden immobility of the immemorial dancer of flamenco the entire dance is concentrated of a sudden in this posture of an instant, under the weight of centuries, all of its foregoing agitation, in such a way as in its absolute fixation is to be found its passing and its minute ad mysterious simulation : the flight of sea gulls over the sea, their avid and sudden swoop onto the prey, and she herself, the flamenco dancer herself, becomes in that instant, like the form most refined and pure of such an incomprehensible paradox : velocity and paralisation, becoming more dense in the procès between Aquiles and parsimony, or the tortoise and despair… No, there is no différence, because to differentiate hère is to make a descent, while here there is but an ascent. And has the flamenco dancer understood suddenly that to make a move is an intolerable imperfection for whoever aspires to the most arduous achievement, to the supreme compromise with the fire in the beyond and the surprise, sacred and full of rejoicing between the fresh flames, a compromise, then, with the truth of the highest form of living, and so the dancer of flamenco remained for this reason without moving in a difficult equilibrium to see if that position, without touching it, in not moving any of the pièces, without turning a page, without causing the hinges to friction, could by chance last, keep enduring there, on the razor’s edge, maintain itself on the head of a pin’s unlikely verticality, balance itself on tip-toes, without breathing, each instant succeeding the other, on the verge of the abysm itself, earth and boulders coming loose, and one after another in succession, and in succession… © T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013