The Poet's Task, Translation of Carlos Bousono's Poem: La Labor Del Poeta

The Poet’s Task, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : La Labor del Poeta To Vicente Aleixandre (It might be worth bearing in mind, while reading this poem, that Vicente Aleixandre was severely handicapped by illness from an early age. T. Wignesan) You, the poet of the solitary heart, You divined from love why you’re a man. You gathered the truth of the plain and your ancient eyes perceived in the depths of the horizon : silence unknowable. You could never tell yourself what miracle burned in your eyes of this blind planet, what side of light was there in your life when tremblingly you watched the fall of night in the empty extension. Because I know very well what you conceal from us. In your corner of the shade, there is a filament of light, there’s a hot point of the interior flower fold and you watch it openly while the night sinks farther and deeper. Everything sleeps, everything holds its silence in the night. Palpitates yet the diminished light in the darkened corner, your celestial innocence, your most pure sense of reality. The stars have all disappeared, everything grows dark over the earth. There’s no consolation that could make us feel at ease in our hearts. All of a sudden, you stand up, your coarse hands upraised to the heavens. It has taken you all your life accumulating your efforts to do this. They were very heavy, your hands, as if they were made of stone or very heavy metal. You have raised your fists in pain during the night. Slowly, they opened up with the force of centuries, of roots which push upwards. As if from under the earth, you unfurled your hands, in within the denseness of the material in darkness. And there, out there, beyond the funereal space, between the thickness of the shadow, you were able, at last, to open your bleeding fists and exhale in the name of all human beings, your brothers, that you loved the light that you saw, the slight light which accompanied you all your life. Shining cold for everybody in the light, for everything celestial or diminished : coldly shining ! I cannot say if it looks like some fresh spurt of water, I know for sure it poured forth freshness, I do not know if it was like a river or a drop of a transparent river. That’s some water which has flowed very slowly, which has slided slowly for your life, which has emanated from a trembling life, finding its source from old roots, from routed buried caverns. From a love rooted in buried rocks. A love for the world, for a world of anxious maturity, of short hopes, of blind effects of exterminations ; a poor world of polished suffering, of sorrowful horror, of prolonged sunsets… © T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013