A New View, Translation of Carlos Bousono's Poem: La Nueva Mirada
A New View, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : La nueva mirada
(My own view of Carlos Bousono stems from a full academic year – from the beginning of September 1970 to the end of May-June 1971 - as a student of his at the Central (Complutense) University of Madrid where he taught the course : « Stylistic commentary of texts », but which included mainly a detailed exposition of his own theory of poetry and humour. It was difficult not to be wholly impressed by his brilliance and originality, even if I didn’t quite agree with some of his principal theoretical premises. It is even more difficult to think of another poet who was an incisive and learned critic, literary historian, and a truly gifted teacher ; in short, the consummate Man of Letters of our Age. T. Wignesan)
Give me your hand – suffering and in pain – my old friend.
Give me your hand just once more and I know at another time you
were my companion,
just as you had been so many times in the lingering darkness.
The sea gulls crossed one another in the sky
making the sea look dark through the closeness of being tormented.
Give me your hand one more time, now I know
what I didn’t know earlier on. I know how to welcome you without
rancour
nor reproach. I’m reconciled to your dismal visit.
Suffering and pain are embossed in my eyes :
where you fashion your more than fine œuvre,
where you exercise your distress, your
goldsmith’s skills
beyond comparison. There
you deposit finally your redemption. You deposit
it as on an altar,
with extreme consideration,
your exquisite workmanship, and you achieve in the middle of the
night, the miracle :
slowly into the skies, the most intricately fine jewel
the golden spectacle
worked over with patience, accumulated reality which accommodates
itself afterwards
to my new view.
And this is so as of now, through your labours in the hidden cave,
in the recondite lair where I suffer the throes of your febrile creation.
And this is so as of now,
I can see
through the accustomed world, a world on fire.
The burning flames take on a colour beyond the habitual gray,
through the obscurity the light looks enraged, the rose
rounds out, the animated crimson
and yet beyond that, through its transcendent appearance,
one sees another mode : transpiercing towards an eternity,
a new country.
A new country, immobile under the light :
through the obscurity of my agitated night.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Copyright © T Wignesan | Year Posted 2013
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