In the Eye of the Hurricane, Translation of Carlos Bousono's Poem: En El Ojo Del Huracan

In the eye of the hurricane, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : En el ojo del hurracan (Ninth in the collection : Metafora del Desafuero, published – according to the editor, Alejandro Duque Amusco – not in 1988, but in 1989, was awarded the « Premio Nacional de Poésia » for 1989, on May 28, 1990. Bousono, as in these later free verse compositions, shows how well he manages the long-breathed line, a clear contrast to the compact and elliptical earlier verse, say, of the collection : Subida al amor. T. Wignesan) The creatures of plenitude situated themselves holding their silence, the thrones of inexplicability, exactly, therefore, in the very centre of the eye of the hurricane : that doors be blown asunder, that windows be blown away, that agonizing bodies in makeshift beds be smothered into oblivion, half-dead widows, postmen who half-way in the act of delivering the love letter which would definitely render us joyful, the seat where the poor old grandmother was in the act of sitting while sewing the newly-born baby’s pony-tailed bonnet which turned around half- way in the gusts, the hurricane which uplifted love and all that was left of love : letters, papers, leaves of music, lovers in coitus at the orgiastic acmé and the light, when it began to dawn, when the saxophone cleared its throat and commenced the beat of the dance, when everything on the stage in its place awaited the raising of the curtain, when the wedding was at the point of being consecrated, and the priest was ready to offer his benediction : « el ite misa est », when within the following few moments the inexorable ceremonial of the written formalities was about to be concluded then, as I said, and only then, the hurricane unleashed its violence with rage, the incomprehensible hurricane, and there stood still only the immoveable lucid eye, separate, eminent, complete in its entire being, that by force of its profundity had ascended to the exact point where it could redeem its guilt, the eye of reconciliation, the eye of wisdom and suave serenity, where the intact and silenced world sang adorable and yet so beautiful without us, necessary pretexts, notwithstanding, of its musical nature. © T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013