Best Carlos Poems
What shames death, more than a man who refuses to die once born?
So much so that when death claims, the aim is unknown,
When the frame lies down and the words simmer, who, the winner?
With more life than Death can take; Never blink-
Into earth goes a Man we will unearth life on end!
Categories:
carlos, life, death, death, life,
Form:
Epitaph
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
Categories:
carlos, natural disasters, nature,
Form:
Free verse
Carlos the chameleon likes to wave at passersby,
But none of them wave back at him which makes poor Carlos cry.
He stands there by his house and waves as loudly as he can,
They all ignore him, that’s not fair, he doesn’t understand.
It’s not that they don’t like him, yes he’s loved by one and all,
But none of them can see him ‘cos he blends in with the wall.
Categories:
carlos, 1st grade, 2nd grade,
Form:
Rhyme
Watch this Hispanic street punk
Furiously drive home his prayer
Frowning and sweating Latin funk
While the blond hippie shakes down her hair...
Santana at Woodstock, 1969 on U-Tube
Categories:
carlos, music,
Form:
Quatrain
Fear of God, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem, Miedo de Dios
(The second and fourth lines of these quatrains all end in the same rhyme, a feat it’ll be hard to maintain without appearing to be inflexible with the sound rather than the sense of the poem. This poem is from Carlos Bousono’s first collection : Subida al amor, 1945, which he dedicated to Vicente Aleixandre, marking the commencement of his steadfast admiration and association with the Nobel laureate. T. Wignesan)
And nevertheless, O ! God ! when imbued with feelings of love
I placed my hand in within your bosom,
I felt the love which subdued me
as with one wave from your kingdom.
But I was afraid of the darkness that could
accumulate in the depths of your mystery,
so deep down where even stars could not reach.
Only the penumbra. Fear gripped me.
Ah ! My God ! With what height of pity you espied me,
yet with so much love you my blindness bless
for having feared the darkness where slumps
the light of all the universe.
Because you are the ultimate hold of knowable protection.
Besides, those who love you will with looks inward train
and see an azure horizon
where a perpetual sunrise will reign.
But here I am on the surface of the earth,
here, across the floor, stretched,
because I was afraid of the horrible night,
perchance locked up in your breast.
And a confused ignorance holds me up :
crossed and brutal, impure and dried.
Closed yet interminably increasing
as with the hardened dead.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
carlos, fear, god, universe,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
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
Categories:
carlos, devotion, , memorial,
Form:
Free verse
Ode to Spain, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : Oda a Espana
(before the Civil War)
(Alejandro Duque Amusco draws attention - in his selection of Carlos Bousono’s poems – to
the fact that José Luis Cano considers Bousono to be the poet who re-introduced the theme of
« patriotism » in the poetry of the post-Civil War (1936-39) era. T. Wignesan)
Oh ! Spain ! the land where
while one fighting bull assailed, another kills.
Drunks flying without direction in the stars
seek to ascend shirt-sleeves at the cuffs.
At the meeting points of unfortunate demise
and of living it up, the merrymaking
goes on until midnight. Accordeons.
More wine. Applause. Uproars. Whistlings. Nausea.
In the midst of this wild revelry, a priest militarily surges up.
Imposes benedictions and awards medals.
He climbs up upon a chair. Harangues the crowd.
A general rising up in the thick of battle.
In the hardened and deserted arenas
on the route of bitter thirst,
multitudes of drunks bracing themselves against the wind,
staggered at the rising of the sun.
One of them was dressed as a bull-fighter.
Another laughed to himself. All were dancing.
…………………………………………………………
In the treeless plain swept by wind : persistent hunger,
Spain stammered and choked.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
carlos, patriotic,
Form:
Ode
When Death my Way Comes, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s sonnet : Cuando yo vaya a morir
( I prefer the reversal in my rendering of the title for it highlights the inevitability of the moment. I have also not vainly tried to stick to the end-rhyme scheme : abba/abba/aca/cac/ since in Spanish - likewise in Malay – the terminations of substantives and conjugations of verbs proliferate in « a », that is, vowels. The English language doesn’t quite offer the poet such facility in rhyming. T. Wignesan)
This skin, this flower, this sapphire
these eyes, what’ll they end up as afterwards.
I would have loved you to be a moon which rides
in the calm of an eternally-swishing whirl.
I would have wished to eternalise you when I espied
slight furrows your sweet face drown :
To breathe life into you, that in your entirety you’ll live on
Even when you hear Death calling in my sigh.
I would therefore that you keep close,
so that I might touch you for a fleeting moment :
and know that you are safe, erect, whole.
As with the oak tree to bend the wind wouldn’t dare.
As with the spring – the pennant.
As with the evening in its frivolous wear.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
carlos, death,
Form:
Sonnet
A Childhood Memory, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : Recuerdo de infancia
(Note : Poem inspired by the figure of Bousono’s grand-aunt with whom he had had to live since childhood, after the death of his mother. Cf. Carlos Bousono. Poesia Antologia : 1945-1993. Madrid : Espasa Calpe, 1993. T. Wignesan)
There was a child. A child who in your hands
wanted to experience the music of sunrise,
feel the soft lawn, the suave grass.*
Out there, in the heights, lights stuck up high.
Was I about to sound the rock
of its mysterious and cautious blackness ?
The world hushed as did also the sky.
The sky hushed like a child would.
Oh ! My childhood dream of a river lined with fronds,
My cristal flight : made all the more necessary ;
my constant tolerance faced with your mood changes
before the grimness of your statuesque stance !
Silent, stilled woman alone during the day,
woman without light, the woman of long shadows,
dried-up wall unable to feel pain : sheer matter.
A hard, embittered woman !
Further, as I watched you at other times walking about :
Your enormous dress train in the sombre mansion
while I continued to strike at my tenuous light.
My girlish light, my suave and livid lights.
Your quietude waxed furious, your parched country
when crossing your path
a child, even a child, always, always,
like scum, the nausea…
• cespedes
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
carlos, childhood,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
Ascent into love, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : Subida al amor
(The first poem in Bousono’s first collection of the same name, written before he was 22,
sounds very much like being his declaration of « love » with life or rather his « testament » of
love . A good many of the poems selected by A. D. Amusco in his anthology : Poésia Antologia
1945-1993 have been revised by the poet, himself.
T. Wignesan)
Pay attention to the airs, Solitary Soul !
Sad soul which goes whimpering all alone.
Rise up, mount ! Love awaits you !
The summit looms high. Limit the harness !
Fluttering, trembling and pale,
I see you mounting with your force held back.
The sun returns where, until yesterday, the moon reigned.
The moon arrives where yesterday blew the north wind.
At last, life shines forth with light.
At last, death is dealt a deadly blow by light.
The summits sing, and so do the valleys. Sing !
those who’re always alive to those who never die !
Face to face together with God’s : listen
to the airs vibrating and live your dreams !
Life together with life, light bound up with loving light
and the humane heaven bound with love in heaven.
Lower the light of love, the light of life.
I feel with ease the minuteness of airs.
Let the light of God dissolve in that of the soul !
How clear it all becomes at once. What silence !
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
carlos, god, life, light,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
The Error, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : El Error
for Miguel Delibes
(There are just some words and phrases in this translation that I might yet want to modify or substitute with other alternative phrasing. T. Wignesan)
There must be an error in the calculation,
a hole in the sock, a trick in the game :
behind our backs somebody drinks all the alcohol of the said-one
and gets drunk and is unable to stand up ;
somebody manages to conceal the harvest’s wheat and the cream
of the meanings.
Search. in the bassement or the dolls’ quarters the reason for the
crucifixion,
and then be obliged to hide the powerful event behind the fact of
taking tea in the dining-room, below the vine arbour or in the
shade of the cherry trees.
Doubtless one will find meaning behind each vile act,
the mathematics of suffering where each crack of the whip is a
number.
Here you have the delightfulness of the encompassing of the
system which provides for exclusion as well,
the co-existence of both the truths, the framework of impossibility.
Right here, in front of us, the superb fitting together of horror and
of music stands presented,
that which engenders the enthusiastic cipher, the melody of the act
of birth and of death.
Faintly visible from an angle/a place the beauty of water spilled
over the floor,
the incessant leak from the eaves trough which makes us laugh.
Look ! How all of us dance around the fire,
we put one step after another over the firebrands without
compulsion,
we get close to the flames with joy, we become familiar with the
cinder(s).
Here we are dancing, enjoying ourselves, surrounding ourselves with ceremony and with rites,
with the rhythm which makes us get together in the moment of
the cremation.
Here we are without fear as if someone perhaps, distractedly perhaps,
or enjoying himself perchance,
had undertaken for us to magically produce
pigeons full of surprise from the sombrero or in the pocket of the
juggler,
from the other side of an incipient horizon gone feeble,
from where perchance we would be warned of it,
dissimulating away those emerging golds from the topmost heights,
an ambiguous error in the calculation,
a hole in the sock,
a huge trick in the game.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
carlos, life, world,
Form:
Dramatic Verse
But then, how am I to say it ? Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : Pero como decirtelo
(To those who are familiar with the Bhakti religious outpourings in the Hindu tradition, in
certainly all the vernaculars of the sub-continent, this poem and its symbolism coming from the
Iberian peninsula might be a delectable surprise. T. Wignesan)
But then how am I to say it since you insist on being
so light and quiet
like a flower. How will I tell it to you
when you are the water,
when you are a fountain, spring, a smile,
a(n) ear of wheat, wind,
when you are the air, love.
How can I say it
to you, incipient lightning,
early light, dawn,
that you will have to die one day
like somebody not here any more.
Your eternal form
like light and the sea, scarcely lays claim
to the enduring majesty
of matter. Beautiful
like the permanence of the ocean
against whatever will hold it back ; your flesh is more ephemeral
than that of a flower. But if you’re
comparable to light, (that’s because) you are the Light,
the light that would express itself
(and) which would say : « I love you ! »
that you would sleep in my arms,
that you would be thirsty : eyes, tiredness
and be possessed of an infinite need
to cry, when you see
the roses in the garden
blooming, once all over again.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
carlos, god,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
Truth, Falsehood, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : Verdad, Mentira
Note: I've tried in vain to upload, since November 2, 2013, the following poem: "Words uttered in a subdued voice in order to constitute a dedication, Translation of Carlos Bousono's poem: Palabras dichas en voz baja para formar una dedicatoria", so if Soupers wish to check on it, go to ZCommunications.org; OccupyPoetry.net, PoemHunter.com or PoemsAbout.com. Many thanks. T. Wignesan
(Quotation : « …sino esencia real que al tacto obliga », excerpted from Lope de Vega’s sonnet, « A un secreto muy secreto », 1634 in Bousono’s collection : Invasion de la realidad. Madrid : Espasa-Calpe, 1962. I’m not quite sure who the persona addresses : Lope de Vega, the most prolific playwright and sonneteer the world has known, some one else, the poet himself or the persona unto itself. Not that it matters, really ! T. Wignesan)
With your truth, with your falsehood, left alone,
with your incredible reality experienced,
your invented reason, your consumed
yet inexhaustible faith you raise high in the open ;
with the sadness in which you perhaps roll on
towards a haven you never felt attracted
with those enormous hopes destroyed,
the re-constructed like the sea its waves mend ;
with your dreams of love which never become
so really true like the sea suspired
with your over-charged heart which is born
dies and is re-born, resuscitates and dies, look
at the immensity of reality because there lies open
the source of all your truth and of all your falsehood.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
carlos, philosophy,
Form:
Sonnet
Somber psalm, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : Salmo sombrio
(from Carlos Bousono’s first book of poems, written before he was 22 : Subida al amor (Ascent into love), 1945, and dedicated to the 1977 Nobel laureat, Vicente Aleixandre.)
Do not pass by me , O ! God ! incognito,
do not cross my path like a sky emptied of its stars,
for my body turns in upon itself in flames,
loving you in silence with such persistent anguish.
Do not cross my path while I keep loving an obscure entity,
while I continue to whimper among cactuses, among stones.
So turn Your face away, Your face that I fear
during such a roaring and wild night !
Keep Your distance from me ! Abandon me in the dark !
so that I may wish to be the source and thirst of this earth
in order to be able to love this twisted
trunk of a body sans light, all alone in this blinding wilderness !
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
carlos, god,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
The Question, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : La Cuestion
« …Oh ! God, Oh ! Centre »*
for Vicente Puchol
(* Note by the editor, Alejandro D. Amusco, attesting that the above quotation was not included in Bousono’s Antologia poética, 1976, and on the « mysterious Centre » on which the poem is a cogitation. T. Wignesan)
Yes, we know it : would you like to find the secret precinct,
the invulnerable enclosed sanctum,
to enter through any hole into the incredible spectacle,
to penetrate the labyrinth and find the powerful Centre.
As if a thief could rob the totality of light
to find, as I say, the powerful Centre, the absolute Centre,
the immobile Centre of the tempest which moves by itself,
a Centre where nothing is found to budge,
where everything is absorbed into itself, like love, containing
itself in itself,
not on its periphery, but fully wrapped in its contents,
overflowing like the apparition of a card in the suit of Spanish cards,
like an enormous cup of manifestation which augments,
like a wave which continues to mount higher and higher and beyond
its highest limits,
farther yet than possibility’s horizons ;
and keeps growing afterwards, going on for days, and the spectacle of its extermination – the hideous knowledge and the joy of recognising its loss ;
and which continues growing for an immemorial duration in the
direction of its own centre : terrible,
like a persistent cascade pouring down its interior, a flooding within
the experience of feeling well in one’s being,
an existential waterfall without end which retracts - having stopped
flowing – inwards into its own Centre.
Ai ! The crucial question is therefore to enter the labyrinth,
The big question comes down to making the move.
Be warned that it is only an act of penetration,
a simple act of transfer ; it would suffice to make a gesture with an
idea that brings joy,
perchance it might suffice just to find water in the barn
or a path in the woods, or in the woods
to fall upon an exit
through the hole (where we came in), to proffer with the key to the
enigma
the solution of the charade,
and discover the other side of the abysm, the reversal of the plot,
before the roof deteriorates
under probing fingers…
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
Categories:
carlos, introspection, , memorial,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue