OLIVERIO GIRONDO, I, at least, am incapable of understanding the seduction of a pedestrian woman

I don't give a darn if women's breasts are like magnolias or like dried figs; a complexion like a peach or like sandpaper. Importance equal to zero I give to whether they awake with a breath like an aphrodisiac or a breath like insecticide. I am perfectly capable of bearing a nose that would take first prize at a carrot show; but one thing is for sure! And this is irreducible. Under no pretext whatsoever will I forgive them for not knowing how to fly. Any one of them who doesn't know how to fly is wasting her time trying to seduce me!


How delightful to have a woman so light…even if she makes us, from time to time, see stars! How voluptuous to pass the days among the clouds…to pass the night on a single flight!

After knowing an ethereal woman, can an earthly woman render us any sort of attraction? Isn't it true that there is no substantial difference between living with a cow or with a woman who has her buttocks seventy-eight centimeters off the ground?

I, at least, am incapable of understanding the seduction of a pedestrian woman, and no matter how much effort I put into conceiving of it, it is not possible for me to even imagine that love can be made any other way but flying.

Oliverio Girondo
(translated by Dan Newland)

Pain

If to recover the recovered thing
I had to lose first the lost one,
if to obtain the obtained thing
I had to stand the things that I stood to.
If to be now enamored
it is necessary to be wounded,
I accept to suffer how I am suffering,
I do accept to cry how I am crying .
Because after all I have understood
that what the tree has of flowery
lives from it has buried.

ELVIS PRESLEY, Unchained melody

Pablo Neruda, Puedo escribir los versos más tristes, translated into English

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, The night is shattered

and the blue stars shiver in the distance.

The night wind revolves around the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved him, and sometimes he loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held him in my arms.

I kissed him many times under the endless sky.

He loved me, sometimes I loved him too.

How could one not have loved his big sad eyes.

What does it matter that my love could not keep him.

The night is shattered and he is not with me.

My sight searches for him as though to go with him,

My heart looks for him, and he is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. So far.

The same night whitening the same trees

I no longer love him, that's certain, but how much I loved him.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch his hearing.

Another's. He is another's.

His voice. His bright body. His infinite eyes.

I no longer love him, that's certain, but maybe I love him.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held him in my arms

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost him.

Though this be the last pain that he makes me suffer

And these the last verses I write for him.

Angel González, Muerte en el olvido, translated into English

Death in the forgetfulness

I know that I exist because you imagine me.

I am tall because you believe I am tall,

and I am clean because you watch me with your good eyes,

with your clean glance.

Your thought makes me intelligent,

and in your simple tenderness,

I am also simple and kind.

But if you forget me

I will be dead and nobody will know it.

They will see that my flesh lives

but that will be another man - dark, clumsy, bad-

the one that inhabits it.

_____

Muerte en el olvido

Yo sé que existo porque tú me imaginas.

Soy alto porque tú me crees alto,

y limpio porque tú me miras con buenos ojos,

con mirada limpia.

Tu pensamiento me hace inteligente,

y en tu sencilla ternura,

yo soy también sencillo y bondadoso.

Pero si tú me olvidas

quedaré muerto sin que nadie lo sepa.

Verán viva mi carne,

pero será otro hombre -oscuro, torpe, malo-

el que la habita...

Ángel González

Conrado Nalé Roxlo, translated into English

Carpenter, make a small coffin

using odorous wood,

a dream for us has died,

something that was between the bird and the rose.

It was its outer life so vague

that it was only seen when it was living

in the tremulous profile of a smile

or in the tone of the voice that named it.

But it´s not your concern the name , carpenter,

it was a love dream, your hand put together

soon the odorous tables, I want

bury deep the dream , flower and bird.

Accompassing the hammer it sounds a song!

' Don´t go to cemetery,

because the love dreams

don´t die, become in weeping

their form of flower and bird´

______

When I was 12 years old or so, coming back home from school, I got into my house, and the radio was on, I left my bagpack in my chair, and in that moment the man in the news said:

´Conrado Nale Roxlo has died.´

I began to cry so bad. My mother asked me what happened, I said that a classmate had a huge problem or so.

This is the little poem, that I remember from my memory (is that the phrase or how is in English?)

I am sure that this translation needs tons of corrections. I would be glad if you post them, to make the neccesary changes.

__________

Original, Spanish

Carpintero, haz un féretro pequeño

de madera olorosa,

se nos ha muerto un sueño,

algo que era entre el pájaro y la rosa.

Fue su vida exterior tan imprecisa

que sólo se lo vio cuando asomaba

al trémulo perfil de una sonrisa

o al tono de la voz que lo nombraba...

Mas que te importa el nombre, carpintero,

era un sueño de amor, tu mano clave

pronto las tablas olorosas, quiero

enterrar hondo el sueño flore y ave.

Al compás del martillo

suena un canto:

´No vayas al camposanto

porque los sueños de amor

no mueren, se muda en llanto

su forma de ave y de flor ´.

_____________

NACHA GUEVARA - TE QUIERO (I love you)