La lambersiana
Detrás de la pileta hay una lambersiana
del color del limón. Es mediodía
y reverbera el aire en el calor
de febrero y la quieta resolana. Los grandes
ya se fueron a misa,
van a rezarle a Dios, que no se ve y es santo,
mientras tanto los primos nos metemos al agua,
nos secamos tirados entre risas al sol.
Después yo entré en la lambersiana. Era otro mundo
ahí dentro, como ver otro lado en las cosas,
lo que las sostenía. Afuera los penachos amarillos
en el aire caliente, y una estructura adentro
de ramas resinosas y la luz, la fresca luz
filtrada, que me dura.
Si usted va y mira una gallina durante una hora o dos, va a encontrar al final que el misterio más que disminuir ha aumentado
Las patas fuertes, amarillas.
Su ritmo al caminar con esa especie de ridícula eficacia,
frenándose de a ratos para escarbar la tierra.
Su estructura compacta en plumas negras, brillantes,
casi azules cuando le pega el sol.
Coronada de rojo, con el pico
de un amarillo igual al de las patas,
rápido el ojo.
Mientras avanza a ras del suelo que rasca y picotea
levanta a cada rato la cabeza y la mueve un poquito:
un atavismo irrenunciable
para avistar al potencial depredador.
Ahora se estira y aletea con fuerza en el lugar.
Quizá para despabilarse,
para activar su circulación o algo así.
La alegría
El mar trepó a la orilla dando tallos y troncos,
la rama que se estira con sus peras sembradas de perales
pero también buscando nuevas frutas
y flores, como el huevo del pez sus golondrinas.
Como, amándose y pudriéndose,
las antiguas musarañas sacaron de sus entrañas
dromedarios, elefantes de trompas extravagantes,
delfines. Como la extraña marea
que nuevas formas tantea
va forjando en el deseo
lentamente a lo largo de siglos
manos, aletas, la cola del vívido pavo real,
la oreja del conejo, el renacuajo
que se hace rana y mañana
va a poner nuevos huevos,
uvas rojas,
el abrojo,
el ojo del león,
de la libélula,
lo que en el árbol ciegamente
tuerce las ramas a la luz;
sus hojas de sed femenina,
la sápida, lívida sabia,
tu sangre con sales de mar.
de Chesterton
Alejandro Crotto
Listen to "If You Go and Look at a Hen . . ." read in the original Spanish by the poet:
These three poems come from Chesterton, Alejandro Crotto’s second book. The poems in this collection share a focus on landscape, internal and external; on the natural world, and the human form within it; on transformations of matter and meaning over time; on faith, a word I use loosely to invoke the diverse expressions of praise laced through these poems; and on the gleaming moments of clarity that flash up from the slow spread of experience and observation. Crotto constantly explores the poetic traditions that have both generated his work and empowered him to break away from them—or to play with them, a special talent of his. Many poems in Chesterton make explicit use of form: there are traditional sonnets; modified sonnets; meters embedded in other meters; and other hybrids, splicings, and permutations (some looser than others) of established verse patterns. In the original Spanish, the poems published here—“The Golden Cypress,” “If You Go and Look at a Hen . . .,” and “Joy”—are all rigorously metered and unerringly intentional in their formal fabric. But they are also graceful and direct. When translating them, my challenge was to try and honor both things: on the one hand, the poems’ formal and metrical armature; on the other, their clear voice and gentle address. Their simplicity, in a way—the simplicity that shines through, despite (and maybe because of) the latticework behind them.
Alejandro Crotto is the author of Abejas (Bajo la luna, 2009) and Chesterton (Bajo la luna, 2013). He has published poems and other texts in the journals Diario de Poesía, Fénix (both in Argentina), Letras Libres (Mexico), Alba Londres (England), Desenredos (Brazil), Exit (Canada), Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and the Beloit Poetry Journal (both in the US), among others; his poems have been widely anthologized in Argentina. In 2015 he published a book of translations from the English entitled Once personas. His latest book of poems, Francisco, will be published in October 2017 by Bajo la luna.
Robin Myers is a Mexico City-based poet and translator. Her translations have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry International Web, Waxwing, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, the Beloit Poetry Journal, and LUMINA, among others. Her poems have appeared in journals like The Offing, Tupelo Quarterly, Big Lucks, the Sonora Review, and New Millennium Writings (as the poetry winner of their forty-first contest). Her poetry collections have been published in Mexico, Spain, and Argentina. She was a resident translator at the Banff Literary Translation Centre in 2014 and a resident writer at the Vermont Studio Center in 2015.
