20
Hay un vacío trabajado:
que desde ese ángulo veas una mariposa
que parece surgida de la nada está bien
ese aleteo corresponde
una monarca
Por un momento hay que poner a raya todo
aquello que acecha lo formado — nubes
aquellas, manos aquellas, bocas aquellas
tragalotodo, tragavacíos
Así, le puse formas, puntos
sentimientos
cosas que destilan un hacer de flor erguida
pistilos
Nadie vino aquí a decirme "mira"
sin embargo
Uno paga puntualmente dentro del capital
el derecho al vacío
el derecho al vacío del capital
el derecho al derecho, izquierda en democracia
A trabajar la tierra del vacío los poetas
creyentes en la tarea del buey
o no creyentes en el verso
libres de vuelta
31
Venimos, decimos dos o tres
cosas bien dichas
entre cientos de cubitos de hielo
hechos agua, sin flotar
Se devuelven las cosas de la Gran Boca al espacio
para que ahí se queden sueltas, liberadas a su pasto
cotidiano — la hereford que va detrás está triste
la veo rezagada del resto, más triste
— homenaje a la hereford de mi día feliz
a su máquina de leche, a su Ford T, de tanto
estómago, caballos de fuerza de la vaca
a su olor materno omnipotente
ondulado, flechado de libélulas
entre cosa y cotidiano
se advierte una complicidad de guerra
defenderán el terreno palmo a palmo
lo que va de la mano a la palmera
darán lo vida una por otra
si es necesario — nunca es necesario
Lo que se teje fortuito, el hilo del instante
que liga lo imprevisto con lo imprevisto
no se consumirá: se establece un desperezarse eterno, elástico
Y se sigue, quedan las cosas, el camino
puesto delante para decir que hay un camino
suspendidas un tiempo para que el que pasa vea
su goteo, su deshielo en realidad, estalactitas
que el instante sustrajo al seguimiento
el instante, chupamirto — estalactitas
33
Círculo cirquero, vueltas
que damos en el aire para caer en lo mismo
Cansa parecerse a un suceder afuera
noria presente sin historia a cuestas
ánsar, cansa el rendido azar
cuando debo decir azar rendido
demasiado arrastre, cola de ruina que surca
Esta certeza de la vuelta que no es
pérdida que se redime en "vuelvo a decirte"
ni el retorno del vencido al que inclinaron
La carpa es un cansancio desde arriba
un toldo que protege a sus tolditos, ala
vuelta del brazo sobre sí
Se despliega un papiro para abajo
ante la revolución, mirada atenta:
micrológicamente el trabajo
de hormiga sobre la sílaba
eso mantiene la dignidad en pie de guerra
la dignidad garza
Macrológicamente el macró
del mundo pastorea el neón, la economía
la va siguiendo, se le cruza, le cuenta el fajo
La maquila ronda la aurora
se diría que hay un plan de amanecer-maquila
de Obvio al desnudo
Eduardo Milán
Eduardo Milán is a difficult poet to categorize. He stands somewhat outside the national poetry scenes both of his native Uruguay and of his long-term residence in Mexico. Milán has been loosely associated, since the seminal anthology Medusario (1997), with the Neobarroco, the continent-wide aesthetic roughly cognate to our bloodless post-avant; yet he is an intensely political poet, sensitive to the reverberations of language and playful with the unexpected.
The challenge for a translator of Eduardo Milán is to mirror him in his acts of echolalia which transition from message to message and render him in an English as spontaneous and rigorous as his Spanish. Eduardo has always graciously insisted that my English versions are better and saner than his Spanish originals: "Lo que suena de locura en español suena de poesía en inglés."
Roberto Apprato writes: "one feels that [Milán's] lines, apparently disconnected, ascend into the space of the page in a single transmission, and therefore make the reader think of everything at once; such is the voice of Milán, first to the text and then the reader, leaving everything in the poem in view; this is what can be done, from a place that is Latin America, in an act both poetic and political, saying, and displaying, what is obvious in its nakedness." No less a personage than Mexican poet Pura López Colomé said to me, "Eduardo Milán is the best poet writing in Spanish today."
The challenge for a translator of Eduardo Milán is to mirror him in his acts of echolalia which transition from message to message and render him in an English as spontaneous and rigorous as his Spanish. Eduardo has always graciously insisted that my English versions are better and saner than his Spanish originals: "Lo que suena de locura en español suena de poesía en inglés."
Roberto Apprato writes: "one feels that [Milán's] lines, apparently disconnected, ascend into the space of the page in a single transmission, and therefore make the reader think of everything at once; such is the voice of Milán, first to the text and then the reader, leaving everything in the poem in view; this is what can be done, from a place that is Latin America, in an act both poetic and political, saying, and displaying, what is obvious in its nakedness." No less a personage than Mexican poet Pura López Colomé said to me, "Eduardo Milán is the best poet writing in Spanish today."
Eduardo Milán was born in Rivera, Uruguay, in 1952, exiled himself for political reasons, and has lived in Mexico since 1979. He has published sixteen volumes of poetry. His Selected Poems is out from Shearsman (2012) and he is featured in Hotel Lautréamont: Contemporary Uruguayan Poetry, edited by Kent Johnson and Roberto Echevarren (2011). This selection is taken from his book Obvio al desnudo (Nakedly Obvious), written in 2005-6 and published by the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (Monterrey, Mexico) in 2009.
John Oliver Simon was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in Translation for his work with the great Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas (1917-2011). His translations form a large part of the Selected Poems of Elsa Cross and of Eduardo Milán (Shearsman). John Oliver Simon is Artistic Director of Poetry Inside Out, a K-12 literary translation program sponsored by the Center for the Art of Translation. One of his poems is set in bronze in the sidewalk of the Addison Street Poetry Walk in Berkeley, California.
