Momentary Return
What was it, my God, what was it?
Oh, false heart, undecided mind—
Was it like the passing breeze?
Was it like the flight of spring?
So light, so fickle, so feathery,
what summer villain . . . Yes! Imprecise
like a smile lost in laughter . . .
floats in the air, like a flag!
Flag, smile, winged tuft,
spring in June, pure wind! . . .
How crazy was your carnival, how sad!
All your tricks change into nothing
—blind memory, bee of bitterness!—
I don’t know what you were, I just know you were.
The Ship Enters, Opaque and Dark
The ship enters, opaque and dark,
in the transparent blackness
of an immense harbor.
Peace and cold.
—Those who wait
are still asleep with their dreams,
still warm, yet faraway, and still within them
from here, perhaps . . .
Oh, how real our candle is, beside the dream
of doubts about the others. How secure it is, compared
to the restless sleep of those next door.
Peace. Silence.
Silence that, when breaking with the dawn,
will speak differently.
Dawn Outside the City
Everything has a white face
—lime, nightmare, adobe, anemia, cold—
against the east. Oh, close to life;
oh, hardness of life! Resemblance
of an animal in the body—root, scum—
(with the soul still misplaced),
and mineral and vegetable!
Stark sun against man,
against the sow, the cabbage, and the wall!
—False happiness, because you are so alone
in the hour,—it is said—, not in the soul!—
All the sky taken
by smoky monotones, wet
with a horizon of dung-heaps.
Sour leftovers, here and there,
of the night. Slices
of the green moon, half-eaten
crystals of false stars,
badly torn paper, with its plaster still fresh,
sky blue. The birds
not yet awake, in the raw moon,
streetlights nearly extinguished.
A pack of beings and things!—
True sadness, because you are so alone
in the soul,—it is said,—not in time at all!—
Three Poems
Juan Ramón Jiménez
translated from the Spanish by Wally Swist
Click here for Wally Swist’s translations of Hermann Hesse’s Two Poems from the Spring 2022 issue.
Translating Juan Ramon Jimenez’s poem “Fruita de mi Flor”/“Fruit of my Flower” began some years ago when I read the poem aloud to my partner, Tevis, one afternoon after lunch, sitting opposite each other in the living room, each of us sitting in one of her armchairs upholstered in gold-colored cloth, which is truly somewhat felicitous for reading a poem by Jimenez. It is one of the most spiritually accomplished of any poem I’ve read, and is among Jimenez’s best poems. However, Jimenez has written several astonishing poems regarding “higher consciousness,” so what is the difference?
There is a difference between spirituality and higher consciousness—Jimenez particularly writes memorably of both. What makes the most difference, in my mind, is that Jimenez lends “higher consciousness” to his poems, such as “Fruita,” which then makes them more integral and not just only poems regarding spirituality, especially since spirituality sometimes can certainly lack any sense of “higher consciousness.” Jimenez knew this and his practice and craft was exacting, passionate, and refined.
I had not thought I would translate my favorite poems by my favorite Spanish poets. I came of age in an era, as a bookseller, when translation blossomed into a golden age. As a social bookseller, I placed books in readers’ hands; now as a translator my calling is to redirect readers’ attention to poems that are immemorial and worth seeing and hearing in new translations aimed at being in harmony with the original voice of an author such as Jimenez.
Robert Bly was an inspired translator and someone whom I found early direction from by reading his translations of Jimenez. This then led to my rereading some of the work other translators had done, including and especially Bly who, despite introducing so many worthy poets to so many readers, in my observation also takes such liberal interpretations of his own, which I believe do disservice to the poets he translates, especially Jimenez, whose purity of form, content, integrity of image, and precision in what is elemental and sublime require a non-egoic interpretation.
My translating became not only a practice but an ardor, and I pursued it with zeal. What has happened to me, further and more deeply, is that I have come to appreciate the nuances in the texts I have translated. Jimenez’s sense of order in the disorder of the world, is expressed by his predilection for perfection of image, sound, and word, as seen in such poems as “Momentary Return,” “The Ship Enters, Opaque and Dark,” and “Dawn Outside the City.”
Another example is Federico García Lorca’s deep roots in the “guitar” and in Duende, the mysterious dark creative force which predicates some, if not much, of Spanish poetry and song, and his nearly inimitable penchant for fairy tale. All of that is heard in his rhythms and in his sense of song, rooted in the deep image. But we must remember that Lorca was influenced by Jimenez, the master, who was Lorca’s elder.
May the translations I’ve made be as rewarding to any reader as they have been for me in making them. May they imbue you with the appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.
There is a difference between spirituality and higher consciousness—Jimenez particularly writes memorably of both. What makes the most difference, in my mind, is that Jimenez lends “higher consciousness” to his poems, such as “Fruita,” which then makes them more integral and not just only poems regarding spirituality, especially since spirituality sometimes can certainly lack any sense of “higher consciousness.” Jimenez knew this and his practice and craft was exacting, passionate, and refined.
I had not thought I would translate my favorite poems by my favorite Spanish poets. I came of age in an era, as a bookseller, when translation blossomed into a golden age. As a social bookseller, I placed books in readers’ hands; now as a translator my calling is to redirect readers’ attention to poems that are immemorial and worth seeing and hearing in new translations aimed at being in harmony with the original voice of an author such as Jimenez.
Robert Bly was an inspired translator and someone whom I found early direction from by reading his translations of Jimenez. This then led to my rereading some of the work other translators had done, including and especially Bly who, despite introducing so many worthy poets to so many readers, in my observation also takes such liberal interpretations of his own, which I believe do disservice to the poets he translates, especially Jimenez, whose purity of form, content, integrity of image, and precision in what is elemental and sublime require a non-egoic interpretation.
My translating became not only a practice but an ardor, and I pursued it with zeal. What has happened to me, further and more deeply, is that I have come to appreciate the nuances in the texts I have translated. Jimenez’s sense of order in the disorder of the world, is expressed by his predilection for perfection of image, sound, and word, as seen in such poems as “Momentary Return,” “The Ship Enters, Opaque and Dark,” and “Dawn Outside the City.”
Another example is Federico García Lorca’s deep roots in the “guitar” and in Duende, the mysterious dark creative force which predicates some, if not much, of Spanish poetry and song, and his nearly inimitable penchant for fairy tale. All of that is heard in his rhythms and in his sense of song, rooted in the deep image. But we must remember that Lorca was influenced by Jimenez, the master, who was Lorca’s elder.
May the translations I’ve made be as rewarding to any reader as they have been for me in making them. May they imbue you with the appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.
Juan Ramón Jiménez (23 December 1881–29 May 1958), a Spanish poet, was renowned for his lyrical poetry. Although primarily an advocate of the concept of “pure poetry,” Jiménez won popularity worldwide with his prose work Platero y yo (“Platero and I”; Platero Is a Donkey, 1917). His quotation, “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way,” serves as epigraph to Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953). In 1956, Jimenez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Wally Swist (b. 1953) has published several books, including Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2011 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Awards, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds and Nature, winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Poetry Book Contest. His translations of Juan Ramon Jimenez have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Hunger Mountain, and Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts.
