God, Gift, & Endless Cipher Translated by Zachary Rockwell Ludington

DIOS

Cuando me muera, no quiero vestirme

ni con la estrella, la cruz, o la luna,

ni con el cisne y el collar de pétalos de loto,

ni con el negro, ni con el blanco, ni con su hélice.

Cuando esté ante dios,

si es que hay alguno que espera,

quiero que me vea así,

desnudo,

tiritando.

GOD

When I die, I don’t want to clothe myself

in star, or cross, or moon,

or in swan with a necklace of lotus petals,

or in black, or white, or their spiral.

When I go before god,

if indeed there is one waiting,

I want to be seen like this,

naked,

shivering. 

DON

Casi todo es gracias a una mano que no es tuya,

a otro brazo que no sabe para quién se esfuerza

cuando desmiga tu sombra y te abre la cama.

Esa mano cocina tu pan cuando olvidas que el hambre no cesa

para que puedas comer sin sudar mientras sudas regando la fruta del otro

que te cuida y no sabe quién eres y no necesita ni quiere entenderlo.

Hay patrullas ahora mismo que te guardan con desvelo el desayuno

para que tú te desvistas y ames y duermas a espaldas del músculo ajeno.

Los mezquinos llaman suerte a esa energía, y deidad los perezosos.

No comprenden que es amor y que sucede así

cuando encuentras a un extraño que te entrega hasta los huesos

sin saber cómo te llamas, ni quién eres, ni si existes.

GIFT

Almost everything is thanks to a hand that’s not your own,

an arm that doesn’t know who it makes the effort for

when it crumbles your shadow and opens up your bed to you.

That hand bakes your bread when you forget that hunger never relents

to let you eat sweat-free, while you sweat and water the fruit of another,

who takes care of you and doesn’t know who you are and doesn’t need or want to understand.

At this instant, sleepless patrols watch fast over your breakfast

so you can undress yourself and love and sleep with your back to another’s muscle.

Stingy souls call this energy luck, and the lazy call it deity.

They don’t understand that in fact it’s love, that so it goes

when you meet someone who turns their marrow out to you

without knowing your name, or who you are, or if you even exist.

CIFRA SIN FIN

Hay un número detrás de las estrellas.

Hay un número detrás de la mirada

que hospeda al número descrito en las estrellas.

Hay un número detrás del cubo en que se vierte

el álgebra y su zumo soso y nutritivo.

Los números se explican fácilmente si se sueñan

y si se escriben para siempre en la necesidad o en el sopor.

Pero más allá, detrás del número que está detrás del número,

se esconde una ecuación que no comprendo ni en la norma de mi sangre más reciente

cuando vuelvo de nacer en el incendio inesperado de otra cifra que se queda siempre joven.

ENDLESS CIPHER

There is a number behind the stars.

There is a number behind the eyes.

It takes in the number written in the stars.

There is a number behind the pail into which

algebra and its bland and wholesome juice are poured.

Numbers can be easily explained if they come in dreams

and if they are written down forever in necessity or drowsiness.

But beyond that, behind the number behind the number,

there is a hidden equation that I cannot understand, even in the rule of my most recent blood

when I return from being born in the sudden blaze of another sign that always will be young.

Pedro Larrea (Spain, 1981) is the author of three books of poems: The Free Shore (Nueva York Poetry Press, 2019); La tribu y la llama (Amargord, 2015); and The Wizard’s Manuscript (Valparaíso USA, 2017). His poetry has appeared, among many others, in the prestigious Spanish magazine Revista de Occidente. He has read as a guest poet in places such as the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the University of New York, Emory University, the University of Kentucky, and elsewhere. He has been a featured author in international poetry festivals and events in the USA, Spain, Italy, Colombia, Honduras, and Costa Rica. As an essayist, he is the author of the study Federico García Lorca in Buenos Aires (Renacimiento, 2015). As a translator, he has published the Spanish edition of Kevin Young’s Book of Hours (Libro de horas, Valparaíso, 2018); Percy Bysshe Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry along with Thomas Love Peacock’s The Four Ages of Poetry (Una defensa de la poesía, Poéticas, 2019); and Rita Dove’s Sonata Mulattica (Valparaíso, 2020). Currently, he teaches at the University of Lynchburg, in Virginia.

Zachary Rockwell Ludington is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Maine, where his research focuses on avant-garde poetry in Spain. His translation of Agustín Fernández Mallo’s Pixel Flesh, which won a grant from the PEN/Heim Translation Fund, is due out in 2020 with Cardboard House Press.