The Ofi Press Magazine
International Poetry and Literature from Mexico City
Poems by Pedro Serrano (Mexico) Published in issue 33 of The Ofi Press. | DE INMOVILIDAD Y ESTAMPIDA De inmovilidad y estampida esta playa que es el verano, un paréntesis de quietud y un hueco en el que encaja como un rayo la horqueta de un tronco detrás de la maleza, sorprendido. Detrás de la maleza sorprendido en un mudo aspaviento mágico, un pujido de luz enmarca el semillerío de pájaros, piruetas y espiguetas sonoras pespunteando cables invisibles. Pespunteando cables, invisibles hilos cruzan con su lápiz el cielo, embadurnando y borrando la plancha gris, mascullando mendrugos y ruido que en un instante de estática enmarcan el amanecer. Enmarcan al amanecer, y a este árbol quieto en su hueco, y a mis hijos en su respiración, y a la curruca en su griterío, y al ferrocarril en un solo haz de inmovilidad y estampida. |
Poem by Pedro Serrano (English Translation by Anna Crowe)
Three Lunatic Songs
I
It is cold in the vast and unprotected slaughter-house of the heavens,
a suffering that is remote and without defences,
the enormous weight of clouds, of squalls and gales,
torn into tatters a landscape laid waste,
torn into tatters across the country.
Over the unprotected fields,
the dance is all of kelp and seaweed and of excluded voices,
of drownings and murmurings of drowning.
Out in the marsh that’s black and still and stagnant, where nothing is reflected,
deserted and benumbed like a pallid cloth that no one may see,
that no one will wander over footstep by footstep,
in a slithering slide across that black marble,
without any voice, or any condolence,
the moon passes by,
disquiet.
Like an incandescence the moon is staring,
like an enchantment the moon holds sway,
like an unwonted Cinderella the moon runs away.
The wind is patrolling, fate is patrolling.
The night fixes its bluish, astonished eyes at so great a span of sky.
Away, far off, the moon goes wandering, in rut, and adrift.
At her mercy the waters and life.
2
As for the moonstruck,
they must be always locked up on these days,
let padlocks be heavy and not a single net curtain for the moon’s illusive light,
for the moonstruck,
whose heart devours their spirit on these nights,
though there may be clouds,
though the sky may lower, overcast, muffled up in itself, the moonstruck
must have their eyes gouged and tongue torn out so that they do not drown, confounded,
so that they do not
wander off
like a milky way that might be light and footprint,
as though their saliva might flee from them,
as though they were within her and in that terrifying light,
as for the moonstruck, oh,
they should be led by the hand
so that they do not get lost or be blinded,
alas, the poor moonstruck.
3
The moon goes so much herself
with her very own self
that she does not remember.
The moon goes rounded,
it would be a piece of luck
for her not to founder.
The moon has broken free,
the moon is dancing
by herself in the meadow.