Night Journey Read online

  You must select a single grief, one only. Renounce fear.

  If you hear a round ring of silence, listen: it too is a world.

  117

  Los cielos del otoño

  —Has cambiado, pero llevas la señal.

  —La señal. ¿Qué señal?

  —Antes la llamábamos el estigma de Caín.

  —HERMANN HESSE

  Quién iba a decir que Maggie llegaría así, en medio de esta lluvia solitaria, con el silencio intacto de su frente y esa sed que la volvía tan bella. Se sienta a la luz precaria de la lámpara, conmigo enfrente, en el mismo escritorio donde leíamos Demián, Mi hermana y yo, La condición humana. En su rostro puede verse una victoria: está arrasado. Me mira y tiemblo, como si pudiera hacer arder las líneas invisibles de mi cuerpo, dejarme prisionera de algo que no sé nombrar. Un sol urgente y ciego, un cómplice sombrío, no me azotaría de igual modo. Igual que aquella noche, sin saber con certeza de qué hablo, le vuelvo a preguntar:

  —¿Te parece que podré?

  Ella se ilumina en una ráfaga (como si la colmara un caos), sonríe maliciosa y abre las alas de un silencio donde caben las islas, el asombro, el rumor de los libros por venir, la rebelión y su precio ineludible, las ilusorias fugas de mí misma, el miedo a una felicidad demasiado ordenada, es decir ese enorme enigma relumbrante que es mi vida. Luego se desvanece.

  Y luego, desde lejos, de un país crepitando de frío y de naufragios, marea y resaca, de un espacio abocado de lleno a lo imposible, recogiendo una a una las piedritas 118

  Autumn Skies

  “You have changed, but you bear the sign.”

  “The sign. What sign?”

  “We used to call it the mark of Cain.”

  —HERMANN HESSE

  Who would have expected Maggie to arrive like this, in the midst of this solitary rain, with silence intact on her forehead and that thirst that made her so beautiful. She sits in the precarious lamplight, facing me, in the same study where we read Demian, My Sister and I, The Human Condition. A victory in her face: it has been sacked. She looks at me and I tremble, as if she could inflame the invisible lines of my body, leave me at the mercy of something I cannot define. Not even a blind, urgent sun, somber accomplice, could lash me like this. Now as then, not knowing exactly what I’m saying, I ask:

  “Do you think I can?”

  She is lit by a flash (as if overflowing with chaos), smiles wickedly, and spreads the wings of a silence that contains islands, astonishment, the murmur of books to come, revolt and its inescapable price, illusory flights from myself, fear of domestic bliss; that is, that huge glittering riddle: my life. Then she vanishes.

  And then, from afar, from a country creaking with cold and shipwrecks, tides and reflux, from a space utterly devoted to the impossible, gathering one by 119

  que deja lo real, me llega un llamado, aliento oscuro de aquel tiempo en que el Destino nos miraba como animal esquivo. Ella responde:

  —No me parece. Estoy segura.

  Y yo, me doy cuenta que la amaba.

  120

  one the pebbles left behind by the real, a call reaches me, hazy visitor from that time when Destiny observed us like a furtive animal. She answers:

  “I don’t think. I know.”

  And as for me, I realize that I loved her.

  121

  Teoría del buen morir

  En el clima azulado de una ciudad de piedra, me están enterrando. Veo la escena y digo:

  —Déjenla. ¿No ven que está viva? ¿No ven el

  movimiento de su cara?

  —Es verdad —dice alguien—. Todavía no ha llegado su tiempo de morir. No ha practicado bastante. El duro amor no ha sido escrito en su alma, algunos tabiques entre ella y la vida siguen en pie. Falta que algo se encamine a su centro como una interrogación.

  Que abrace la osadía de la petición y la entrega.

  Que clave un signo sobre la arena de su imagen, a ver lo que la boca hace del silencio. Debe vivir.

  Me dejan entonces vivir. El desconocido habla todavía pero no logro entender. Dice algo sobre la Buena Muerte: un secreto, un error imperioso, amar de cerca, algo así. Después se evapora en un reducto de sombra y yo, entre afligida y contenta, me subo a un tren y abandono la última ciudad del mundo.

  122

  Theory of a Good Death

  In the bluish climate of a stony city, they are burying me. I watch and say:

  Leave her alone. Can’t you see she’s alive? Don’t you see her face twitching?

  “It’s true,” someone says. “It’s not time for her to die yet. She hasn’t practiced enough. Love’s exactions have not been written on her soul; there are still a few partitions between her and life.

  Something must advance to its center like a

  question. Must dare petition and surrender. Must thrust a signpost into her sand image, to see what the mouth makes of silence. She has to live.”

  So they let me live. The stranger is still talking but I can’t understand him. He says something about the Good Death: a secret, an indispensable error, loving face-to-face, something like that. Then he evaporates into a stronghold of shadow and I, half-troubled, half-content, board a train and abandon the last city on earth.

  123

  Casandra

  Behind every exquisite thing that exists, there is something tragic.

  —OSCAR WILDE

  Vivo en una mezquita, lujosa y fría, en el centro de una isla a punto de sucumbir. Sé que los aviones llegarán y destruirán la ciudad y que es preciso partir. Pero nadie me cree. En medio del resplandor lunar, los habitantes de esta isla nada ven, ni siquiera el mar que los rodea.

  Enamorados del vacío, son ya hombres de ceniza, hipnotizados por su propio movimiento inerte. Se demoran en una extraña languidez, nostalgia incurable de máscaras, sedas, cofres y joyas deslumbrantes. Ya no aman sino la superficie cóncava de los reflejos, los lienzos fúnebres, la utilería de la noche. El bombardeo empieza.

  Caen las bombas con la furia de los anatemas y un desbande espantoso a través de ruinas consternadas. Todo se derrumba salvo la mezquita y acaso el otoño incalculable. El paisaje es ahora de una destreza sin límites.

  Sombras errantes atraviesan las calles. Parias en ronda de agonía. Letargia. Montículos de huesos y de cráneos. El sudario de la bruma. Y yo, como una bella Notre Dame des Larmes en la noche alta de mis blancas piezas. Mi sarcófago blanco. Mi cripta incólume en medio de esta vieja pasión insostenible. ¡Qué fatiga! Mis cantos leen el pasado. Casta viajera de la muerte y sus prosas de lamento, no hay exilio para esta patria monótona.

  124

  Cassandra

  Behind every exquisite thing that exists, there is something tragic.

  —OSCAR WILDE

  I am living in a mosque, luxurious and frosty, in the center of an island on the verge of defeat. I know that planes will come and destroy the city and that we must leave. But no one believes me. In the lunar glow, the island’s inhabitants perceive nothing, not even the ocean that surrounds them. Enamored of emptiness, already turned to ashes, men hypnotized by their own inertia.

  They tarry in a strange languor, an incurable nostalgia of masks, silks, coffers, and dazzling jewels. Now they love nothing but the concave surface of reflections, winding sheets, night’s makebelieve. The bombardment begins. Bombs fall furiously as anathemas and a horrifying rout through a consternation of ruins. Everything crumbles except the mosque and perhaps the

  incalculable autumn. Now the landscape is surprisingly dexterous. Shadows stray through the streets. Pariahs circling in agony. Lethargy. Heaps of bones and skulls.

  The shroud of haze. And I, like a beautiful Notre Dame des Larmes in the tall night of my white rooms. My white sarcophagus. My fortified crypt in the midst of this old untenable passion. Such weariness! My songs read the past. Chaste voyager of death and its prosy lament, there is no exile from this repetitious country.

  125

  Carta a mí misma

  Querida: Escri
bo como se mira una ciudad monumental.

  A la espera de algo rojo y denso como una telaraña.

  También la verdad es un puente desde la luz a lo oscuro, desde lo lleno al vacío, derrotas cada vez más complejas, como heridas sobre heridas, como si la vida fuera alcanzando la muerte. Tengo miedo. ¿Pero qué sabe de eso tu tristeza? ¿Qué sabe tu cuerpo de los héroes que huyen? ¿De la impostura del coraje? Escribir es un riesgo. Se parte, sin entender por qué. O más bien, en su vagar inmóvil, de cautiverio en cautiverio, extraviado en el rostro oscilante de la noche, el viajero busca signos, como quien busca su figura en la figura de la ausencia, sin reconocer su propio hogar, esa oscura y enorme y quieta cueva erigida al fondo de sí mismo, que nunca se ha movido. Ah, cuánto orgullo todavía en lo que escribo. Cuánta huída. Cuánto apuro, sin buscar lo inmutable, sin saber que sólo aprende aquello que se extingue. Yo, la mendiga de toda travesía. La pasajera constante de la jaula del tiempo. La cazadora de mi alma más vieja, del sentimiento más frágil, el más fértil.

  Yo que destejo la agotada memoria, acuciada por el don de la pregunta incesante, la incesante nostalgia de la trama invisible. ¿Qué se puede esperar de la ciudad cursiva? La enseñan en el arrabal los astrólogos. La ejercen los que buscan la tumba de tu sombra donde amar es más fácil. Los que añoran como yo tu silencio, esos caballos blancos que galopan en tus sueños de noche, como si nos pertenecieran. . .

  126

  Letter to Myself

  Darling: I write like looking at a monumental city.

  Waiting for something red and dense as a spiderweb.

  Truth too is a bridge from light to darkness, fullness to emptiness, more and more complex defeats, like wounds upon wounds, as if life were catching up with death. I am afraid. But what does your sadness know of this? What does your body know of fleeing heroes? Of the imposture of courage? To write is a risk. One sets out, not knowing why. Or rather, in her motionless nomadry, from cell to cell, lost in the oscillating face of night, the traveler pursues signs as if pursuing her own semblance in the semblance of absence, without recognizing her home, that dark and immense and quiet cave standing in the depths of the self, which has never moved. Ah, still so much pride in what I write. So much haste, overlooking the changeless, ignoring the need to die into learning. I, the beggar on every journey. Constant passenger in the cage of time.

  Hunter of my oldest soul, my frailest, most fertile sentiment. I who unravel my frayed memory, goaded by a talent for incessant questioning, an incessant nostalgia for the invisible design. What to expect from the cursive city? Astrologers teach it on the outskirts. It is practiced by those who hunt for the grave of your shadow, where loving is easier. Those who yearn for your silence as I do, for those white horses galloping in your night dreams, as if they belonged to us . . .

  127

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  THE LOCKERT LIBRARY OF POETRY IN TRANSLATION

  George Seferis: Collected Poems (1924–1995), translated, edited, and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

  Collected Poems of Lucio Piccolo, translated and edited by Brian Swann and Ruth Feldman

  C. P. Cavafy: Selected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard and edited by George Savidis Benny Andersen: Collected Poems, translated by Alexander Taylor Selected Poetry of Andrea Zanzotto, edited and translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann

  Poems of René Char, translated and annotated by Mary Ann Caws and Jonathan Griffin

  Selected Poems of Tudor Arghezi, translated by Michael Impey and Brian Swann

  “The Survivor” and Other Poems by Tadeusz Różewicz, translated and introduced by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

  “Harsh World” and Other Poems by Angel González, translated by Donald D. Walsh

  Ritsos in Parentheses, translations and introduction by Edmund Keeley Salamander: Selected Poems of Robert Marteau, translated by Anne Winters Angelos Sikelianos: Selected Poems, translated and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

  Dante’s “Rime,” translated by Patrick S. Diehl Selected Later Poems of Marie Luise Kaschnitz, translated by Lisel Mueller Osip Mandelstam’s “Stone,” translated and introduced by Robert Tracy The Dawn Is Always New: Selected Poetry of Rocco Scotellaro, translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann

  Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems by Wisl/awa Szymborska, translated and introduced by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire The Man I Pretend to Be: “The Colloquies” and Selected Poems of Guido Gozzano, translated and edited by Michael Palma, with an introductory essay by Eugenio Montale

  D’Après Tout: Poems by Jean Follain, translated by Heather McHugh Songs of Something Else: Selected Poems of Gunnar Ekelöf, translated by Leonard Nathan and James Larson

  The Little Treasury of One Hundred People, One Poem Each, compiled by Fujiwara No Sadaie and translated by Tom Galt

  The Ellipse: Selected Poems of Leonardo Sinisgalli, translated by W. S. Di Piero The Difficult Days by Roberto Sosa, translated by Jim Lindsey

  Hymns and Fragments by Friedrich Hölderlin, translated and introduced by Richard Sieburth

  The Silence Afterwards: Selected Poems of Rolf Jacobsen, translated and edited by Roger Greenwald

  Rilke: Between Roots, selected poems rendered from the German by Rika Lesser

  In the Storm of Roses: Selected Poems by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated, edited, and introduced by Mark Anderson

  Birds and Other Relations: Selected Poetry of Dezso Tandori, translated by Bruce Berlind

  Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao, translated and introduced by Jeanne Larsen

  The True Subject: Selected Poems of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, translated by Naomi Lazard

  My Name on the Wind: Selected Poems of Diego Valeri, translated by Michael Palma

  Aeschylus: The Suppliants, translated by Peter Burian Foamy Sky: The Major Poems of Miklós Radnóti, selected and translated by Zsuzsanna Ozváth and Frederick Turner

  La Fontaine’s Bawdy: Of Libertines, Louts, and Lechers, translated by Norman R. Shapiro

  A Child Is Not a Knife: Selected Poems of Göran Sonnevi, translated and edited by Rika Lesser

  George Seferis: Collected Poems, Revised Edition, translated, edited, and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

  C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems, Revised Edition, translated and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, and edited by George Savidis Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid, translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole

  The Late Poems of Meng Chiao, translated and introduced by David Hinton Leopardi: Selected Poems, translated and introduced by Eamon Gennan Through Naked Branches: Selected Poems of Tarjei Vesaas, translated and edited by Roger Greenwald

  The Complete Odes and Satires of Horace, translated with introduction and notes by Sidney Alexander

  Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol, translated by Peter Cole Puerilities: Erotic Epigrams of The Greek Anthology, translated by Daryl Hine Night Journey by María Negroni, translated and introduced by Anne Twitty

  Document Outline

  Contents

  Kidnapped by the Inexorable: Translator's Introduction

  Esqueletos bajo el cielo

  Skeletons under the Sky

  La jaula en flor

  Cage in Bloom

  Catástrofe

  Catastrophe

  Ecuyère y militar

  Equestrienne and Officer

  Los bosques de mármol

  The Marble Forests

  La pérdida

  Loss

  Gabriel

  Gabriel

  Heráldica

  Heraldry

  Van Gogh

  Van Gogh

  The Great Watcher

  The Great Watcher

  El espejo del alma

  Mirror of the Soul

  La ciudad nómade

  Nomadic City

  El padre

  The Father

  Diálogo
con Gabriel I

  Dialogue with Gabriel I

  Lido

  Lido

  La visita

  The Visit

  La guía telefónica

  The Telephone Book

  El mapa del Tiempo

  The Map of Time

  Napoleón II

  Napoleon II

  Los amantes

  The Lovers

  Los ojos de Dios

  The Eyes of God

  El caballo blanco

  The White Horse

  El bebé

  The Baby

  Las tres madonas

  The Three Madonnas

  Tout cherche tout

  Tout cherche tout

  Carta a Sèvres

  Letter to Sèvres

  El diccionario infinito

  The Infinite Dictionary

  Las ventanas del siglo

  Windows on the Century

  Diálogo con Gabriel II

  Dialogue with Gabriel II

  Los dos cielos

  The Two Heavens

  Fata Morgana

  Fata Morgana

  New Jersey

  New Jersey

  Rosamundi

  Rosamundi

  Encrucijada

  Crossroads

  La ceguera

  Blindness

  Midgard

  Midgard

  La ropa

  Clothes

  El diluvio

  The Deluge

  Sleeping Beauty

  Sleeping Beauty

  El viaje

  The Journey

  Die Zeit

  Die Zeit