RAFAEL ALBERTI ~

 The Angel of Sand

Seriously, in your eyes the sea was two children spying on me,

afraid of knots and harsh words.

Two children of the night, terrible, expelled from heaven,

whose childhood was a robbery of ships and a crime of suns and moons.

Sleep now. Close your eyes.

I saw that the true sea was a boy who jumped naked,

inviting me to a plate of stars and a bed of algae.

Yes, yes! My life would be, already was, a detached coast.

But you, waking, drowned me in your eyes.

Living Snow

Without lying, tell me what lie of snow walked mute through my dream!

Voiceless snow, with blue eyes perhaps, slow and with hair.

When did the snow, looking distracted, push coils of fire?

It walked mute, whitewashing the unanswered questions,

the forgotten and crossed out sepulchers, to launch new memories.

Giving to ashes, already airborne, the shape of boneless light.

_________________________________

Rafael Alberti

Concerning the Angels

translated from the Spanish by John Murillo

Four Way Books, 2025

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA ~

 

R E A D      M E

Reaktion Books

2020

RE-READING CESAR VALLEJO ~

The Miserable Supper





    How long will we have to wait for what is

not owed to us . . . And in what corner will

we kick our poor sponge forever! How long before

the cross that inspires us does not rest its oars.



    How long before Doubt toasts our nobility for

having suffered . . .



                                     We have already sat so

long at this table, with the bitterness of a child

who at midnight, cries from hunger, wide awake . . .



    And when will we join all the others, at the brink

of an eternal morning, everybody breakfasted.

For just how long this vale of tears, into which

I never asked to be led.



                                               Resting on my elbows,

all bathed in tears, I repeat head bowed

and defeated how much longer will this supper last.



    There's someone who has drunk too much, and he mocks us,

and offers and withdraws from us — like a black spoonful

of bitter human essence — the tomb . . .



                                                         And this abstruse one knows

even less how much longer this supper will last!





_____________________________
Cesar Vallejo
The Complete Poetry
California, 2007
translated by Clayton Eshleman


         
here we are, election day in America —

are we having a miserable supper?

RAFAEL ALBERTI ~

To Painting



To you, flax in the field. To you, expanse

of surface for the eyes: expectant glance.

To you, imagination, ice or coal,

exact design or fire out of control.



To you, line unforeseen or always known.

To you, heroic paintbrush, wax or stone,

complaint to whatever style's envisioned,

to measure or the lack of all precision.



To you, form; color, resonating scheme

by which life shows the volume of its space,

dark next to light, light next to sun, now fainter.



To you, fictive reality of dream.

To you, real object, palpable, in place.

To you at last, the hand, all Painting's painter.




————————————
Rafael Alberti
translated by Carolyn L. Tipton
To Painting
Northwestern University Press 1997