Synopsis
Roberto Sosa was born in Honduras in 1930. Expressing the oppression and poverty of his country, the poems in The Difficult Days are from Un Mutido Para Todos Dividido and Los Pobres, which won the Adonais Prize for Poetry in Madrid in 1968.
Originally published in 1983.
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The Difficult Days
By Roberto Sosa, Jim LindseyPRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1983 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06583-0All rights reserved.
Contents
INTRODUCTION, vii,
Esta Luz Que Subscribo, 2,
This Light I Subscribe To, 3,
Los Pobres, 4,
The Poor, 5,
Transparencia, 6,
Transparency, 7,
Los Peldaños Que Faltan, 8,
The Missing Stairs, 9,
Los Indios, 10,
The Indians, 11,
La Realidad, 14,
Reality, 15,
La Yerba Cortada por los Campesinos, 16,
The Grass the Peasants Cut, 17,
Los Elegidos de la Violencia, 20,
Those the Violence Selects, 21,
Las Voces No Escuchadas de los Ricos, 22,
Unheard Voices of the Rich, 23,
La Muerte Otra, 24,
The Other Death, 25,
Los Claustros, 26,
The Sanctuary, 27,
La Hora Baja, 28,
Low Hour, 29,
Malignos Bailarines sin Cabeza, 32,
Wicked Headless Dancers, 33,
Las Sales Enigmáticas, 34,
The Mysterious Sallies, 35,
Piano Vacío, 36,
Empty Piano, 37,
La Batalla Oscura, 38,
The Dark War, 39,
Mi Padre, 40,
My Father, 41,
Arte Espacial, 54,
Spatial Art, 55,
Canción para un Gato Muerto, 56,
Song for a Dead Cat, 57,
Testimonios, 58,
Testimonies, 59,
Los Dias Dificiles, 60,
The Difficult Days, 61,
Después de los Encuentros, 64,
After the Encounters, 65,
Un Anortnal Volumen de Lluvia (Crónica de un Juicio Final), 66,
An Unusual Amount of Rain (A Doomsday Report), 67,
Descripción de una Ciudad en Peligro, 70,
Description of an Endangered City, 71,
El Aire Que Nos Queda, 74,
The Air We Have Left, 75,
El Invierno Puede Ser un Invalido, 76,
Winter Can Be an Invalid, 77,
La Arena del Desierto Que Comparto con Otros, 78,
The Desert Sand I Share with Others, 79,
CHAPTER 1
Esta Luz Que Subscribo
Esto que escribo
nace
de mis viajes a las inmovilidades del pasado. De la
seductión
que me causa la ondulación del fuego
igual
que a los primeros hombres que lo vieron y lo sometieron
a la mansedumbre de una lampara. De la fuente
en donde la muerte encontró el secreto de su eterna
juventud.
De conmoverme
por los cortísimos gritos decapitados
que emiten los animales endebles a medio morir. Del amor
consumado.
Desde la misma lástima, me viene.
Del hielo que circula por las oscuridades
que ciertas personas echan por la boca sobre mi nombre.
Del centro
del escarnio y de la indignación. Desde la circunstancia
de mi gran compromiso, vive como es posible
esta Iuz que suscribo.
This Light I Subscribe To
What I'm writing
is born
of my trips to the past, and what is fixed there. Of the
seduction
worked on me by shimmering fire
as it was worked
on the first men who saw fire and subdued it
to the meekness of a lamp. Of the fountain
where death found the secret of its eternal youth.
Of letting myself be moved
by the brief, beheaded screams
weak animals emit when halfway dead. Of consummate
love.
Of grief, finally, all of the same grief.
Of the ice circulating through the darknesses
certain persons spew over my name. Of mockery
and indignation, at the quick. From the circumstance
of my great compromise, it lives as it may,
this light I subscribe to.
Los Pobres
Los pobres son muchos
y por eso
es imposible olvidarlos.
Seguramente
ven
en los amaneceres
miiltiples edificios
donde ellos
quisieran habitar con sus hijos.
Pueden
llevar en hombros
el feretro de una estrella.
Pueden
destruir el aire como aves furiosas,
nublar el sol.
Pero desconociendo sus tesoros
entran y salen por espejos de sangre;
caminan y mueren despacio.
Por eso
es imposible olvidarlos.
The Poor
The poor are many.
That's why
we cannot forget them.
Surely
they see
in the morning light
many buildings
they would like
to live in with their children.
They can
shoulder
the coffin of a star.
They can
rip up the air like furious birds,
blot out the sun.
But not knowing their treasures
they enter and leave by mirrors of blood;
they walk, and die, slowly.
That's why
we cannot forget them.
Transparencia
Los hospitales
asignados a las pobres gentes
encierran
las amplitudes de los dobles fondos.
Allí los médicos penetran
los confines de los desválidos
y escuchan la tristeza dentro de una caja iluminada.
En los días de lluvia
los enfermos mentales
imaginan lagunas y veleros;
navegan al olvido y ya no vuelven.
En los pasillos, monjas y sacerdotes
detrás
de la espesura de sus hábitos,
cruzan frases,
cambian inclinaciones,
descienden las escalas de encantados ramajes.
Los pacientes se pasan las horas
midiendo la brevedad de la existencia;
? admirando
las enfermeras
con pechos protegidos por los dedos de lo tierno
La muerte
acostada en los anfiteatros
envía la inmovilidad de su amenaza.
Cualquiera
puede hacer suyas estas palabras
un día de visitas,
un jueves, por ejemplo.
Transparency
The hospitals
assigned to the poor
are spacious
as trunks with false bottoms.
Doctors there force
the last doors of the helpless
and listen to sadness in a lighted box.
On rainy days
the mentally ill
imagine lagoons, and boats there with sails.
They sail out to oblivion and no longer return.
In the corridors, nuns and priests
beneath
the heaviness of their habits
exchange small talk,
bow to each other,
descend enchanted arbors step by step.
Patients pass the hours
measuring the briefness of their existence
or admiring
the nurses
with breasts shielded by the fingers of tenderness.
Death
lounging on the dissecting tables
extends his open invitation.
Anyone
can make these words his
any visitor's day,
a Thursday, for example.
Los Peldaños Que Faltan
Nuestros hijos
ven
la ruina acumulada de las ciudades.
Tocan el velo extendido en las barriadas.
Meditan
en los choques que producen las caídas
de las golondrinas
que ya no distinguen los hilos telegráficos
Se contemplan dentro del diario espejo sucio
que nadie advierte.
Aprenden con los moribundos
a contar los peldaños que faltan a la vida.
Y crecen sin asombro.
The Missing Stairs
Our children
see
the hoarded ruin of cities.
Touch the veil that laps the suburbs.
Muse
upon the shocks caused by the falling
of the swallows
that no longer distinguish the telegraph wires.
Contemplate themselves inside the daily dirty mirror
no one answers for.
Learn with the dying
to count life's missing stairs.
And grow up unamazed.
Los Indios
Los indios
bajan
por continuos laberintos
con su vacio a cuestas.
En el pasado
fueron guerreros sobre todas las cosas.
Levantaron columnas al fuego
y a las lluvias de punos negros
que someten los frutos a la tierra.
En los teatros de sus ciudades de colores
lucieron vestiduras
y diademas
y máscaras doradas
traídas de lejanos imperios enemigos.
Calcularon el tiempo
con precisión numérica.
Dieron de beber oro líquido
a sus conquistadores,
y entendieron el cielo
como una flor pequeña.
En nuestros días
aran y siembran el suelo
Io mismo que en edades primitivas.
Sus mujeres modelan las piedras del campo
y el barro, o tejen
mientras el viento
desordena sus duras cabelleras de diosas.
Los he visto sin zapatos y casi desnudos,
en grupos,
al cuidado de voces tendidas como látigos,
? borrachos balanceándose con los charcos del ocaso
de regreso a sus cabañas
situadas en el final de los olvidos.
Les he hablado en sus refugios
alia en los montes protegidos por ídolos
donde ellos son alegres como ciervos
pero quietos y hondos
como Ios prisioneros.
He sentido sus rostros
golpearme los ojos hasta la ultima luz,
y he descubierto así
que mi poder no tiene
ni validez ni fuerza.
Junto a sus pies
destruidos por todos los caminos,
dejo mi sangre
escrita en un oscuro ramo.
The Indians
The Indians
descend
maze after maze
with their emptiness on their backs.
In the past
they were warriors over all things.
They put up monuments to fire
and to the rains whose black fists
put the fruit in the earth.
In the theaters of their cities of colors
shone vestments
and crowns
and golden masks
brought from faraway enemy empires.
They marked time
with numerical precision.
They gave their conquerors
liquid gold to drink,
and grasped the heavens
like a tiny flower.
In our day
they plow and seed the ground
the same as in primitive times.
Their women shape clay
and the stones of the field, or weave
while the wind
disorders their long, coarse hair, like that of goddesses.
I've seen them barefoot and almost nude,
in groups,
guarded by voices poised like whips,
or drunk and wavering with the pools of the setting sun
on the way back to their shacks
in the last block of the forgotten.
I've talked with them up in their refuges
there in the mountains watched over by idols
where they are happy as deer
but quiet and deep
as prisoners.
I've felt their faces
beat my eyes until the dying light
and so have discovered
my strength is neither
sound nor strong.
Next to their feet
that all the roads destroyed
I leave my own blood
written on an obscure bough.
La Realidad
Llueve. Cruje
la realidad.
(En las grandes ciudades
los bosques
y las bellas armas de casa bajo la lluvia
son dos cuerpos hermosos.)
Algo
se rompe
dentro del hombre
que ha caminado demasiado solo.
Llueve. El espejo es idéntico.
Alguien me dice: es cierto,
nosotros no tenemos esperanza.
Reality
It's raining. Reality
rustles.
(In the great cities
the forests
and lovely housewives in the rain
are two voluptuous bodies.)
Something
breaks
inside the man
who has walked too alone.
It's raining. In the mirror too.
Someone says to me: it's true,
we have no hope.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Difficult Days by Roberto Sosa, Jim Lindsey. Copyright © 1983 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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