READIN

🦋 Breakfast and Lunch

A new poem from Pelele had the happy effect of reminding me of one of my very favorite poems, Kenneth Koch's "Lunch" -- and the funny thing is, I was noticing similarities to "Lunch" even before I looked up to the top of the poem and noticed Pelele's title...

Breakfast

by Eduardo Valverde

Last night I dreamed of you -- or of your father:
a tall man under his hat.
The place I found myself reminded me,
its silence, of a bird -- a bird that’s sleeping,
an engine, maybe, lying in the junkheap.
He came along, his face drawn long, like kids
when they play at grown-up
or like a bankrupt god
who tallies up his mornings carefully
and finds that all that glitters is not gold;
he carried a green bottle in his hands
and the analgesic pain that comes of touching earthly things.

He spoke enthusiastically of the sea's paternal womb,
of land unmapped, unconquered, which begins off in the darkness --
in every single letter of the word, “desperation” --
He spoke of a taste like olives, of the flavor in her breasts,
in hers who never aged but who had brought forth many daughters
each with olive nipples;
of the unease that he feels before the window in a photo
in which a bowl of fruit is standing lonesome on the floor
of the hallway in a vacant house --
or I should say, before the light that’s coming through the window,
an angel hewn of green basalt;
a solid angel, weak Annunciation.

He poured me out a cup and took the bottle by its neck.
Could not remember you; but he said,
with joy in his eyes, he said My kids were like the rattle
of the hills when trains are rolling by;
like a pack of dogs, dogs baying in the distance
to push your weary heart along the journey.
It must have been getting dark, I guess -- a solitary lamp
was turning back to ash his eyes and moustache

And me, I was anxious, I needed to pee;
I felt my dress was falling into shadow --
     its weight returning --
raised my hands to my cheeks and found I was not dying
nor was I really back among the living.

Two images in particular seem like they could have come from Koch's pen, the woman "who never aged but who had brought forth many daughters/ each with olive nipples", and the man boasting, "My kids were like the rattle/ of the hills when trains are rolling by" -- also the general flow of the text and of voice reminds me of Koch. (I have probably intensified this similarity in my translation; but I believe it is present in the original as well.) The "analgesic pain that comes of touching earthly things" is going to stay with me for a long time.

posted evening of Thursday, June 30th, 2011
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Hi Jeremy, thanks again for taking the time to read my work and else, translate it.

This verse is also the one I feel more proud about in this poem: "the analgesic pain that comes of touching earthly things"... glad you appreciate it too.

Just a couple of things: 1."he spoke... the ocean´s paternal womb"
2. every single letter of the word, “desperation (taking off "strange")
3. "Could not remember you, but he said" (takink off "two")
4. The person who tells the dream -to a man- is a woman (this is very important), in spanish the reader does not realize that until the last paragraph, because of "el vestido" and I think "garments" does not accomplish that "twist" in english...

Thank you very much, my friend.
by the way, once I started reading "El cristo de Elqui" of Rivera Letelier, but I didn´t like too much so I did not even finish it. Should I give it a second chance?

Regards, Eduardo

posted evening of July second, 2011 by Pelele

Thanks for the notes, Eduardo -- I had been under the impression that the speaker was a man talking to a woman rather than vice versa. That is an important distinction. I will rework and post a new version tomorrow.

I adored "El arte de la resurrección". So of course I would say yes, give it another chance. Maybe you will like it better, maybe not...

posted evening of July second, 2011 by Jeremy

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