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🦋 In the cellar

por J Osner

Inmóvil en el sótano escucho
Los pisos chirriantes
Mientras los pisa ella
Y la casa hecha carne gruñe
Pesada
Del fardo acumulado
De todos los años
Y miles de años
De todos los pies
Que sus tablas han pisoteado
De todos los vientos
Que sus maderas han azotado
Que las tejas han desalojado
De sus techos
Hace años

Y caída la noche
Suspira
La casa y se
Asienta. En su tanque
Callan
Los peces. Afuera
Escucho
El ruido suave
De hojas.

posted morning of Saturday, February first, 2014
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Stand still in the cellar and I hear
The floorboards creaking
As she walks across them
And the house made flesh is groaning
Beneath
The accumulated weight
Of all the years
And thousands of years
And all the feet
That have tread on its planks
And all the winds
That have buffeted its timbers
And dislodged shingles
From its roofs
Years gone by

Now night is fallen
The house sighs
And settles. In their tank
The fish
Are quiet. Outside
I can hear
The rustling
Leaves.

posted morning of February first, 2014 by J

Possibly of interest afa translation, this is a back-translation, a second translation. I wrote the first draft several months ago in English, and without line breaks. Something about it caught my ear as suggesting it would flow very nicely in Spanish -- and it did, but needed line breaks and a few tweakings of meaning. It became a Spanish poem -- that is to say, the process of translation was a process of revision. In order to make it an actual work of poetry I had to change the idiom.

So the above version is a re-translation, carrying back into English of a text originally written in English.

posted afternoon of February first, 2014 by J

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