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Open House by Circe Maia
(Translated from Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheva

July 1, 2015 Contributed By: Circe Maia, Jesse Lee Kercheval

It is a strange house.
Look:
the hand suddenly opens
sleeping doors.

There are fine staircases and high windows.
The windows are
open and voices can be heard
singing.

Singing with the voice of the earth and the air of the sky.
Slow voices descend black stairs.
White voices descend trembling
lofty columns.

They sing with an absent air and a voice of the wind.
They sound as if they are asleep and in pain,
the slow deep voices.
They sound as if they are tired and suffering
from old wounds.

They are singing there
in windows,
opened wide.

CASA ABIERTA

Es una casa extraña.
Mira:
la mano abre de pronto
puertas dormidas.

Son finas escaleras y altas ventanas.
Las ventanas están
abiertas y se oye
voces cantar.

Cantan con voz de tierra y aire de cielo.
Lentas voces descienden peldaños negros.
Blancas voces descienden por temblorosas
columnas estiradas.

Cantan con aire ausente y voz de viento.
Suenan como dormidas y doloridas
las hondas voces lentas.
Suenan como cansadas y lastimadas
de heridas viejas.

Cantando están
en ventanas abiertas
de par en par.

Return to table of contents for Issue 9 Summer 2015.

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Filed Under: Translation Posted On: July 1, 2015

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Peter Milne Greiner, Temporal Cyborg
Reviewed by Christopher Cokinos

Lost City Hydrothermal Field by Peter Milne Greiner The Operating System, 2017 148 pp., $18 The poet David Wojahn has made the distinction between the poetry of stuff and the poetry of wisdom. The former, he claims, is the deployment of references in often pell-mell fashion; it does clutter so much poetry today, especially that […]

IN WINTER by Georg Trakl (translated by Daniele Pantano)

The field gleams white and cold. The sky is lonely and vast. Jackdaws circle above the pond And hunters descend from the forest. A silence dwells in black treetops. A firelight flashes from the cottages. Sometimes a sleigh rings in the distance And slowly the gray moon climbs. On the ridge a deer bleeds softly […]

85 by Catullus (translated from the Latin by David Macey)

I hate and love. Explain that star-crossed pair. I cannot. That’s my little cross to bear. Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.   Return to table of contents for Issue 3 Fall 2010

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