Me parece que el traducir de una lengua a otra es como quien mira los tapices flamencos por el revés, que aunque se ven las figuras, están llenas de hilos que las oscurecen, y no se ven con la lisura y tez del haz; y el traducir de lenguas fáciles, ni arguye ingenio ni elocución, como no le arguye el que traslada ni el que copia un papel de otro papel––dijo don Quijote.
Y aún así le dije a Enrique Fierro, simpatizante de los rinocerontes––Tomemos prestada la pelota de ping-pong de nuestros amigos Lorenzo y Margarita, y aquí escribámonos y traduzcámonos el uno al otro. Pero, tejamos reversos, traducciones traidoras, como falsos amigos, des faux amis que se miran, pero no se reconocen.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Allegories, festivals were we all, for intoning and walking and walking always away from that unknown rumble. Suddenly we would slow to greet effusions to a lagoonal metonym audibly separated from a salty poem to be propelled about the recurrent streets of Montevideo. Or to have a tea feast at the Americana Patisserie, where sometimes Esther would appear, who after hugging us and kissing us would smile at us with that look that even now, alive or dead, joins us.

Who cares now how we continue? [Who cared when I care tumbled Tuesday unnoticed, alone, into the mer?]* Yawning, everyone has realized that neither do I translate ("a continuation of nothingness," as Macedonio said) nor are you a minor poet or a Rodin thinker. [We're both left at the corner waiting while he's before the bobería.]* It occurred to me, thankfully, that you spent your first years not in Mexico, but in Cincinnati, two blocks east of Rodin St., not far from the park. And that on that street every night an impassable muster of insomniac words offered themselves up to the gobbling gluttonous poets.

Calla tea, please.

*Translator's Note

2 comments:

  1. I'd like to attend a tea feast, but no calla tea for me please.
    I found Icare (a week late). He was waiting for someone to discern his plume. Sí, tu pluma también.

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  2. "Calla tea, please."

    Fabuloso.

    ReplyDelete