Montevideo Poem

These last weeks I’ve been working via Skype with old friend Eric Sarner (see above) who is translating Aljibar, a collection of my poems into French for publication in Luxembourg by Editions PHI this spring. (He already translated h.j.r. a few years back.) Sarner just finished a TV documentary on Route 66 & is hiding for three months in Montevideo, Urugay, to write the book that goes with the movie. What a grand way to go about things writerly! (Eric is a lovely poet and an excellent prose writer — his 1985 book on Beyrouth still haunts me all these years later.) And what a great hat! Montevideo — the birthplace of the Comte de Lautréamont, a.k.a Isidore Ducasse, a.k.a Maldoror, the man who is en “mal d’aurore,” who aches for, who misses, who feels deprived of dawn. Here’s a poem by Eric, written in Montevideo, which also has a dawn in it, and translated for the pleasure of seeing if I could hear something Spanish arising between the French and the English. ¿Quien sabe?

Poem 1 of these here years

suppose
this bird
jacana jacana
all along the
river Uruguay
the other morning

there’ll be a little ferocious wind
when warmth comes and
a luke-warm wave
to fool the frost

that’s all I’m promising you

but
keep everything the seasons have to offer
keep everything from one end to the other
these hollow dawns too
the inflammation as much
keep
or eat it all
by heart and lucidity
terribly