from Mascarilla y trébol (1938) [“Mask and Clover”] and Poesías no incluídas en libro (1934–1938) [“Uncollected Poetry (1934–1938)”]
Translated from the Spanish (Argentina) by Elisa Taber
Return to Sanity
You’d broken my sun: off the constellations’
serrated mechanisms
it hung in shreds yet to touch the tree,
house of light toying with burning earth.
You picked up the coral stretch-marked sea
and in a small basket of heliotropes
here on my lap left it to the sweet
lulling sway of my chest.
Upon returning, now of your love cut,
I sat on Shadow’s edge and alone
assemble the sun with great sanity.
Now it’s set in place; now the waves
fall off my lap and, forewarned,
the irate sea absorbs its flock.
Return to My Birds
I no longer heard your frugal concert,
my birds: I saw a city of mirrors
crenellated in gold and flags,
not hands, waving from its beacons.
And in its steep circle great voices
of acoustic pomp; and my finger neared
and the wallpapered city fell
and the livid air wrote: misery.
Now I am back in your chests, alone,
and yours is no worse, beloved flight,
and the orbital disposition of the star.
Now I hear you again, untethered,
and how you, my little one, croon
on my balcony: “Why did you abandon me?”
Nest in a Statue
In the statue’s cradled arm,
a sweet hollow: the bird hay lay,
gold needlegrass bristling bronze,
and perched. And the bird knew not.
The sky opened a mallow vine,
rendered human by the bronze
and that gilded grace fleuron.
But the bronze and the bird knew not.
A boy passed and dreamed of a wick
and a misfortunate one coveted a bed
and love smiled at him across two rivers.
Sprouted in him a far psalm
and an invisible peace rose.
And being, bird, and bronze knew not.
Great Painting
Death gathered the toppled trunk
and the fallen chapiter and the dry
fleece of the tree, and sent the moon
to pray for those ruins.
Its requiem attracted some rat
and the insect refused to sing there
and the sky yawned threatening
a slow retracted dawn.
A wounded stag with broken antlers
hit the chapiter and found nested there
in black stones, teeth of silence.
No; not yet a renowned painters’
painting, but I entered the canvas
and death’s brushes agilely stroked.
Screen Sea
I
The sea comes and beats the walls
and on screen frees its swells
and approaches your seat and the miracle
of steel and moon touch your senses;
inhales salt your awoken maw
and fights your body the wind
and near your soles the water
and the yelling pleasure now casts voices.
The lunar machines in the canvas
spin crystal illusions so alive
that you now lunge to dive:
Escapes the sea that the celluloid crushes
and on your fingers remains, resplendent,
a mystical flower, technical and cold.
Cartoons
II
A mystical flower, technical and cold,
from the tube of colors, seedbed
of flat beings that the drawing animates,
though terrestrial, born in an afterworld.
Thousands of years ago the daring
claw of man, about to gut him,
painted walls and bit the stones
to attain a walking tree.
See the little black-and-white being
that traces you, another copy
of a greater, undefined model:
A soul it has that is your selfsame,
your poor selfsame one chasing
wind trains and paper ports.
The Sun
(Naive Little Poem)
I'd mislearned it:
the sun is big,
all of fire.
It burns the skin.
Makes the eyes narrow,
the outstretched hand seeks it
and feels heat.
Its touch flowers the tree,
embodies the child,
ripens the grain.
It’s very big;
an ember
falling on the cities,
big too.
It rises in the east
and hides in the west.
If it died,
we’d die.
Pretty.
Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938) was a Swiss-born Argentine writer, single mother, and teacher. In her lifetime, she published seven poetry collections, two essay collections, and two plays. Mascarilla y trébol (“Mask and Clover”; 1938), Entre un par de maletas a medio abrir y las manecillas del reloj (“Between Two Half-Open Suitcases and the Hands of the Clock”; 1938), and El amo del mundo (“Master of the World”; 1927) are representative of her feats in the aforementioned genres.
Elisa Taber is a Paraguayan-born Argentine writer, literary translator, and anthropologist. She is the author of An Archipelago in a Landlocked Country (2020), and translator of Miguelángel Meza’s Dream Pattering Soles (2021) and Horacio Quiroga’s Beyond (2022). Elisa is also Co-Editor of SLUG and Editor at Large at Seven Stories Press.
World Poetry Review 