By Rafael Courtoisie
Translated from the Spanish by Anna Rosenwong
CAUSES AND EFFECTS
1)
An absolute requirement
inhabits the stuff
of voice
the look listens
color sings.
2)
It rains
not in space
but in the wind’s tongue.
A corporeal thought
fills the silence, overruns it.
Water from the words
naked in the mouth.
The sound and the fury:
sweet fury
red sound.
3)
Prudence to penetrate the night
and gentleness to leave it
warm.
4)
I don’t listen: I drink
as if your words
were water.
Kiss my thirst.
5)
The answer invents the question.
Sun, night.
Caress is the answer
to skin’s question.
6)
The animal of serenity
strikes, an ochre
lightning bolt in the mind.
The night goes out
the body remembers.
7)
The rocks are voices
fossils of a dead language
high words stripped of flesh
shouts of bone.
8)
The word “moss”
contradicts
the word “sun.”
The shadow illuminates
feeling.
#
CAPSIZE
Soft is a word. Ship
a stone that sinks
Soft walks
your word, ship
in my port. Soft
the ship sinks
in the word, my hand
in your ship.
Soft.
#
FOOTPRINTS AND FEET
Not poetry, but its slow cause.
Poetry’s cause, not its effects.
Oranges and cats.
Oranges that breathe.
Fresh cat juice.
Poetry sand, angel excrement
secret shit, poetry rain
aerial liquid, irresponsible birds.
Death’s narrow path.
Not poetry, but concrete silence
petals of stones
grave marble flowers
statues and silence.
Not poetry, but its cause.
A shoe without a foot, a foot without a print.
Rafael Courtoisie Beyhaut is one of Uruguay’s leading writers, with work published around the world. The author of four novels, eighteen volumes of poetry, and eleven story collections, Courtoisie has won many prizes, including Uruguay’s national prizes in both narrative and poetry. He teaches screenwriting at the Escuela de Cine del Uruguay in Montevideo.
Anna Rosenwong is a translator, poet, editor, and educator. Her publications include Roció Cerón’s Diorama (winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award), José Eugenio Sánchez’s Suite Prelude a/H1N1 and Climax with Double Cheese, as well as an original collection of poetry, By Way of Explanation. She is the translation editor of Drunken Boat. Her work has been featured in World Literature Today, The Kenyon Review, Translation Studies, The St Petersburg Review, Pool, and elsewhere.
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