Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
 translated by Hardie St. Martin

XVI:  Punishing loves

punishing loves / keeping sorrows down /
from sun to moonlight i pass / creatures
like living proofs of you / you may have seen them
often / now that they come around here dressed

like you / in other words beautiful / gentle like
when you looked sadly at the close of day /
and wanted not to sleep but to dream /
tugging at the night with two little fists

to my son

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
 translated by Hardie St. Martin

IV:  Crestfallen my burning soul

crestfallen my burning soul
dips a finger in your name / scrawls
your name on the night’s walls /
it’s no use / it bleeds dangerously /

soul to soul it looks at you / becomes a child /
opens its breast to take you in /

protect you / reunite you / undie you /
your little shoe stepping on the

world’s suffering softening it /
trampled brightness / undone water
this way you speak / crackle / burn / and love /
you give me your nevers just like a child

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
 translated by Hardie St. Martin

Note V

don’t keep sadness away from the fireside /
sit here beside me / old gal /
you’re never going to leave me /
forgive me for neglecting you

for drifting from rage to rage
going out of one dead man entering
another dead man or shattered world /
for traveling like this all these years /

move up closer to me / sadness / so
much anger and so many dead ports
send a chill through me but
i have to go on moving / on and on

Notes  —  (Calella de la Costa, Paris Rome, August-October, 1979)
to Eduardo Galeano
          to Helena

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
 translated by Hardie St. Martin

Note III

walking on my bare knees
through a field of broken glass /
walking on my naked soul
through a field of broken comrades /

whom neither the twilight nor the sea
that washes over any man will wash /
i don’t know what’s washing over them now /
quiet at last / unafraid

of death / killed /
by bullets or cyanide / by
their own or another’s hand / dead
all the same / rotting

under the earth in this land
that took them in / fires
put out by military hatred / urge
us on to victory sons

Notes  —  (Calella de la Costa, Paris Rome, August-October, 1979)
to Eduardo Galeano
          to Helena