Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
 translated by Hardie St. Martin

Deaths

one day i watched death going by / she wasn’t on horseback / she
was screaming
like the swallows circling santa maria maggiore / such
a death is sad / i really mean it and in case
anyone doesn’t know that such a death is sad

this one was screaming like one of the damned / of no help to her
the lovely summer the fountains the women she allowed to go on
their way
like heat fire or pity / this death
wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel anywhere

to start off no one needed her / she wasn’t bold or brave /
couldn’t
sing / couldn’t make anyone else sing / she wasn’t wearing
blue stockings / her eyes
screamed like swallows slicing the afternoon around
santa maria maggiore / i’m telling it the way i saw it / this
death drew pity or compassion from coachmen gentle
horses in broad daylight / a death with such poor taste / alone /
unhappy / old death / unable

to fly / without a string around her small feet / screaming
in the middle of the public square

when she had gone by i felt scared
i never want to see that death again
cross my heart i never want to see her again
especially not on the day of my death

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

Things They Don’t Know

dark times / filled with light / the sun
spreads sunlight over the city split
by sudden sirens / the police hunt goes on / night falls and we’ll
make love under this roof / our eighth

in one month / they know almost everything about us / except
this plaster ceiling we make love
under / and they also know nothing about
the rundown pine furniture under the last ceiling / or
about the window the night pounded on while you shone like the      sun / or
about the beds or the floor where
we made love this month / with faces around us like the sun
spreading sunlight over the city

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
translated by Hardie St. Martin

Reds

rain beats down on Río de la Plata and it’s going on
36 years since they killed Federico García Lorca but
what is the connection between the reality out there
and the reality in here? or
what is the connection between the unreality out there
and the reality in here?

I don’t know it the river’s gray line
is like the knife used to slash the sky
the knife used now to cut short children’s lives in Azul
they cut short children’s lives in Santa Fe and other parts of the republic
sometimes forever or always forever
it’s one of our country’s crosses

that’s a fact in the West
the sun doesn’t turn sunsets red here
the blood of children turns the republic’s sunsets red

children in Salta in Tucumán little angels
whose lost or spilled blood is swept away by sunsets
day after day after day

and what has it to do with Federico García Lorca’s death
with Federico García Lorca’s execution in Granada in 1936?
or do sunsets in the West of Spain
turn red not with the sun
but with Federico García Lorca the poet’s blood
day after day after day?

I don’t know I don’t know
“you’ll fall into the river, kid!”  Federico García Lorca said
“I understood when he disappeared into the water” Federico García Lorca said
“there’s another river in the rose” Federico García Lorca said
but why does his blood turn Granada red
day after day?

and why do children in Azul Santa Fe Tucumán Salta
turn red the republic’s sky
under which others forgot or pretend to forget them?
why did they fall into the river and disappear
into the water leaving squalid poverty
for the river of another rose?

what’s the connection between the reality
out there and this unreality in here? or
what’s the connection between the unreality out there
and this reality in here?
when did they kill Federico García Lorca in Tucumán?
when did they shoot him in Azul Santa Fe Salta?

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
translated by Hardie St. Martin

XX:  Those who created God

those who created god with
one or two men or
converted man into god were
punished with eternity while
those who started off
by naming the fear of death accepting
the sudden or terrifying end
(not as fury oblivion or limit) and

regarded their neck as something relative
their shoulder something temporary their
ribcage something borrowed those were
dispersed through time and history

scattered on earth like seed planted
in the sun heavy with solitude
or indecision and buried in thought
before the graveyards of white birds