Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
translated by Hardie St. Martin

IV:  The sun on the day’s crest

the sun on the day’s crest gilds
points of land flags barrier reefs someone
sitting at the roadside inspects
his feet

tied down to the road he’s thinks
of kings swallowed up by time he sticks
a yellowed fingernail
into the sole of his right foot digs out

the tiny splinter
that made him bleed
and
feel the road under him he sniffs

at the hard sharp object still warm
his body would not accept it
dark covered with blood
and he’s silent out there in the sun

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
translated by Hardie St. Martin

CIII:  I saw my country’s map in yellow one day

i saw my country’s map in yellow one day
it happened suddenly and i thought how strange
the word yellow it was
a perfect day in fall

full of lives and tremors i
saw
my country floating
on the Atlantic we

were drifting along with it i felt
something like terror
or love or grief
as i faced the yellow map i thought

about my country we were all drifting
to the south the interior the north and so
i dreamt about your love
my darkened one i mean peace

fall was just beginning my country
was drifting on the sea
the wide open ocean
strange words oh so strange

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
translated by Hardie St. Martin

CCLXI:  These poems

these poems this batch of papers this
handful of fragments still trying to breathe
these soft rough words i’ve put together
will be the end of me
sometimes they’re worse than actions or closer to the truth
time passing doesn’t polish or improve them
it shows up the cracks in their flaking walls
their ceiling is caving in and it’s raining

and they can give me neither shelter nor defense
i actually avoid them like cities cursed in ancient times
destroyed by plagues and disasters
by magnificent foreign kings

worse than pain are these
ruins i’ve built while living and letting live
moving between two waters
between this world and its beauty

and i’m not complaining for in
writing poems i sought neither gold nor glory
neither happiness nor unhappiness
neither home nor forgiveness

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
translated by Hardie St. Martin

Another May

when you went past my window may
with autumn on your back
and flashed signals with the light
of the last leaves

what was your message may?
why were you sad or in your sadness gentle?
i never found out but there was always
one man alone in the street among autumn’s golds

well i was the boy
at the window may
shielding my eyes
when you went past

and come to think of it
i must have been the man