to Juan Carlos Cedrón

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
 translated by Hardie St. Martin

If Gently

if waves from someone who threw himself into the sea
came to mind gently / what about our brothers who were
in-earthed? / do leaves sprout from their fingers? /
saplings / autumns
soundlessly losing their leaves? / silently

our brothers talk about the time when
they were twothree inches away from death / they smile
remembering / even now feeling their relief
as if they hadn’t died / as if

paco were still brilliant and rodolfo were looking
up all the lost thoughts he’d always carried
slung over his shoulder / or rodolfo (forever) digging through
his bitterness
had just pulled out the ace of spades / he turned his mouth to the
wind /
inhaled life / lives / saw with his own eyes the angel of death /
but now they’re talking about when
things worked out / nobody killed / nobody got killed /
they outwitted the enemy making up for some of the general
humiliation/
with brave actions / with dreams / and all this time
their companions lying there / wordless /
flesh falling from their bones on a january night /
quiet at last / so terribly alone / without kisses

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
 translated by Hardie St. Martin

On the Soul Begins to Hurt

Early on the soul begins to hurt / pale /
in the wavering light it explores your not being here /
the heart rises with misgivings /
goes over the sky like the sun

in daylong search / day in day out / it burns
freezing / as if its bones thrown out
of joint / or like an unsaid word
where i try to march against death /

soul you harmonize harmonies that barely
make it across the world’s width /
broken / it broods over
what you left me / night on its feet

on August 25, 1976
my son marcelo ariel and
his pregnant wife claudia
were kidnapped in
buenos aires by a
military commando,
like in tens of thousands
of other cases, the military
dictatorship never officially
acknowledged these who
“disappeared,” it referred to
“those absent forever.”
until i see their bodies
or their killers, i’ll never
give them up for dead.

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