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

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