Oviedo

PARA QUE YO ME LLAME ÁNGEL GONZÁLEZ

Para que yo me llame Ángel González,
para que mi ser pese sobre el suelo,
fue necesario un ancho espacio
y un largo tiempo:
hombres de todo el mar y toda tierra,
fértiles vientres de mujer, y cuerpos
y más cuerpos, fundiéndose incesantes
n otro cuerpo nuevo.
Solsticios y equinoccios alumbraron
con su cambiante luz, su vario cielo,
el viaje milenario de mi carne
trepando por los siglos y los huesos.
De su pasaje lento y doloroso
de su huida hasta el fin, sobreviviendo
naufragios, aferrándose
al último suspiro de los muertos,
yo no soy más que el resultado, el fruto,
lo que queda, podrido, entre los restos;
esto que veis aquí,
tan sólo esto:
un escombro tenaz, que se resiste
a su ruina, que lucha contra el viento,
que avanza por caminos que no llevan
a ningún sitio. El éxito
de todos los fracasos. La enloquecida
fuerza del desaliento…

Translation:

Before I Could Call Myself Ángel González

Before I could call myself Ángel González,
before the earth could support the weight of my body,
a long time
and a great space were necessary:
men from all the seas and all the lands,
fertile wombs of women, and bodies
and more bodies, incessantly fusing
into another new body.
Solstices and equinoxes illuminated
with their changing lights, and variegated skies,
the millenary trip of my flesh
as it climbed over centuries and bones.
Of its slow and painful journey,
of its escape to the end, surviving
shipwrecks, anchoring itself
to the last sigh of the dead,
I am only the result, the fruit,
what’s left, rotting, among the remains;
what you see here,
is just that:
tenacious trash resisting
its ruin, fighting against wind,
walking streets that go
nowhere. The success
of all failures. The insane
force of dismay…

Translated by Steven Ford Brown from sixteentons(dot)wordpress(dot)com

Ángel González (1925-2008), Spanish poet is featured here to commemorate Spain’s first ever World Cup win at FIFA 2010 in South Africa.

Listen to the poet read this poem here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKm22WyGHGs

Picture Santa Maria del Naranco, Oviedo, Spain from commons(dot)wikimedia(dot)org

The  Head of Hadji Murat

Rasul Gamzatov

I look upon the severed head before me,

I hear somewhere the distant battle’s roar,

And blood runs freely over the bare stones

Through villages at peace no more.

And sabres that have seen much action, whirl,

Honed razor-sharp upon the rocks,

And hillmen loyal t the Caucasus

Gallop along the mountain tracks

Then to that gory head I put this question:

“Were you once famous in these lands,

And whose were you, to meet with such a fate

And come to gried in alien hands?”

“Hadji Murat’s was I.”

came the head’s answer,

“And I am not ashamed to say,

That I tumbles off his shoulders simply

Because I went too far astray.”

The path I chose indeed was not the best one,

Vanity brought me to this plight…”

Sadly I contemplate the erring head

Cut off in the unequal fight.

By paths that reach far out into the distance

As men up in the mountains born,

Dead of alive, back to those summits

It is our duty to return.

Translated by Alex Miller