Robin Ouzman Hislop

Robin Ouzman Hislop is co-editor at of Motherbird.com and Artvilla.com where he also publishes Poetry Life & Times.   His recent publication of collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, was published by Aquillrelle.com. Buy All the Babble of the Souk by Robin Ouzman Hislop at Amazon or Lulu....... Read more

Even Now. Audio Textual Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

THE VIRUS MONOLOGUE. Translation from Source: https://lundi.am/Monologue-du-virus by Amparo Arróspide & Robin Ouzman Hislop

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THE VIRUS MONOLOGUE
 
 
“I came to shut down the machine for which you could not find the emergency brake. “
 
 
“Silence, dear humans, all your ridiculous calls to war. Lower the looks of revenge you have on me. Turn off the halo of terror that surrounds my name. We, viruses, from the bacterial background of the world, are the true continuum of life on Earth. Without us, you would never have seen the light of day, nor would the first cell.
 
We are your ancestors, just like stones and algae, and much more than monkeys. We are everywhere you are and where you are not too. Too bad for you, if you only see in the universe what is your liking! But above all, stop saying that I’m the one killing you. You do not die from my action on your tissues, but from the lack of care of your fellow men. If you weren’t as rapacious among yourself as you were with everything that lives on this planet, you would still have enough beds, nurses and respirators to survive the damage I do to your lungs. If you did not store your old people in dying rooms and your able-bodied people in reinforced concrete hutches, you would not be there. If you had not changed the yesterday still luxuriant, chaotic, infinitely populated vastness of the world or rather of the worlds into a vast desert for the monoculture of the Same and the More, I would not have been able to launch out a planetary conquest of your throats.
 
If you had not almost all become, throughout the last century, redundant copies of a single and unsustable form of life, you would not be preparing to die like flies abandoned in the water of your sweet civilization. If you hadn’t made your backgrounds so empty, so transparent, so abstract, believe me that I wouldn’t be moving at the speed of an aircraft. I have only come to carry out the sanction which you have long since pronounced against yourselves. Forgive me, but it is you, as far as I know, who coined the name “Anthropocene”. You have claimed all the honor of the disaster; now that it is accomplished, it is too late to give it up. The most honest among you know this well: I have no other accomplice than your social organization, your madness of the “big scale” and its economy, your fanaticism for the system. Only systems are “vulnerable”. The rest live and die. There is “vulnerability” only with regard to control, its extension and its improvement. Look at me carefully: I am only the reverse of the reigning Death.
 
So stop blaming me, accusing me, tracking me down. Stop paralyzing against me. All of this is childish. I offer you a conversion of the look: there is an immanent intelligence in life. You don’t have to be a subject to have a memory or a strategy. You don’t have to be sovereign to decide. Bacteria and viruses can also make rain and sun shine. So see me as your savior rather than your gravedigger. Feel free to believe me, but I came to shut down the machine for which you could not find the emergency brake. I have come to suspend the operation of which you were the hostages. I came to demonstrate the aberration of “normality”. “To delegate our food, our protection, our ability to take care of our living environment to others was madness” … “There is no budgetary limit, health is priceless”: see how I have the language and the spirit of your governors forked! See how I bring them back to their real rank of miserable swindlers, and arrogant with that! See how suddenly they denounce themselves not only as superfluous, but as harmful! You are for them only the supports of the reproduction of their system, even less than slaves. Even plankton is treated better than you.
 
Be careful, however to blame their shortcomings. Avoid wasting your energy. To accuse them of carelessness is to lend them more than they deserve. Ask yourself, how did you find it so comfortable to let yourself be governed? To praise the merits of the Chinese option against the British option, of the imperial-forensic solution against the Darwinist-liberal method, is to understand nothing of either, of the horror of one as the horror of the other. Since Quesnay, the “liberals” have always regarded the Chinese Empire with envy; and they continue to do so. They are Siamese brothers. That one confines you in your interest and the other in that of “society” always comes down to crushing the only non-nihilistic conduct: taking care of oneself, those one loves and what one loves in those one doesn´t know. Do not let those who led you to the abyss pretend to know how to get out of it: they will only prepare you for a more perfected hell, an even deeper grave. The day they can, they will patrol the beyond with their armies.
 
Thank me instead. Without me, how much longer would all these unquestionable things suddenly suspended been regarded as necessary? Globalization, contests, air traffic, budgetary limits, elections, sports competitions, Disneyland, fitness rooms, most shops, the congress and parliament, school crowding, mass gatherings, most office jobs, all this drunken sociability which is only the flip side of the anguished loneliness of metropolitan dwellings: all this was therefore unnecessary, once the state of necessity manifests itself. Thank me for the test of truth for the next few weeks: you are finally going to live your own life, without the thousand loopholes that, year after year, keep the untenable going. Without realizing it, you had never moved into your own existence. You were among the boxes, and you didn’t know it. You will now live with your loved ones. You will live at home. You will stop being in transit to death. You may hate your husband. You may vomit your children. Perhaps you will want to blow up the decor of your daily life. To tell the truth, you were no longer in the world, in these metropolises of separation. Your world was no more livable in any of its points than on the condition of constantly fleeing. It was necessary to be dazed by movement and distractions so much ugliness had gained presence. And the ghostly reigned among beings. Everything had become so effective that nothing made more sense. Thank me for all of this, and welcome to earth!
 
Thanks to me, for an indefinite time, you will no longer be working, your children will not go to school, and yet it will be the complete opposite of the holidays. Holidays are that space that must be furnished at all costs while awaiting the expected return from work. But here, what opens up before you, thanks to me, is not a demarcated space, it is a huge gaping hole. I am here to disassemble everything. Nothing can guarantee you that the non-world of before will return. All of this profitable nonsense may be over. By dint of not being paid, what could be more natural than not paying your rent? Why would he still pay his debts to the bank, the one who can no longer work anyway? Isn’t it suicidal, in the end, to live where you can’t even grow a garden? Whoever has no more money will not stop eating, and the one who has the iron has the bread- as Auguste Blanqui used to say.
 
Thank me: I place you at the foot of the fork that tacitly structured your lives: the economy or life. It’s up to you. The range is historic. Either the rulers impose their state of emergency on you, or you invent your own. Either you get attached to the emerging truths or you put your head on the chopping block. Either you use the time I am giving you now to figure out the next world from the lessons of the ongoing collapse, or it will end up by radicalizing, even more. Disaster ends when the economy stops. The economy is devastating. It was a thesis before last month. It is now a fact. No one can ignore the fact that it will take police, surveillance, propaganda, logistics and telework to repress it.
 
As you face me, do not give in to panic or denial. Don’t give in to biopolitical hysteria. The coming weeks are going to be terrible, overwhelming, cruel. The doors of Death will be wide open. I am the most devastating production of the ravage of production. I come to nullify the nihilists. The injustice of this world will never be more glaring. It is a civilization, and not you, that I come to bury. Those who want to live will have to make new habits, and their own. Avoiding myself will be the occasion for this reinvention, this new art of distance. The art of greeting each other, in which some were short-sighted enough to see the very shape of the institution, will soon no longer obey any label. It will be an agreement between sentient beings. Do not do it “for others”, for “the population” or for “society”, do it for your own. Take care of your friends and your loved ones. Rethink with them, sovereignly, a just form of life. Make good life clusters, expand them, and I can’t do anything against you. This isn´t a call for the massive return of discipline, but of attention. Not for the end of all lightness, but of all neglect. What other way was left for me to remind you that salvation is in every gesture? That everything is in the infinitesimal?
 
I had to face the facts: humanity only asks itself the questions that it can no longer not ask itself. ”
 
Source: https://lundi.am/Monologue-du-virus Original French Version

Reducto Anagramatico Sunday Afternoon 1915 Wallace Stevens. Poem Excerpt from Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
 

 

 
reducto anagramatico sunday afternoon 1915 wallace stevens
 
come give balm to the gusty grieving
nights to hush day green the seas
for her dark oranges bloom an
 
indifferent inhuman evening
of cherished comfort and wings
like wide complacencies
 
but next moves in mythy gat motions
among any hind’s heaven or paradise
& cries cause the sun’s littering
 
our afterwards river sky relinquish
the mountains and whistle in her porch
death still the imperishable inescapable
 
for receding boughs to wear sleeplessly
the sun colours to hang of sky bosom
serafin plum the perfect rivers the hills
 
the lay sky paths that live impassioned
upon grass phrases in extended cries over
her peignoir and coffee upon blood calm
 
 

 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
 
 
https://www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
https://www.twitter.com/PoetryLifeTimes
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com . You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Themes. A Poem by Richard Lloyd Cederberg

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Using Symphonic nomenclature as a springboard to birth 7 life insights – 5-7-5-7-7

CHROMATICISM:

A stream in motion,

Water flows over pebbles

Touching each in turn,

Notes in semitones ascend

Or cascade down like water

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ANTITHESIS:

Opposites become,

Dwelling together in time,

Up or down the scale

Humanity seeks meaning

Good or evilly driven

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THEMATIC INTER-RELATIONSHIP:

Evolving hearts join

In inter-linking circles,

A stark commingling

Of space and line adjoining

Returns to places once known

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TONALITY:

Static expression,

Two souls brooding in one key

Seek security,

Living methodically

With little chance of mishap

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PIZZICATO:

Violoncellist

Intently interpreting,

Ready to evince

Staccato sounds on taut strings,

Plucking with fingers and bow

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ARIA:

Wisdom’s melody

Exposing intricate paths

Drawing the hearer

Into the deep mysteries

Of life’s richer fulfillments

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MODULATION:

Varied expression,

Strategically changing keys

To advance insight,

Transitional reflections

Reveal treasures once hidden

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richard lloyd cederberg 2019


AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY – 2019

RICHARD was born in Chicago Illinois. He is the progeny of Swedish and Norwegian immigrants. Richard began his journey into the arts at age six. For twelve years he played classical trumpet. Then… the wonderful incursion of British music influenced him to put down the trumpet and take-up acoustic and electric guitar. Richard began writing songs and lyrics. He performed in 17 professional bands. He played clubs, halls, cabarets, and concerts in Europe, Canada, across the USA, Alaska, and even Whitehorse in the Yukon Territories. Richard’s band SECRETS was one of the top four Pop-Jazz bands in San Diego for 5 years. In 1995 Richard was privileged to design and build his own Midi-centered Recording Studio ~ TAYLOR & GRACE ~ where he worked until 2002. During that time, he composed and multi-track recorded, over 500 compositions. Only two CD’s were compiled: WHAT LOVE HAS DONE and THE PATH. Richard retired from music in 2003.

.

RICHARD’S POETRY uses various elements: nature, history, relationships (past and present), parlance, alliteration, metaphor, characterization, spirituality, faith, eschatology, art, and subtext. He enjoys the challenge of poetic stylization: Rhythmical, Poetic/Prose, Triolets, Syllable formats, Story-Poems, Freeform, Haiku, Tanka, Haibun, and Acrostic. Richard has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.

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PUBLISHED BOOKS: The MONUMENTAL JOURNEY SERIES integrates adventure, mystery, and historical fiction.

1. A MONUMENTAL JOURNEY…

2. IN SEARCH OF THE FIRST TRIBE…

3. THE UNDERGROUND RIVER…

4. BEYOND UNDERSTANDING…

5. BETWEEN THE CRACKS… is a spinoff from the MJ Series…

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NEW BOOKS presently being written or compiled: A NEW RACE OF HuMAN’S… an eschatological drama that takes place just before the translation, during Daniel’s 70th Week, and into the Millennium. UNDER SILENT BRIDGES… a diversified collection of poetic invention, short-stories, essay’s, and digital photography.

Press Release Let the Whales Escape Collected Poems By R.W.Haynes

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Let the Whales Escape R.W.Haynes
 
 
Mona Lisa and the Marlboro Man
 
Not knowing if wisdom would impulsively fly
Or if it dragged its feet when impulse flared,
She had to make the call and suddenly try
To do what an immortal would have dared,
An Aphrodite, ascending in a flying cart
Drawn by fifty gurgling pigeons at a speed
Which matched the speed of her own matchless heart
And the heartbreaking glory of her need.
Later, back in Laredo, she would say
She didn’t know why she’d taken off that way,
Smiling with satisfaction, recalling when
Her best moments flew by delightfully then.
 
He didn’t want anyone saying, “Oh.
This is how I feel,” but people do
Say that, and he said it, sometimes, too,
In unguarded moments, and he would show
How he felt, displaying great disdain
As he lit his pipe, blew blue smoke forth
Delivering himself from aesthetic pain
Incurred by foolish ideas from the North,
And, nodding slightly to appreciate
A tolerable turn of phrase which he
Thought suggested some brain activity,
He let his tobacco counter-obfuscate
Suspicious overflows of raw emotion
Which threatened to undermine devotion.
 
 
On the Balcony of the Palacio de Cortés
 
Madness stands at one elbow. At the other
Various figures in masks take their turns,
And all whisper steadily, one after another,
Syllables whose content one never learns.
The maniac is familiar; one keeps a careful eye
On him night and day, and day and night,
But who are the others who are standing by,
And what are these advisements they recite?
I dream the lonely ghost of love is one
Whose only consolation is to speak of sin,
And when that sad companion is done,
I hear Complacency, Madness’s mad twin.
I listen in patience, fighting back the fear
I’ll never hear the voice I hope to hear.
 
 
Ibsen on the Nile
 
Those monuments are monuments merely
Of themselves; this river of nutrition
And death, inundating Egypt, is clearly
A muddy embodiment of time’s volition.
I saw the Sphinx off in the distance. Today
I purchased an ancient mummified hand
To give to my wife, safely far away,
And I suspect that she will understand.
I met DeLesseps recently. He and I
Have much in common, more than he knows;
My work is lonelier, but there exists a tie
Between what we do as humankind grows.
These monuments record the vanity of ages;
Mine put the outraged human soul on stages.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Amparo Arróspide Reviews Goddess Summons the Nation Collected Poems by Tony Martin Woods

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Goddess Summons the Nation Paperback
Goddess Summons the Nation Kindle Edition
 

 
Goddess summons the Nation
 
a book of poems written with the vocation of songs and minstrelsy, articulated in four chapters with revealing titles, Substructure, Superstructure, Demolition and Flowers. Full of irony, the poetic voice, which is an ethical, indignant voice, wants the written script to transcend in spoken writing (The grapes / don’t die / in the vineyard / with the harvest / in the summer. // They transcend / and translive / victorious / in the wine, // like the poem in the song … ). This book talks to the reader in short, concise verses, with lexicon of the perspective of one who stands on the brink of historical abyss (The West bleeds to death /…). To paraphrase Ezra Pound, this book has style, that is to say, limpidity, as opposed to rethoric; where the poet in dealing with his own time, sees that language does not petrify in his hands; he has prepared for new advances along the lines of true metaphor, that is interpretative metaphor, or image, as diametrically opposed to untrue or ornamental metaphor. These poems daringly address Brexit and Trump, the policy of closing borders and xenophobia, and a nation that appears personified in female allegories – I am the matriot / the highest patriot / I serve my shares / I sooth my country /…, and cyborgs who leave a planet in ruins ( his brain compressed in a zip folder / stored in a private cloud // No memories / just data / …), our own planet from which figs also flee (with millions of figs like me, like you / away from a supernova / of stupid national greed / … ). In one poem, Time to leave Brexit, we can also read the condensed intention of the book: I’ve never been an island, / Nor a chunk of it. / I could never be one / Cause I’m a social being / made of flesh / And emotions. Images of flesh and bone, and emotions that readers will share.
 
Editor’s Note: see also Artvilla.com Goddess Summons the Nation. By Tony Martin Woods.
 
Goddess summons the Nation
 
un poemario escrito con vocación de cancionero y de mester de juglaría, articulado en cuatro capítulos con títulos reveladores, Substructure, Superstructure, Demolition y Flowers. Pleno de ironía, la voz poética, que es una voz ética, indignada, y que pretende que la escritura escrita trascienda en la escritura hablada (The grapes/don´t die/in the vineyard/with the harvest/in the summer.// They transcend/and translive/victorious/in the wine,// like the poem in the song/…). Se interpela al lector en versos breves, concisos, con léxico de nuestro tiempo y una temática actual de quien se sitúa al borde del abismo histórico (The West bleeds to death/…). Parafraseando a Ezra Pound, este es un libro con “style, that is to say, limpidity, as opposed to rethoric”, donde el poeta “in dealing with his own time, sees to it that language does not petrify in his hands; he has prepared for new advances along the lines of true metaphor that is interpretative metaphor, or image, as diametrically opposed to untrue or ornamental metaphor”. Los poemas se atreven con el Brexit, con Trump, con la política de cierre de fronteras y xenofobia, con una nación que aparece personificada en alegorías femeninas – I am the matriot/ the highest patriot/ I serve my shares/ I sooth my country/, y con cíborgs que abandonan un planeta en ruinas (his brain compressed in a zip folder/stored in a private cloud// No memories/just data/…), planeta del que también huyen los higos ( with millions of figs like me, like you/ away from a supernova/of stupid national greed/…). En uno de sus poemas, Time to leave Brexit, también podemos leer la intención condensada del libro: I´ve never been an island,/Nor a chunk of it./ I could never be one/Cause I´m a social being/made of flesh/And emotions… Imágenes de carne y hueso, y emociones que compartirán lectores y lectoras.
 
 

 
 
 
Antonio Martínez Arboleda:
Antonio (Tony Martin-Woods) started to write poetry for the public in 2012, at the age of 43, driven by his political indignation. That same year he also set in motion Poesía Indignada, an online publication of political poetry. He runs the poetry evening Transforming with Poetry at Inkwell, in Leeds, and collaborates with 100 Thousands Poets for Change100tpc.org/. Tony is also known in the UK for his work as an academic and educator under his real-life name, Antonio Martínez Arboleda at the University of Leeds. His project of digitisation of poetry, Ártemis, compiles more than 100 high quality videos of Spanish poets and other Open Educational Resources. http://www.artemispoesia.com/ . He is the delegate in the UK of Crátera Revista de Crítica y Poesía Contemporánea , where he also publishes his work as translator from English into Spanish. He published his first volume of poetry in Spanish, Los viajes de Diosa (The Travels of Goddess), in 2015, as a response to the Great Recession, particularly in Spain. His second book, Goddess Summons The Nation, is a critique of the ideas of nation and capitalism, mainly in the British Brexit context. It incorporates voices of culprits, victims and heroes with mordacity and rhythm. It consists of 21 poems, 18 of which are originally written in English. It is available in print and kindle in Amazon and other platforms. Editor’s note: further information bio & academic activities can be found at this link: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/languages/staff/91/antonio-martinez-arboleda
 
 
 
 

 
 
Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a Spanish poet and translator. She has published seven poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar, Presencia en el Misterio, En el Oido del Viento, Hormigas en Diáspora and Jaccuzzi, as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and in both national and foreign magazines. She has received numerous awards. Editor’s Note: see also Poetry, National Literature Prize 2018, Francisca Aguirre, Translated from Spanish by Amparo Arróspide & Robin Ouzman Hislop

Homage to Francisca Aguirre – The Lullaby Poems (Translated from Spanish)

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Francisca Aguirre, Premio Nacional de las Letras 2018 El jurado la ha elegido 
“por estar su poesía (la más machadiana de la generación del medio siglo)
entre la desolación y la clarividencia, la lucidez y el dolor"

Francisca Aguirre, National Literature Prize 2018
The jury chose it "because its poetry is (the most Machadian* of the generation 
of the half century) between desolation and clairvoyance, lucidity and pain"

* In the tradition of Antonio Machado

https://elpais.com/cultura/2018/11/13

Francisca Aguirre was born in 1930 in Alicante, Spain, and fled with her family to France 
at the end of the Spanish Civil War, where they lived in political exile.  When the Germans 
invaded Paris in 1942, her family was forced to return to Spain, where her father, painter 
Lorenzo Aguirre, was subsequently murdered by Francisco Franco's regime.  
Aguirre published Ítaca (1972), currently available in English (Ithaca [2004]), when she was 
42 years old. Her work has garnered much critical success, winning the Leopoldo Panero, 
Premio Ciudad de Irún, and Premio Galliana, among other literary prizes.  
Aguirre is married to the poet Félix Grande and is the mother of poet Guadalupe Grande.



From "NANAS PARA DORMIR DESPERDICIOS"

LULLABIES TO LULL THROWN AWAYS

by FRANCISCA AGUIRRE

Translated by Amparo Arrospíde & Robin Ouzman Hislop ***

NANA DE LAS SOBRAS                                                                             A Esperanza y Manuel Rico Vaya

canción la de las sobras, eso sí
                      que era una nana para dormir el hambre.
Vaya canción aquella
                      que cantaba mi abuela con aquella voz
que era la voz de la misericordia
disfrazada de voz angelical.
                             Porque la voz de mi abuela
nos cantaba la canción de las sobras.
                             Y nosotras, que no conocíamos el pan,
cantábamos con ella que
                             las sobras de pan eran sagradas,
las sobras de pan nunca se tiran.

Siempre recordaré su hermosa voz
cantando aquella nana mientras el hambre nos dormía.
                                         **
LULLABY FOR LEFTOVERS                                                          To  Esperanza and Manuel Rico

Well, a leftovers song,
                    that truly was a lullaby to lull hunger to sleep.
Wow, that song 
                    my grandmother sang with a voice
that was the voice of mercy
disguised as the voice of an angel.
                              Because my grandmother´s voice
sang for us the leftovers song.
                              And we, who did not know bread,
sang together with her that
                              bread leftovers were holy,
bread leftovers shall never be thrown away.

I will always remember her beautiful voice
singing that lullaby while hunger lulled us to sleep.

                                                                                                       **

NANA DE LAS HOJAS CAÍDAS                                                                       
                                                                                                                       A Marián Hierro
Casi todo lo que se pierde tiene música,
                                                             una música oculta, inolvidable.
Pero las hojas, esas criaturas parlanchinas
que son la voz de nuestros árboles,
                    tienen, como la luz, el agua y las libélulas
una nana secreta y soñadora.
                    Lo que se pierde, siempre nos deja
                       un rastro misterioso y cantarín.

Las hojas verdes o doradas
              cantan su desamparo mientras juegan al corro.
Cantan mientras los árboles las llaman
como llaman las madres a sus hijos
sabiendo que es inútil, que han crecido
                     y que se han ido a recorrer el mundo.

                                                                                                      ****

LULLABY FOR FALLEN LEAVES
                                                                                                                     To Marián Hierro

Almost everything which is lost has a music,
                                                                     a hidden, unforgettable music.
But leaves, those chattering creatures
who are the voices of our trees
                       have -- like light, water and dragonflies --
a secret dreamy lullaby.
                                   That which is lost to us, always leaves
                                           the mysterious trace of its song.
Green or golden leaves
                        sing of their neglect as they dance their ring a ring of roses.
They sing while trees call to them
as mothers do calling their children
knowing it is futile, as they have grown up
                                     and left to travel the world over.
                                                                                          
                                                                                                                               **

NANA DE LAS CARTAS VIEJAS

Tienen el olor desvalido del abandono
y el tono macilento del silencio.
Son desperdicios de la memoria, residuos de dolor, 
                                                   y hay que cantarles muy bajito
para que no despierten de su letargo.
En ocasiones las manos se tropiezan con ellas
                                                  y el pulso se acelera
porque notamos que las palabras	
                                                 como si fueran mariposas
quieren bailar delante de nosotros
y volver a contarnos el secreto
                                                 que duerme entre sus páginas.
Son las abandonadas,
                                 los residuos de un tiempo de desdicha,
relatan pormenores de un combate
                                 y al rozarlas oímos el tristísimo andar
de los presos en los penales.

                                                                                                         **

LULLABY FOR OLD LETTERS

They give off the helpless smell of neglectfulness
and the emaciated tone of silence.
They are memory´s cast offs, residues of pain
                                                   and should be sung to in a low croon
so as not to awaken them from their lethargy.
Sometimes your hands chance upon them
                                                   and your pulse races
because we realize that words
                                                   wish to dance before us
as if they were butterflies
and tell us again the secret
                                                  sleeping inside their pages.
They are the neglected,
                                                  the remnants of unhappy times,
recounting the details of a struggle
                                                  and as we brush them we hear the saddest steps
of prisoners in jails.

                                                                                                          **

NANA DEL HUMO

La nana del humo tiene muchos detractores,
casi nadie quiere cantarla.
                                            Muchos dicen que el humo los ahoga,
otros piensan que eso de dormir al humo
                                            no les da buena espina,
que tiene algo de gafe.
                                   El humo no resulta de fiar:
en cuanto asoma su perfil oscuro
todo son malas conjeturas:
                                             se nos está quemando el bosque,
aquella casa debe de estar ardiendo.
El humo es un extraño desperdicio,
                                             tiene muy mala prensa.
Es un abandonado,
                                   es un incomprendido;
casi nadie recuerda que el humo es un vocero,
un triste avisador de lo que se nos avecina.
Y por eso, cuando lo escucho vocear con impotencia
yo le canto la nana del silencio
                                   para que no se sienta solo.
                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                       **

LULLABY FOR SMOKE

The lullaby for smoke doesn´t get many supporters,
almost nobody wants to sing its song.
                                               Many say smoke stifles them,
others think to lull smoke to sleep
                                               makes them queasy, 
that it´s a bit of a jinx.
                                  Smoke is not trustworthy:
as soon as it rears its dark head
it conjures up conjectures
                                                        -- a forest fire,
a house burning down.
Smoke is a weird remain,
                                             it´s got bad reports.
It´s a reject,
                                  it´s a misunderstood thing;
almost nobody remembers smoke is a herald,
a sad forwarner of what looms over us.
That´s why, when I hear it calling out helplessly,
I sing to it the lullaby for silence
                                             so that it doesn´t feel so lonely.


                                                                                                     ***
Translators:

Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a Spanish poet and translator. She has published 
seven poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos 
poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar, Presencia en el Misterio, En el Oido del Viento, 
Hormigas en Diáspora and Jaccuzzi, as well as poems, short stories and articles on 
literary and film criticism in anthologies and in both national and foreign magazines. 
She has received numerous awards. 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include 
All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist 
the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande 
and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. 
See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest 
Collected Poems Volume at  Next-Arrivals
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