Traducciones de Toothsome poems by Art Zilleruelo de Christopher Perkins

Cubetas

Parece cordones de petróleo crudo
están cayendo del cielo
porque cordones de petróleo crudo
están cayendo del cielo.

Estábamos preparados
para descender en las canaletas
con tazones y cubetas,
para raspar estas cosas preciosas y fugarse,
como automovilistas tirándolo en el parque
y asfixiando la interestatal con sus cuerpos
atiborrando sus abrigos con el dinero
del choque de un camión blindado.

No estábamos preparados
para el hombre que emergió
de cuero y mezclilla del Jaguar negro,
produjo del bolsillo de su chaqueta
una botella de Coca-Cola Mexicana,
que vació en un solo trago
y re-llenandola en la fuente a la que todos nos agachamos,
luego bajó de rodillas y codos
poniendo sus labios al chorro,
y zampar hasta llenarse, permanecer quieto un momento
como una barcaza en muelle seco,
luego camina con pasos pesados
subiendo la colina, achicándose con la distancia
y vacilando en la bruma, una mancha
de extraña puntuación de un guión
que todos estaríamos aprendiendo pronto.








Buckets

It looks like ribbons of crude oil
are falling from the sky
because ribbons of crude oil
are falling from the sky.

We were prepared
to descend upon the gutters
with mugs and buckets,
to scrape up this precious stuff and scarper,
like motorists throwing it into park
and choking the interstate with their bodies
to stuff their coats with cash
from the crash of an armored truck.

We were not prepared
for the man who emerged
in leather and denim from a black Jag,
produced from his jacket pocket
a bottle of Mexican Coke,
which he drained in one draught
and re-filled at the fount we all bent to,
then went down on knees and elbows
to apply his lips to the current,
to gulp himself full, to lie still a moment
like a barge in a dry dock,
then walk with heavy steps
up the hill, shrinking with distance
and wavering in haze, a blot
of strange punctuation from a script
we might all be learning soon.









 
Star Stuff

for Carl Sagan

We are exhausted.

We stared too long at stars,
spilled too much ink reaching
for what would burn us if it could.

Flesh of their flesh,
we are orphans, nonetheless;
spawn of indifferent
fathers who never learned our names.

We are exhaust. We are
dust that suffers.






 
Cosas de estrellas

para Carl Sagan

Estamos extenuados.

Mirando por tanto tiempo a las estrellas,
derramado tanta tinta atrapando
lo que nos quemaría si pudiera.

Carne de su carne,
somos huérfanos, a pesar de ello;
semilla de indiferentes
padres que nunca aprendieron nuestros nombres.

Somos gases de escape. Somos
polvo que sufre.
 









Art Zilleruelo is the author of Weird Vocation (Kattywompus Press, 2015), The Last Map (Unsolicited Press, 2017), and Toothsome (Spartan Press, 2020). His poetry has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Cherry Tree, Pleiades, and other journals, and his Wordsworth criticism appears in Partial Answers: A Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas. He is Coordinator of the Writing Center at Massasoit Community College. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Northeastern University, a Poetry M.F.A. from Wichita State University, and a B.A. in English from Penn State. He serves as a poetry reader for Lily Poetry Review. He lives with his wife Meg McCormick in Massachusetts.