El libro de las puertas / Alfredo Silva Estrada

The Book of Doors

to Luisa Palacios

Et par la porte ouverte
La perspective du hasard
Pierre Reverdy


1
the closest door:
a beginning block opens


2
from a threshold of unfelt things
doors of the five senses


3
to be born in the strangeness of knocking at a door


4
may it be the door
between sky and earth


5
robust memory doors
for the inner fire


6
listen to eternal chance
at the trembling door


7
doors that drop
a horizon in our hands


8
to love the light that unfolds through the door


9
infinitely, the eyes
through the half-opened door


10
some other avid door
while we taste our bread and the unpronounceable


11
what doors grow from earth
when we enjoy our earth-being?


12
o door sustained by knowledge of air!


13
secret scent of true earth
carried by the glowing door


14
maybe there is an absent door
moving calmly


15
and chance
--in pairs, after all--
as a friendly door




Translator’s note: Poet, essayist and translator Alfredo Silva Estrada was born in Caracas in 1933. He has published several collections of poetry, including most recently: Por los respiraderos del día / En un momento dado (Monte Ávila Editores, 1998) and Al través (Angria Ediciones, 2000). In 1997 he was awarded Venezuela's Premio Nacional de Literatura. Silva Estrada lives in Caracas and recently published his translations into Spanish of the work of Lebanese poet Salah Stétié.




{Alfredo Silva Estrada, Acercamientos, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1991 }