R.I.P. Jorge Eduardo Eielson

Room on Fire

Lost in a black waltz, oh always
Always between my shadow and the terrible
Cleanliness of the stars, I touch the center
Of a silk lightning bolt, I shout
Amid the large living flowers,
I roll through the legs of oxen, desolate.
Oh circles of mire, material voids!
Will I set you aflame one day,
Will I erase the sun from the sky, the sea
From the water? Or will I cry perhaps
Facing the cold natural cycles, as though facing a blind,
Vast, useless answered telephone?

*

Via Veneto

I wonder
if I truly
have hands
if I really possess
a head and two feet
and not merely gloves
and shoes and a hat
and why I feel
so pure
even more pure yet
and closer to death
when I take off the gloves
the hat and the shoes
as though taking off my hands
my head and my feet

*

[the purest machine will exist]

the purest machine will exist
a perfect copy of itself
and it will have a thousand green eyes
and a thousand scarlet lips
it will be useless
but it will have your name
oh eternity


—Jorge Eduardo Eielson (Peru 1924- Italy 2006)


(English versions translated from Las ínsulas extrañas: Antología de la poesía en lengua española, Barcelona, España: Galaxia Gutenberg/Círculo de Lectores, 2002.)