Vox Populi

Translated by John Samuel Tieman and Paola de Santiago Haas

The Goring And The Death


At five in the afternoon.
It was five in the afternoon sharp.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A basket of lime already at hand
at five in the afternoon.
All the rest was death and just death
at five in the afternoon.

The wind blew the cotton wool away
at five in the afternoon.
And the rust seeded crystal and nickel
at five in the afternoon.
The dove and the leopard in a fight
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a bare shaft
at five in the afternoon.
The low tones of a bass began
at five in the afternoon.
The bells of arsenic and the smoke
at five in the afternoon.
On the corners groups of silence
at five in the  afternoon.
And the bull alone his heart upright!
at five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming
at five in the afternoon,
when the bull ring was covered with iodine
at five in the afternoon,
death laid eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon sharp.

A coffin with wheels is the bed
at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes sound in his ear
at five in the afternoon.
The bull bellowed at the front of the coffin
at five in the afternoon.
The room was iridescent with agony
at five in the afternoon.
From a distance comes the gangrene
at five in the afternoon.
The shaft of a lily in the green groins
at five in the afternoon.
The wounds burned like suns
at five in the afternoon,
and the crowd broke the windows
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Oh that terrible five in the afternoon!
It was five on every clock!
It was five in the shadow of the afternoon!


***


Bloodshed


I don't want to see it!

Tell the moon to rise,
I don't want to see the blood
of Ignacio in the sand.

I don't want to see it!

The moon wide open,
horse of motionless clouds,
and the gray plaza of the dream
with willows on the barriers.

I don't want to see it!
For my memory burns.
Warn the jasmines
with their small whiteness.

I don't want to see it!

The old world cow
who passed her sad tongue
over a snout of blood
spilled on the sand
and the bulls of Guisando,
near death and near stone,
howling for two centuries
tired of stepping on the earth.
No.
I don't want to see it!

Ignacio climbs into the stands
with his death slung over his shoulders.
He looks for the dawn
and the dawn was no more.
He searches for his confident profile,
and the dream disorients him.
He looked for his beautiful body
and he found his blood open.
Don't tell me to look!
I don't want to feel the blood gush
every time with less strength;
that gush that illuminates
the stands and spills
over the corduroy and the leather
of the thirsty crowd.
Who screams at me to see it!
Don't tell me to look at it!

He didn't close his eyes
when he saw the horns close,
but the terrible mothers
lifted their heads.
And through the cattle ranches
there was an air of secret voices
that cried to celestial bulls,
herdsmen of pale mist.

There was no prince in Seville
who could compare to him,
no sword like his sword,
no heart so true.
Like a river of lions
his marvelous strength,
and like a torso of marble
his prudence engraved.
Air of an Andalusian Rome
gilded his head
where his laughter was a spikenard
of salt and intelligence.
What a great toreador in the plaza!
What a great rustic in the mountain range!
How smooth with the sheaves!
How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling in the provincial fair!
How tremendous with the last
banderillas of darkness.

But now he sleeps without end.
Now the mosses and the grasses
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.
And his blood now comes singing:
singing past swamps and prairies,
sliding along horns frozen,
vacillating soulless in the fog,
stumbling with its thousand hooves
like a long, dark, sad language
in order to form a puddle of agony
next to the Guadalquivir of the stars.

Oh white wall of Spain!
Oh black bull of sorrow!
Oh stiff blood of Ignacio!
Oh nightingale in his veins!

No.
I don't want to see it!
No chalice can hold it,
no swallows can drink it,
there is no frost of light that cools it,
there is no song nor downpour of lilies,
no crystal cup to cover it with silver.
No.
I don't want to see it!


***


The Body Before Us

The rock is a forehead where the dreams moan
without having curved water nor frozen cypresses.
The rock is a shoulder for carrying time
with trees of tears and ribbons and planets.

I have seen gray rain flowing toward the waves
raising their tender riddled arms,
so as not to be hunted down by the lying rock
that frees its limbs without soaking the blood.

Because the rock catches seeds and clouds,
skeletons of larks and wolves of the half-light,
but gives no sound, no crystals, no fire,
save bull rings and bull rings and rings without walls.

And now on the stone lies Ignacio the well born.
It's over: So what's happening? Consider his figure:
death has covered him with pale sulfur
and dressed him with head of a dark minotaur.

That's that. The rain penetrates his mouth.
The insane air leaves his hollow chest.
And love, soaked with the tears of snow,
warms on the summit of the cattle ranches.

What are they saying? A silence with stinking reposes,
We are with a body before us that vanishes,
with a clear form that had nightingales
and we see it filling with fathomless holes.

Who crumples the shroud? There's no truth to what it says.
Nobody sings here, nor weeps at the corner,
nobody digs in his spurs, nor frightens off a snake.
Here all I want is a pair of round eyes,
in order to see that body that will not rest.

I want to see here the men of the hard voice.
Those that break horses and break rivers:
the men whose skeleton rings and sings
with a mouth full of sun and flint.

Here I want to see them. In front of the stone.
In front of this body with the reins shattered.
I want them to show me where there's an exit
for this captain tied by death.

I want them to teach me a weeping like the river
that has sweet mists and steep banks,
in order to take the body of Ignacio and lose it
without hearing the redoubled panting of the bulls.

Let it be lost in the round bullring of the moon,
an immobile bull that poses as a grieving girl;
let it be lost in the night without the song of the fish
and into the white weeds of frozen smoke.

I don't want them to hide his face with handkerchiefs
so he may get used to the death he carries.
Go, Ignacio. Feel no more the hot bellows.
Sleep, fly, rest. Even the sea dies.


***


Absent Soul

Neither the bull nor the fig tree know you,
neither the horses nor the ants of your house.
Neither the child nor the afternoon know you
because you have died forever.

The back of the stone does not know you,
nor the black satin where you destroy yourself.
Your mute memory does not know you
because you have died forever.

Autumn will come with a conch,
a grape of fog and a gathering of mountains,
but no one will want to look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

Because you have died forever,
like all the dead of the Earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a pile of bloodless dogs.

No one knows you. No. But I sing to you.
I sing for your silhouette and your grace.
The memorable ripeness of your insight.
Your appetite for death, the taste of death's mouth.
The sadness of your valiant joy.

It will take a long time to be born, if there is ever born
an Andalusian so clear, so rich in adventure.
I sing your elegance with words that moan
and I recall a sad breeze through the olive trees.

                                                                                                                                 
Translation copyright 2019 John Samuel Tieman and Paola de Santiago Haas.