Severo Sarduy Translated from the Spanish by David Francis
if you make them spin orange LEMON cherry some over others LEMON cherry LEMON the invisible pieces cherry LEMON LEMON if they coincide cherry LEMON LEMON the segments LEMON orange LEMON that a framework fixes orange LEMON LEMON if once they stop LEMON cherry LEMON some over the others orange LEMON LEMON the invisible pieces orange LEMON LEMON their lines carry on after a dry thud LEMON LEMON LEMON cascade of coins
You will have built a body
Seguidillas
si las haces girar naranja LIMÓN cereza unas sobre otras LIMÓN cereza LIMÓN las piezas invisibles cereza LIMÓN LIMÓN si coinciden cereza LIMÓN LIMÓN los segmentos LIMÓN naranja LIMÓN que un adamiaje fija naranja LIMÓN LIMÓN si al detenerse LIMÓN cereza LIMÓN unas sobre otras naranja LIMÓN LIMÓN las invisibles piezas naranja LIMÓN LIMÓN se continúan sus líneas despúes de un golpe seco LIMÓN LIMÓN LIMÓN cascada de monedas
Hailing from Spain, a seguidilla can be a poetic form or a folk dance, known for its footwork. In the book, the poem appears in a series of lyrical pieces related to flamenco. The term seguidilla derives from seguida, and might be translated more literally as a “little ordering” or “sequencing,” delineating a method of flow. Translating Sarduy’s poem, I saw its words become a miniature, and new, slot machine. I loved lining its lemons up.
"I write in lines. The lines find their way on paper whether I overhear two boys insulting each other at the gas station, or see a gull cleaning her feet, or two old men playing dominoes on a hood of a car, or two young women kissing at the fish market. They become lines on receipts, on my hands, on a water bottle, on other people’s poems."
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“'The Meteor' starts in the far past, with a blackout: 'tutto annerò.' Annerò—that’s the past remote, a tense that doesn't exist in English. It indicates a past so far past that the present can’t touch it. But Pascoli means to infiltrate, undermine it—which is part of what compels me about the poem. It’s what compels me about translation, too: this vibrant failure of equivalence that brings the past into the present and present into the past."
