Rafael Cadenas
Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Cabot Black
You appear,
you undress,
you enter the light,
you wake the colors,
you crown the waters,
you begin moving through time like a liqueur,
you finish off the most blinding of shores,
you predict if the world will continue or fall,
you conjure the earth to keep pace with your molten slowness,
you reign in the center of this conflagration
and from the first
to the seventh day
your body an arrogant
palace
where lives
the
tremor.


You

Tú apareces,
tú te desnudas,
tú entras en la luz,
tú despiertas los colores,
tú coronas las aguas,
tú comienzas a recorrer el tiempo como un licor,
tú rematas la más cegadora de las orillas,
tú predices si el mundo seguirá o va a caer,
tú conjuras la tierra para que acompase su ritmo a tu lentitud de lava,
tú reinas en el centro de esta conflagración
y del primero
al séptimo día
tu cuerpo es un arrogante
palacio
donde vive
el
temblor.
from the book THE LAND OF MILD LIGHT / Arrowsmith Press
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
Rafael Cadenas' poem YOU was mesmerizing from the start. His music, word choice: his poems are almost like paintings; what he leaves out resonates just as much as with what he leaves in. And as with all poems, you search for the just-right word; first the poet and then the translator.
 
Martín Espada Wins the 2021 National Book Award in Poetry

"The National Book Foundation announced the winners of its 2021 National Book Awards in Young People's Literature, Translated Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction. Martín Espada has won the award in Poetry."

via LITERARY HUB
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
What Sparks Poetry:
David Blair On W. H. Auden's "Petition"

"Naturally, I enjoyed the subtle rhymes so much that I did not even notice them, nor the poem's sonnet form, a perfect spell working on my barely conscious mind because here, in the last line and a half of the poem, was a sentiment so sudden that I could, without embarrassment, sport around with it typed and taped to my binder on a strip of paper, a fortune cookie fortune, a restaurant's first dollar: 'look shining at / New styles of architecture, a change of heart.'"
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
View in browser

You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. 
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2021 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency