Efraín Huerta: Some minimal poems, from 'Poemínimos Completos'

Translations from Spanish by Jerome Rothenberg 

CALDERONIANA

 

I was

A fool

& what

I loved

Has made

Me

      Into

            Two fools

 

 

NO HELPING IT

 

And from

Us

The

Beatified

Poets

Ariseth

The

Gloom

Of the

            Womb

 

 

INSECTARIUM

 

A

Place

Where

The

Sectarians

Are

Very

              In

 

 

FEROCITY

 

From the

Fallen

Poetree

Everyone

Makes

                        Ashes

 

 

GIDEANA

 

Not

Having

Had

The guts

To kill himself

            Decides

            He’s dead

            Already

 

 

SALEM

 

As

Easy

As

Finding

A

Witch

In a

            Haystack

 

 

THE BARBARIAN

 

Always

I’ve

Sought

To descend

As far

Up

As possible

 

 

STERILITY

 

Theoretician

Of everything

Fighter

For nothing

 

 

A POEM OF SHIPWRECKS

 

1/

Me here

Navigating

Through the

Civic

Waves

 

2/

Me here

No longer struggling

In the

Icy waters

Of the ego’s

Calculating

Mind

 

3/

That one

Drowns alone

And lonely

In a

Glass

Of water

 

4/

Then I

Keep on

Swimming

In betwixt

            Two waters

 

5/

One day

It won’t be raining

Into buckets

It will just be

Raining

Buckets

 

6/

You always

End up

Kicking off

Just like

            A drowned man

 

7/

IMPOSSIBILITY

 

For now

I cannot go

To San Miguel

De Allende

 

I don’t have

The change to spare

Not even for

The landscape

 

 

THREATS

 

Blessèd be

The humble

Poets

Because

From them

Will rise

The kingdoms

Of the

Grass

 

 

SAINT FRANCIS (I)

a paraphrase 

Everything’s

Fucked

Up

Except

For

Love

 

[NOTE.  Born in the same year as his fellow poet Octavio Paz, Huerta (1914-1982) has come to be recognized as a pivotal figure in modern Mexican poetry.  His influence on later Mexican poets continues to grow, & if the Poemínimos aren’t typical of his prolific work in poetry and poetics,

they’re a contribution nonetheless to the creation of a minimal & “impure” poetry as one aspect of 20th & 21st-century experimental modernism worldwide.  The translations-in-progress that I’m showing here are a reflection of my own pleasure in his work over all (poemínimos & poemáximos), behind which there’s also the following account by Huerta himself:

 

I believe that every poem is a world.  A world & something still more special.  A sealed-off territory immune to interference from those without credentials, the censors & the lyrically disabled.  A poemínimo is a world, yes, but sometimes I have forebodings that I’ve discovered a new galaxy & that light years serve me only as a point of reference, a very fuzzy reference, because the poemínimo is like the turning of a corner or the next stop on the subway line.  A poemínimo is a crazy butterfly, captured sometimes, sometimes crammed into a straitjacket.  And you may no longer touch it, that’s the thing.  That crazy thing, that thing that’s unpredictable, that plops down on you or just rubs up against you, still makes sense – as it has done for you already.”

 

Writes Octavio Paz: “Efraín Huerta has a central place in the poetry of the modern city.”  

 

And something more than that. (J.R.)]