This book gathers ten indispensable authors from the Canary Islands in a carefully crafted bilingual edition translated by Margaret Hart. The poetry collection offers a deep immersion into island memory, identity, and the Atlantic landscape beyond tourist clichés.
At Zenda we offer three poems from El lado oculto de la duna / The Dark Side of the Dune (El sastre de Apollinaire).
***
LICORICE DAYS
Ángel Sánchez
nothing in the hands
nothing in the pockets
this black and linear vigil
greatly preferred to bread
of the black market
each morning in the schoolyard
raise or lower banners, singing the face to the sun with the shirt
the tranquility dismantled
of all free men
licorice days
nothing in the hands nothing
in the pockets
the soldiery enjoys the truce
without passion
basta una mirada a nuestro derredor
para entender qué bien haría
a esta orilla del tormes escamoso
una guerra edificante
(From Naumaquia, Salamanca, 1971).
***
FOURTH MONTH: DAY 1
Cecilia Domínguez Luis
I want to know what is written about us
in this sky hidden by opals and palm shoots.
Why do doors sprout in cities,
when you come toward me through the realms of the jaguar and the skylark.
I look at the stairs and recall a blue gaze
that came and went in gusts, like the wind among the trees
—a girl at the edge of fire and the sacred, distant as your face when you sleep—,
I want to know why your gaze embraces the ghost that detaches from me
and chooses it, and makes me pay drop by drop, its ravings.
If it is late to sow I lay out the most perverse stones of your current.
My window holds on a thread of fog,
while I watch the parade of boats,
with a wandering look seeking you in the waters.
(From Cuaderno del orate, Ed. La Palma, 2014).
***
QUADRILATERAL
Federico J. Silva.
The Casa Marina Hotel in Key West
is pleased to present
the bout for the Florida regional title
Writers on the Rocks.
On the left, red trunks,
37 years old, 6 feet 1 inch,
190 pounds, author of Adiós a las armas,
Ern Hemingway.
On the right, blue trunks,
56 years old, 6 feet 2 inches,
220 pounds, attorney for Hartford Accident
and Indemnity Company
and poet,
Wall Stevens.
Ernie, an amateur and a braggart,
was in his nature,
boasted: any half-man
can own the ten-cent Mercury.
Even this bartender
knew that Elsie Stevens
was the face of that coin,
the most beautiful girl in Reading.
Wall, who firmly believed
in poetry as a destructive force,
took her on: I would love to have the great man here now
and knock him out with a single punch.
One rainy night.
Hem appeared here.
An uppercut was the first blow
of the three times the poet
kissed the canvas and took the count.
A pool of blood.
I cried: I want a fair fight.
Ernest took off his glasses
and Wallace delivered the announced crochet
to his jaw.
The Illinois man had a donkey’s jaw.
Five days in hospital:
one swollen eye, a broken hand
in two places.
Over drinks they settled it.
Elsie could not find out.
The supreme fiction:
Stevens had fallen down the stairs
and anyone who says otherwise lies.
Wally never wanted to remember it.
—————————————
Authors: Ángel Sánchez, Cecilia Domínguez Luis, Federico J. Silva, Ricardo Hernández Bravo, Pedro Flores, Silvia Rodríguez, Juan Jesús Hernández López, Tina Suárez Rojas, Rafael-José Díaz, Acerina Cruz. Title: The Dark Side of the Dune. Publisher: The Tailor of Apollinaire. Sales: All Your Books.