Statues with severed heads, temples burned and abandoned, children running amid the disaster… This poetry collection is threaded with fire, an attempt to reflect on iconoclasm and the worship of images.
At Zenda we present four poems, translated by Unai Velasco, from Notes for a Fire of the Eyes (La Bella Varsovia), by Gabriel Ventura.
***
In the realm of eyelidless children
the dream is an orphaned animal.
The wildest of them pierce it with spears,
they pelt it with stones
and let it bleed among peonies.
The sun sets.
The lips of the executioners turn black.
***
Lady of the animals,
great mother
identical
to the ash.
(Judicial stone of yes and no)
We have followed the trace of bones
to the foot of the mountain.
A dry crack
of radiance: a pristine frontier.
Vicious circle / closed circle / mouth
continues and sways.
Faithful caterpillar, devours
the nacre of the flower.
***
Language appears.
O: we have appeared
in language.
O: language has made us appear.
And the one who has no tongue, where does she go?
Where does she come from?
Who makes?
Will we come?
Could we even
have the voice to come,
to forget ourselves?
The error.
The tree of error.
Shell
power.
A source that never fails,
that we are,
let us be…
In the place.
***
The possibility of concentrating the pain of the world
(in a single point)
the pain of the names
of the ashes
of the fires
is impossible
feverish iris veils
the universal acid
of despair
burning the elbows
we have no right
to pronounce hell
when words are
the boats of death
lily of the sky mother of the deaf
that you chew green crystals
save us from the eyes
the eyes
it is terrible
but they would endure
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Author: Gabriel Ventura. Title: Notes for a Fire of the Eyes. Translation: Unai Velasco. Publisher: La Bella Varsovia. Sold by: All Your Books.
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