>> This next poem is called Adivinanza which means riddle in English and is a poem
about news, it's about what you read in newspapers.
It's about the front lines in the newspaper which you read almost every single day,
which I read almost every single day.
[? I want to ?] say something about the others.
Now that I listened to that poem in English,
I thought of the [inaudible] lost in the others, which is too bad.
So this is a, I guess, in a way, this is a political poem
but I don't know what political means in terms of the poetical.
So that's something that maybe you'll have to decide.
Adivinanza.
Ahora los están matando.
Mira el cadáver abultado en la zanja.
Ahora los echan de la ciudad.
Velos correr hacia el peaje con la mano entrometida en un bolsillo sin remiendos.
Ahora los tientan con un negocio, la maquinaria virtual detrás del mundo,
resollando como un primer motor, aniquilado por la bruma larga y rizada que oculta al sol con su
máscara de nieve.
Ahora los fustigan con letanías de justicia,
antiguas y quebradas por el chasquido de una mandíbula cuyo febril hueso se apresuró a dar
la mordida y acabó cubierta con el leve resquemor de su polvo.
Ahora nos callan con una elocuencia que desconocen,
nada quiso el mago con la boca llena,
nada quiso decir acerca del idioma que se iba filtrando por sus colmillos,
como un trobar clus inventado por el paladar,
entre la frase breve de ayer y la cláusula más remota de una plegaria.
Ahora les clavan epítetos con cada pausa del aire, rey del halo,
duende del alma, maestro de lo bueno y lo bello.
Ahora los agotan con ideales opacos, espejos de sombras sin el marco sólido de estaño,
sin la cara envuelta en su gesto.
Ahora los colman de premios por la honra de un pueblo,
por la carrera de obstáculos, por la moral indecisa.
Ahora los persiguen y los llaman y a veces los rompen al alba, cuando andan en este campo,
afincados en un recoveco, simulando con sus semejantes desde siempre, sin turbulencia,
el breñal quieto a pesar de la soltura con que los animales atraviesan el baldío como si
fuera una extensión de su pelambre.
Y viene lo peor, viene el pronóstico de cada día.
Su pan, su circo y luego generaciones y generaciones.
The microphone.
Sorry.
>> Something that I really love about Tedi's work and that I also love
about translating her work is this classical sensitivity that lends, I think a calmness
to a poem that makes it feel timeless even at the same time it seems contemporary and I think,
you know, we definitely hear that in this poem.
Also something that you'll note just like me here at the course in the poem,
I got it with the others as a fact that I think reading Tedi's poetry certainly
in translating, it makes me a better reader.
I've always, I'm having to expand my reading because of the enormous reading
that she has done and -- the depth of her understanding of that reading.
So thank you for that.
I feel like I have to adjust this.
So [inaudible].
But, so that's why I'm not looking at her while I'm saying these wonderful things about her.
But I appreciate that so much.
And I think you hear that just very lightly here, you hear the word -
Have the words trobar clus which in English are trobar clus.
And trobar clus is a reference to basically the ballads of the troubadours
and to a specific kind of a literary -- I don't want to say it,
a sort of a verse form, a part of a [inaudible] ballad.
So I hope with these and many things, if you, you know, are interested,
that they will also expand your reading as they did mine.
A riddle. Now they kill them, see the corpse bloated in the ditch.
Now they vanish them from the city, see them running for the toll booth,
hands intruding in their shabby pockets.
Now they tempt them with commerce, the virtual machinery behind the world,
panting like a primordial motor, annihilated by the long and wispy haze
that hides the sun with its snowy mask.
Now they whip them with litanies of justice, ancient and shattered
by the snapping jaw whose feverish bone couldn't wait to bite,
finally coming to rest in the light rancor of its dust.
Now they silence them with an unknown eloquence,
the sorcerer with his mouth full would do nothing,
would say nothing about the language leaking from his eye teeth
like a trobar clus invented by the pallet.
Somewhere between yesterday's brief phase and prayers most distant claws.
Now they stab them with epithets in each airy pause, king of halos,
soul's goblin, master of goodness and beauty.
Now they exhaust them with opaque ideals, shadowy mirrors, lacking a sturdy tin frame
and the face enveloped by its gesture.
Now they heap them with prizes for a people's honour,
for the obstacle course, for dubious morality.
Now they hunt them and call for them and sometimes break them
at dawn while they walk this field, find a quiet place to hide,
pretending along with their fellows as they always have, no turbulence,
the thicket still in spite of the animals fluently crossing the wasteland,
as if it were an extension of their skins
and then comes the worst, comes the forecast of every day.
Its bread, its circus, then generations and generations.