Three Poems

Abstract

20 WLT JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 2015 photo : flickr . com / junonic Opposites The perfection with which the body springs from the diving board, the certainty with which it makes a scissor movement and cuts the water defeats without any work and without realizing all the babbling, advances, retreats the yes and no of the word thought and not spoken spoken and not thought. Again, the swimmer leaps. Watch him. Be silent. The Window Can you see there was no total of distinct days and nights and minutes? Only one point, unchanging, holds the gaze. It does not move although waves fall, blue bubbles drift down, skies clean and round, restless radiant days fall and fall. No matter that the nights blow winds of darkness dull noise and points of silence, it does not change, it does not move. Always, you appear at the same window. poetry Three Poems by Circe Maia WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 21 photos : dan h . fuller Circe Maia is the author of nine books of poetry. She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1932 but has lived most of her life in the northern city of Tacuarembó. Her collected poems, Circe Maia: Obra poética, was published in 2011. In 2013 she was awarded the Delmira Agustini Medal of Art by Uruguayan president José Mujica. Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of thirteen books of fiction, memoir, and poetry and editor of América invertida: An Anthology of Younger Uruguayan Poets. Wet Grapes . . . Wet grapes, the scent of vacations, on the palm of the hand like a spinning top washed, pure and black heart of the night. How in time with us, your beat, and how we felt bliss sometimes, strong dense, almost tangible, no one knew from where. Putting the cloth on the table – happiness was made of linen or glass and china and during the dinner, it flew from one side to the other, over the light of the glances, from a glass to the table, from bread to the water. Everyone heard its beat in the conversations in the comfortable silences, in greetings to each: see you tomorrow! Now everyone has gone to bed and it is as if the smiling glance will never wake again, they flew, the summer nights and brilliant wet fruit flew like quick steps on the sidewalk and what came – who knows from where – was happiness, dark night wind on the skin of the face. Translations from the Spanish By Jesse Lee Kercheval ...