Gerardo Diego
Novel
Translated from the Spanish by Francisco Aragón
for Paul Dermée
The garden gate has crossed its arms
The wind barks in a grove of trunks
A passing car whisks away the sobs
calming down the lake
You could say the sun
has made fun of the park
And here are three detectives
looking into the abduction
dusting the piano keys
for getaway prints
With every uncovered clue
a fake bird disappears into a building
and under intense questioning
a mute star stares down death
And on we go
The road never tires of departing
and returning alongside hills
It’s five in the afternoon
Water sprawls next to a stream
and a few miles away spring
The moon rushes to get there first
Where are the lovers
City corners hardly
said goodbye
see you tomorrow
when you saw the sudden
night leap from an elbow
jutting treacherous from a passing car
The clock on the tower enlarged its pupil
and confused cocks
lose track of the added hour
There’s a lump in every corner
and from the balcony hangs a lamp
With every step a passer-by takes
the light yields and the sky darkens
At last we’ve cornered the crook
A naïve clock confesses murder
And in the folds of the sobbing curtains
the moon bursts with passion
The city sleeps in the usual place
And at the scene of the crime
a spooked streetlight gazes at the jailed tree
Francisco Aragón reads “Novel”
A member of the so-called “generation of ’27,” Gerardo Diego (1896-1987) was the Spanish poet among his peers who first became interested in avant-garde poetics. The mode he adopted in his experimental poems was “creacionismo” or “literary cubism.” The piece published here was written in 1922 while living on the north coast of Spain in a bungalow on the beach. It forms part of his collection Handbook of Foams. An accomplished pianist and music critic, Diego went on to publish many books, and was an active editor including as the first anthologist of his co-hort. He earned his living as a high school French teacher. In 1979 he shared the Cervantes Prize—Spanish letters’ highest honor—with Jorge Luis Borges.
Francisco Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. He is the author of After Rubén (Red Hen Press, 2020), Glow of Our Sweat (Scapegoat Press, 2010) and Puerta del Sol (Bilingual Press, 2005), as well as editor of the anthology The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007). As a translator from the Spanish, Aragón has had a hand in a number of books, including volumes by Francisco X. Alarcón (1954-2016) and Federico García Lorca (1888-1936). More recently, he’s been rendering into English versions of Rubén Darío (1867-1916). His translations have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Chain, Chelsea, Jacket, Nimrod, and ZYZZYVA. For more information, visit: http://franciscoaragon.net