Rei Berroa (Dominicana, 1949)
Is Emeritus Professor in Spanish at George Mason University. He has authored numerous books of poems, poetry anthologies,and critical research. Criticism: El cuerpo hendido: Poéticas de la m/p/aternidad (México: Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, 2020) and Aproximaciones a la literatura dominicana. 2 vols. (Santo Domingo, 2008 and 2009). Poetry: Sonpalomas pensajeras (La Paz-Santa Cruz: Bolivia, 2023), Librode los dones ylos bienes(Mexico, 2013; Caracas, 2010), Eufemistica per viveretranquilli (Trieste, Italy, 2011). For the 2014 DominicanBook Fairin NewYork, dedicatedto his work, the Ministry ofCulture published the552-page anthology of his work: De quites y querencias:antojología de poemasy poéticas(1974-2014). He received the Trieste International Poetry Award for life achievement in poetry (Trieste, 2011) and the Mihai Eminescu Prize of Romania (Craiova, 2012). He has been partially translated into some 40 languages. He coordinates each year the Poetry Marathon of Teatro de la Luna in Washington, DC, and the World Poetry Day Festival.
‑I‑
¿Qué peso es
el que lleva en la camisa
este berroa[1]
que se ha puesto
la cabeza del revés?
)Cómo piensa que va a encontrarse así
en esta edad de partido y oficina?
Y si viene y nos cuestiona
sobre el mundo o sobre el aire,
)qué le vamos a decir al pobre iluso?
)Cómo indicarle que no debe preguntar
si es que ya sabe?
Y al venir y plantarse a nuestra vera
con su olor a vino y carcajada,
)por qué se rasca
el corolario de la vida,
llega tarde a sus reuniones,
se olvida de pagar sus hipotecas,
sus deudas surrealistas,
y el abrazo que le debe a Lautréamont?
Pequeño funcionario que imagina,
no sabe este burócrata
qué parte del horario sólo existe
de la noche al esqueleto
y cuál otra le podría
dejar la mañana boquiabierta,
temblando de rocío,
como un dios que va a pecar.
-I-
What weight
does this berroa[2]
bear on his back,
that it has made him
wear his head backwards?
How can he think he will find himself like that
in this age of political parties, offices for profit?
And if he comes and questions us
on the world or on the air,
what are we going to say to this poor deluded one?
How do we explain to him you shouldn't ask
if you already know?
And when he comes and plops down right next to us
with his smell of wine and laughter,
why does he scratch at
the corollary of life,
arrive at his meetings late,
forget to make his mortgage payments,
his anarchist debts,
and the hug he owes Lautréamont?
Minor functionary of the imagination,
this bureaucrat does not know
which part of his timetable only exists
from the night to his skeleton
and which other part might
leave the morning open‑mouthed,
dew‑shaking
like a god who's going to sin.
CÁNTARO QUE CAE
A pesar de que el barro es su materia
y le contiene
un hombre no es simplemente un cántaro que cae
vertigoso,
estridente,
compungido
sobre lo duro de la tierra
para luego quebrarse en mil
bondades
inalcanzables todas
para la delgadez del aire.
FALLING URN
Even though clay is his material
and contains him
a man is more than an urn falling
shrill
dizzy
remorseful
on the hardened earth
only to break in a thousand shards
of goodness
inaccessible
to the fragility of air.
[Translated by Tracy Lewis with the author]
TRES FRAGMENTOS CONTRA LA ESPESURA
‑1‑
Es el miedo a Soledad
lo que socava a los humanos.
Igual que Dios creó el mundo
por un terrible pavor a quedarse
para siempre al desamparo de la noche,
sin poder besar a nadie a su antojo en el ombligo,
en contra,
como es obvio,
de su cárcel de Unidad,
así también,
en los inicios,
se dijeron los amantes:
No es bueno que Dios sea soledad.
Amémonos.
Quizá podamos sacarle del vacío.
Desde entonces,
y convocada por el hombre y la mujer al desnudarse,
ha venido cayendo una creciente claridad
sobre lo espeso de la tierra
y Dios ha consolidado su puesto
y dice que es familia.
‑2‑
Dios no nos oye
no nos puede oír como se dice
que lo hiciera antaño.
Se echa a reír detrás de la puerta
en la habitación en donde le hemos confinado
y no sabemos bien por qué hemos querido tenerle allí
tan ampliamente y a su aire
a qué se deberá que no nos oiga
que luego escape tan a gusto por entre la ventana
que deje el caserón abandonado y las flores
del jardín muriéndose de espanto
y que se marche por ahí
sin saber nosotros adónde va
o por qué
después de esta invención nuestra peculiar y necesaria
le hayamos permitido
ausentarse de la leve inconveniencia
de ser como nosotros los humanos.
)Nos odiará Dios por haberle creado
a imagen y medida de nuestras pesadumbres?
‑3‑
En los inicios,
y siguiendo la creencia natural
que tenía con respecto a lo divino,
deambulaba el hombre por la vida
sin saber por qué ni para qué.
Pero un día, en medio de la noche,
dio con otro ser
que lo complementaba.
Después de conocerla y descubrirse
el hombre se olvidó de Dios.
Cuentan que otro tanto le sucedió a ella
que, por caminos muy distintos,
había venido sufriendo
las mismas vehemencias.
Y es que
sólo la carne
nos libera de la divinidad.
THREE FRAGMENTS AGAINST DENSITY
‑1‑
It is the fear of Solitude
that undermines humans.
In the same way God created the world
out of a terrible fear of being
forever left in the abandon of night,
without being able to kiss anyone, at Her whim, in the navel,
against,
as is obvious, Her prison of Unity,
so also,
in the beginning, lovers said to themselves:
It is not good that God be Solitude.
Let us love each other.
Perhaps we can save Her from the void.
Since then,
summoned by man and woman taking off their clothes,
a growing clarity has descended
over the density of the earth,
and God has consolidated Her position
and says that She is family.
‑2‑
God does not hear us.
He cannot hear us, as they say
He used to in ancient times.
He bursts into laughter behind the door
of the room where we have confined Him
and do not know why we wanted to keep Him there
so spaciously and free to wander,
why does He not hear us,
why does He so eagerly escape through the window,
leave His house abandoned and the flowers
in the garden dying of fear
and why does He walk away from here
without our knowing where He is going
or why,
after we have allowed this invention of ours,
so peculiar and necessary,
to absent Himself from the mild inconvenience
of being like ourselves, human.
Will God hate us for having created Him
in the image and by the measure of our own suffering?
‑3‑
In the beginning,
and following the natural belief
that he had with respect to the divine,
man wandered through life
without knowing why, or for what.
But one day, in the middle of the night
he met another being who complemented him.
After knowing her and discovering himself,
man forgot God.
They say the same thing happened to her
who, by very different roads,
had come through
the same suffering.
And it is that
only the flesh
liberates us from divinity.
[Translated by Tom Jones and the author]
[1]berroa = “pequeño zarzal en el campo” o también “el que quiere ser bueno” en lengua vasca. [2] berroa: = "little bush in the fields" or also "the one who wants to be good," in Basque language.