GERMAIN DROOGENBROODT (edited by)
AWAITING HIM
In the morning
I wake up like a gazelle
enjoying myself in the mountainside,
waiting for you.
At midday,
buried among flowers,
I start to draw
your name in the womb of the river’s water.
At twilight,
full of love,
I bend
and then I wait for you
till you come at night,
till you come to perch on me like a bird
and undulate your body
like a flag
over my body.
© GIOCONDA BELLI (Nicaragua, 1948 – )
Translation: Germain Droogenbroodt – Stanley H. Barkan
*
Love
My soul was a light blue dress, the color of the sky;
I left it on a rock by the sea
and naked I came to you, looking like a woman.
And like a woman I sat at your table
and drank a toast in wine, inhaling the scent of
some roses.
You found me beautiful, like something you saw in
a dream,
I forgot everything, I forgot my childhood and my
homeland,
I only knew that your caresses held me captive.
And smiling you held up a mirror and asked me
to look.
I saw that my shoulders were made of dust and
crumbled away,
I saw that my beauty was sick and wished only to –
disappear.
Oh, hold me tight in your arms so close
so that I need nothing more.
EDITH SÖDERGRAN (Sweden, 1892-1923)
*
DO YOU KNOW?
Do you know?
you said
I never
never was so happy like this night
Never. And you told it
at the very moment
I decided not to tell you
you know
I probably deceave myself
but I believe
and it appears to me
that this is the most beautiful night of my life.
IDEA VILARIÑO (URUGUAY 1920-2009)
Translation: Germain Droogenbroodt
Artwork: Franco Blandino
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