Efra�n Huerta: Some Minimal Poems, from �Poem�nimos Completos�

Translations from Spanish by Jerome Rothenberg

calderoniana 

I was

A fool
& what
I loved
Has made
Me
      Into
           Two fools

no helping it

And from

Us
The
Beatified
Poets
Ariseth
The
Gloom
Of the
            Womb

insectarium

A

Place
Where
The
Sectarians
Are
Very
              In

ferocity

From the

Fallen
Poetree
Everyone
Makes
                        Ashes

gideana

Not

Having
Had
The guts
To kill himself
            Decides
            He�s dead
            Already

salem

As

Easy
As
Finding
A
Witch
In a
            Haystack

the barbarian

Always

I�ve
Sought
To descend
As far
Up
As possible

sterility

Theoretician

Of everything
Fighter
For nothing

a poem of shipwrecks

1/

Me here
Navigating
Through the
Civic
Waves

2/

Me here
No longer struggling
In the
Icy waters
Of the ego�s
Calculating
Mind

3/

That one
Drowns alone
And lonely
In a
Glass
Of water

4/

Then I
Keep on
Swimming
In betwixt
            Two waters

5/

One day
It won�t be raining
Into buckets
It will just be
Raining
Buckets

6/

You always
End up
Kicking off
Just like
            A drowned man

7/

impossibility

For now

I cannot go
To San Miguel
De Allende

I don�t have

The change to spare
Not even for
The landscape

threats

Bless�d be

The humble
Poets
Because
From them
Will rise
The kingdoms
Of the
Grass

saint francis (i)
a paraphrase

Everything�s

Fucked
Up
Except
For
Love

[note.  Born in the same year as his fellow poet Octavio Paz, Huerta (1914-1982) has come to be recognized as a pivotal figure in modern Mexican poetry.  His influence on later Mexican poets continues to grow, & if the Poem�nimosaren�t typical of his prolific work in poetry and poetics, they�re a contribution nonetheless to the creation of a minimal & �impure� poetry as one aspect of 20th & 21st-century experimental modernism worldwide.  The translations-in-progress that I�m showing here are a reflection of my own pleasure in his work over all, behind which there�s also the following account by Huerta himself:

�I believe that every poem is a world.  A world & something still more special.  A sealed-off territory immune to interference from those without credentials, the censors & the lyrically disabled.  A poem�nimo is a world, yes, but sometimes I have forebodings that I�ve discovered a new galaxy & that light years serve me only as a point of reference, a very fuzzy reference, because the poem�nimo is like the turning of a corner or the next stop on the subway line.  A poem�nimo is a crazy butterfly, captured sometimes, sometimes crammed into a straitjacket.  And you may no longer touch it, that�s the thing.  That crazy thing, that thing that�s unpredictable, that falls down onto you or just rubs up against you, still makes sense � as it has done already.�

Writes Octavio Paz: �Efra�n Huerta has a central place in the poetry of the modern city.�  

And something more than that. (J.R.)]