Monday, November 15, 2010

A poem by Nicanor Parra


I was in class several weeks ago when Nicanor Parra's came up in our digital poetry course (obviously unrelated to dp). I thought I would give him a try and so I picked up Poemas y Antipoemas. My professor had hyped him up a little bit so I think I was expecting more. Overall, it was still quite good. Here is one of my favorite poems (and one that was short enough for a blog post).

"Madrigal"

Yo me haré millonario una noche
gracias a un truco que me permitirá fijar las imágenes
en un espejo cóncavo. O convexo.

Me parece que el éxito será completo
cuando logre inventar un ataúd de doble fondo
que permita al cadáver asomarse a otro mundo.

Ya me he quemado bastante las pestañas
en esta absurda carrera de caballos
en que los jinetes son arrojados de sus cabalgaduras
y van a caer entre los espectadores.

Justo es, entonces, que trate de crear algo
que me permita vivir holgadamente
o que por lo menos me permita morir.

Estoy seguro de que mis piernas tiemblan,
sueño que se me caen los dientes
y que llego tarde a unos funerales.


1 comment:

Ben said...

Parra is pretty good. One of the better contemporary Lat Am. poets. He wrote a number of poems on Pedro Páramo, I don't recall the name of the collection, but I used on of them in my thesis. Good stuff. Looks like you're taking some fun classes out there.