Love More Mysterious
Than The Dead
... odours of childhood
that welcomed sickly joy ...
Quasimodo
We thought we had forgotten the smell
of the old house, when suddenly,
on opening a wooden door,
those summer nights came back to us,
the mosquitoes' torment,
the holidays, their eves and the mysterious
resuscitation of our dead.
The years used to age
these memories too, used to
superimpose other summer nights,
other holidays, other eves, another love
more mysterious than the dead.
Until in an instant there returned
the smell of childhood and its sickly joy.
Alexis' Moon
The street has changed: before,
night here was wilder: on the corner
a lamp would swing in the summer
breeze, crickets and frogs were omens of storms
and there came from the depths of the darkness
a strong perfume of countryside and basil.
But over there above the houses, at the edge of the
sky,
the same trees were refreshing the atmosphere:
the fragrant limes in November, the pines and
cypresses,
the balsamic eucalyptus: from those
immortal timbers sprouted sometimes that moon
that my son gazes at with my astonished eyes.
The Immortal Crown
The race from one end of the avenue
to the other had no more purpose
than victory. Even more gratuitous
than the athletes' race in the stadium,
who looked for no other prize than the olive
crown or the garland of laurels,
that soon wither.
We were even far
from striving for the crown or the garland
of the athletes; far,
with greater reason, from seeking the crown
of victorious immortality,
which we imagined wreathing the brows
of our loved dead.
(Translated by Brian Cole)
Author’s Bionote:
*Guillermo Eduardo Pilía was born in La Plata, Argentina, in 1958.
He graduated with a degree in Literature from the National University of La
Plata. Although he has written in almost every genre, his preference has been
for poetry. He has published the following books of poems: Arsénico (1979); Enésimo Triunfo (1980); Río Nuestro
/ Cazadores Nocturnos (1990); Huesos de la Memoria (1996); Viento de lobos
(2000); Visitación a las islas (2000); Caballo de Guernica (2001); Ópera
flamenca (2003); Herido por el agua (2005); Ojalá el tiempo tan sólo fuera lo
que se ama (2011); Ainadamar (2016); Sobre la cuerda y sin la red (2016);
Casamundo (2019); Como el dios que gestaba en su muslo (2020); La jambe de
Rimbaud (2021); Fatiga de los metales (2021); Ministerio del salmista (2022); Ca
iarba la umbra (2023); Orfandad de las cosas (2024); and Ansias de clara
palabra. Antología 1979-2024 (2025). In addition to his poetry collections published in French and Romanian, his
work has been translated into English, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, and Catalan.
His writing has garnered him numerous awards in Argentina, Spain, France, the
United States, Romania, and several Latin American countries, including the
Andrés Bello Prize (Madrid, 2014), the León Benarós Prize (Buenos Aires, 2016),
the Grand Prix of the Mihai Eminescu Festival (Craiova, 2023), the Ovidius
Golden Crown (Constance, 2023), the Shakespeare Prize (Constance, 2025), the
Tribu de la Palabra Prize (Madrid, 2025) and awards for Literary Excellence
from various institutions. He is an Illustrious Citizen of La Plata. He has
been a member of the Hispanic American Academy of Letters in Madrid since 2014,
which he currently presides over. He also belongs to nine other academies in
Spain, Italy, Greece and Romania.
