Daniel Calabrese [Argentina / Chile]

 

The First Déja Vu
 
A horse on the pampas and a tree.
 
A horse swaying
with boat tenderness.
 
A honey horse
and two stiff reins.
 
What? Didn’t you see death?
How it galloped?
 
A wooden horse
and a tree split wandering
through wastelands.
 
Then I remembered what I was like:
absent, swayed, sad, liquid.
 
What? Didn’t you see death?
How it galloped?
 
(from Spanish to English translation: Katherine M. Hedeen)
 
 
 
The Drowned Man
 
I’d like to make it clear that it wasn’t the river
but the earth itself where I drowned.
 
The only river in my memory
is a shudder
where small things sink
even though they never fully disappear.
 
Sometimes
they sink before the river runs past.
 
And their cries for help
always
comes too late.  
 
(from Spanish to English translation: Katherine M. Hedeen)
 
 

Wonder
 
Today’s work involves
moving a stone from here to there.
It’s a heavy rock,
more than an ox,
more than a sack full of rain.
It’s a prehistoric hole
a black mirror
close to swallowing the world. 
 
Today’s work involves
lifting that stone and letting 
it gently drop in the middle of the road
to block off the bikers and
background music,
to block off Route 2
when the red arteries say so. 
 
And when everything’s at a standstill,
all slowed down by the stone,
illustrious, saintly generations stopped up,
stopped up too the love between things natural 
and revealed,
then the work
will involve taking it away from that place,
lifting the stone once more, with tired eyes,
and burying it somewhere, in the nothingness,
in the lake of hidebound indifference
where beds creak, TVs glow,
engines shine,
wine flows into light,
memory and sad conversations rotting
and soon sinking, along with the stone,
into the most complete extinction.
 
(from Spanish to English translation: Katherine M. Hedeen)
 
 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Daniel Calabrese is an Argentine poet born in Dolores, Buenos Aires province, who has lived in Santiago de Chile, since 1991. His first book, “La faz errante” [The Wandering Face], won the Alfonsina Storni Prize (1990) in Argentina. It was followed by “Futura ceniza” [Future Ash] (1994), “Singladuras” [Day’s run] (1997), and “Oxidario” [Oxidary] (2001), which received an award from the National Fund for the Arts in Buenos Aires. His book “Ruta Dos”, which had a wide critical impact, won the Revista de Libros Prize in Chile (2013) and was published in the Visor Collection of Madrid (2017) with a prologue by Raúl Zurita. The Italian version was nominated for the Premio Camaiore Internazionale among the five best foreign works. His latest book is “Compás de espera” [Measure of Waiting] (2022), based on his experience as a soldier during the Falklands War. His poetry collections and personal anthologies, most recently “Un cielo para las cosas” [A Sky for Things], have been published in more than ten countries. Some of his work has been translated into Italian, English, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian, Chinese, and Japanese. He is the founder & director of “Ærea. Revista Hispanoamericana de poesía” [Ærea. Latin American Poetry Magazine] and a member of the International Council of the Vicente Huidobro Foundation. His website: www.daniel-calabrese.com