Bilingual (Spanish/English)
Paper, saddlestitched, 52 pp
$8.50 plus s&h
2004, ISBN 0-932412-23-8
A bilingual collection translated from the original Spanish by the author.
This is the first title in our new Mamey Editions project, focused on bilingual publications and Caribbean literature.
Judith Kerman comments:
“The poet’s voice explores the distances of desire with a quiet yearning equally moving in both languages, a romanticism in which the strangeness and distance of the world illuminate and map the strangeness and distance of the beloved.”
The Chess Player
by Johnny Durán
For Leandro Morales
In his beloved chaos barely touched by anguish
Jose has arranged on an invisible board
The feverish pieces of fear
Imprisoned shadows last in diverse fields
Like a succession of echoes
Like a procession of torches
Flock of bats in gothic belfries
The vapor of your breath is love in the crystals of the rain
Is “I love you” installed in an outline
Is the sentence which the bird crosses
Like a concentric vertical pool
In burning dunes: Door
To another dimension
The rain is an ephemeral palace
Your laughter a breakwater of oblivion
Certainties, matches put out
In a useless chain
In his beloved chaos barely touched by anguish
Jose has arranged on an invisible board
The feverish pieces of fear.
A Leandro Morales
En su caos adorado a flor de angustia
José ha dispuesto sobre un tablero invisible
Las piezas febriles del miedo
Encarceladas sombras en ámbitos diversos perduran
Como una sucesión de ecos
Como una procesión de antorchas
Bandada de murciélagos en campanarios góticos
El vaho de tu aliento es el amor en los cristales de la lluvia
Es el te quiero instalado en un bosquejo
Es la sentencia que atraviesa el pájaro
Como un charco vertical concéntrico
En médanos ardientes: Puerta
Hacia otra dimensión
La lluvia es un efímero palacio
Tu risa un rompeolas del olvido
Las certezas fósforos que van apagándose
En una inútil cadena
En su caos adorado a flor de angustia
José ha dispuesto sobre un tablero invisible
Las piezas febriles del miedo.
Johnny Durán was born and still lives in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He has published translations of Mark Strand and translated the poems of Judith Kerman for her book Plane Surfaces/Plano de Incidencia (CCLEH, 2002). This is his first book.