Poetry (Attempt at Definition)

Porque uno de mis profesores de seminario nos pidió definir la poesía (obvio, de una forma muy subjetiva que no va a tener calificación) o justificar una traducción. Y yo terminé yéndome por la poesía, a la que le doy un intento de definición con un intento de poema (aunque, ahora que lo pienso, hubiera sido divertido juatificar una traducción con un poema).

Pero en fin. Enjoy.



unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
-Charles Bukowski, “So You Wanna Be a Writer?”


His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby



Soft sweet snake, scurrying, gnawing for food at the back of the brain—
The wide eyed ghost inside the mirror, gaping silent at the unfolding scene—
Electric fingertips of nightfall: blanket for rolling plains of skin.
The moon’s quiet, ceaseless ministry, underneath the veil of blue-sky dreams.
The deep silence of prayer, crowned by laurel, yet on your knees—
Sunshine in forgotten evenings, eyes to watch the end of the day—
It sings slowly, like a shadow, lost in a hide-and-seek game:
Tunes its blue guitar and rambles through the mind-alleys again…
The crime and wishes that wander through the usual lonely streets
(For it has never been strung out of the golden milk of days)
And it dances and develops in a thousand hidden ways
Labyrinth-like, as forgotten, otherworldly pencil signs
In a mathematics notebook: they serpent and they fly,
Lost among the lines, fool the one who thinks they shall stay and never flee,
They place the magic mirror o’er the vision of the ones chosen to see.
The only proof of our existence, mournfully standing beside
Time’s friendless tombstone, watching the Milky Way die.
The illusion of, in mortality, seeing the shooting star of life.
A new world, reinvented in your cold and lying eyes.