Silva Echoing….

He prowls by the riverside

that goes carrying on his country

somehow he still counts himself a believer

Staring into the night, black as can be.

Uneasily, he grabs a seat at the bar

waiting for her eyes to reappear

feeling a distant, blinking star

lonely mornings’ foggy veneer.

How innocence and adolescence vanishes

the sternness of the pallbearers’ steps

a future this moment so readily banishes

a home that still needs to be kept.

Truth locked away in rhymed language

sprinkled like perfume before a dinner party

each word slowly building a bridge

footsteps pacing every closer to the edge.

A shooting star on the tabloid page

soon to transformed into a frozen tear

the darkness hides pressed, drying flowers

all tallied up a just another of love’s martyrs. 

Se va con algo mío…

Se va con algo mío…

Se va con algo mío la tarde que se aleja…

mi dolor de vivir es un dolor de amar

y al son de la garua, en la antigua calleja,

me invade un infinito deseo de llorar.

Que son cosas de niño me dices… ¡Quien me diera

tener una perenne inconciencia infantil,

ser del reino del día y de la primavera,

del ruiseñor que canta y del alba de abril!

¡Ah, ser pueril, ser puro, ser canoro, ser suave

trino, perfume o canto, crepúsculo o aurora-

como la flor que aroma la vida… y no lo sabe,

como el astro que alumbra las noches… y lo ignora! 

You Leave with Something of Mine

You leave with something of mine the afternoons you go away…

The pain of loving is the pain of living

and the drizzle in an ancient passageway

invades me with the infinite desire to sob.

What childlike things you say to me…“Who would give me

forever a juvenile carelessness,

To be from the day’s kingdom, of the spring and

The nightingale that sings at daybreak in April.

Ah, to be youthful, to be pure, to be melodious, to be a soft

trilling, perfume or song, twilight or the first light of dawn

Like the flower scent of life… I’m not familiar with it,

Like heavenly bodies that light up the night…and I ignore it!

El alma en los labios

El alma en los labios

Para mi amada

Cuando de nuestro amor la llama apasionada
dentro tu pecho amante contemples extinguida,
ya que sólo por ti la vida me es amada,
el día en que me faltes me arrancaré la vida.

Porque mi pensamiento, lleno de este cariño
que en una hora feliz me hiciera esclavo tuyo,
Lejos de tus pupilas es triste como un niño
que se duerme soñando en tu acento de arrullo.

Para envolverte en besos quisiera ser el viento
y quisiera ser todo lo que tu mano toca;
ser tu sonrisa, ser hasta tu mismo aliento,
y así poder estar más cerca de tu boca.

Vivo de tu palabra, y eternamente espero
llamarte mía, como quien espera un tesoro.
lejos de ti comprendo lo mucho que te quiero
y, besando tus cartas, ingenuamente lloro.

Perdona que no tenga palabras con que pueda
decirte la inefable pasión que me devora;
para expresar mi amor solamente me queda
rasgarme el pecho, amada, y en tus manos de seda
dejar mi palpitante corazón que te adora!

The soul in lips 

To my beloved

When you imagine our impassioned love’s flame

inside your chest to be extinguished,

the day you’re without me, my life will be torn from me

only because of you is my life beloved.

Because my thoughts, full of such affection

become your slave in some joyous hour,

far from your pupils, all is as sad as a child

who sleeps dreaming of your cooing accent.

I would be the wind to envelope you in kisses

I want to be all that your hand touches;

to be your smile, to be even your very breath,

all just to be closer to your mouth.

I live by your word, and eternally I hope

to call you mine, like one awaiting a treasure.

far from you the bounds of my love hits home

and kissing your letters, I simply cry.

Forgive me; I don’t have the words with which

to tell you about the ineffable passion that devours me

to express that it is only my love that remains

tearing open my chest, beloved, in your silken hands

I leave my beating heart, which adores you so!

Mi ciudad

Mi Ciudad

                                                Aguas Fuertes y óleos a la

                                        cuidad de Santiago de Guayaquil

Se encuentra mi cuidad circundada de cerros

y si sobre los cerros la corva luna brilla

en los patios ululan tristemente los perros

al vagabundo espectro de la diosa amarilla.

Tienen sus calles reminiscencias provincianas

infantil alegría sus casas de madera,

dulzura familiar sus sencillas mañanas

y es siempre una mentira su fugaz primavera.

Oh, cuidad de Santiago, ciudad pequeña y mía

que abrigas mi alegría y mi melancolía

Y el universo lirico que dentro del pecho llevo.

Imagen de mi alma tantas veces vencida

que surges más bella cada vez mas erguida

con un ritmo más puro y con un ideal nuevo. 

My City

                                    Strong waters and oil paintings of

                                the city of Santiago de Guayaquil

My city is surrounded by hills

above the hills an arched moon shines

on patios dogs howl sadly at

the wandering spirit of a yellow goddess.

Its streets have their provincial reminiscences

childlike joy of its wooden houses,

familiar sweetness of its simple mornings

the perpetual lie of its fleeting spring.

Oh, city of Santiago, my tiny city

That shelters my melancholy, my joy

And the universal lyric I carry in my chest.

Image of my soul so often vanquished that

Springs forth more beautiful, each time soaring

With a purer rhythm and a new ideal.

To a Poet

Ninety years after his death, memories of Medardo Ángel Silva meander as a shadow and echo through the streets of Guayaquil, Ecuador. You need not doubt that he is still there. You can only ride so many of the darting white city buses before finding yourself humming along to Julio Jaramillo singing “El alma en los labios” , which the teenage chulillo blasts to battle the humidity. Museums display first additions of his work and celebrate him even along the Malecón 2000, a swanky riverside develop where he would have wandered along enjoying his beloved darkness broken only by a streetlamp’s wandering light.

In contemporary Ecuador, he may be one of the few writers anyone may recall, though he exists more as a portrait, a lovelorn depressive—an archetype of a romantic that even he occasionally draws as crudely as any in current pop culture. He is a near celebrity but not really a writer, gone down to the fate of Kerouac and Hemingway; Silva is the poet as imagined by all those who have never read of stanza of poetry. With this fate in his homeland, it’s not surprising that his work has not been widely exported.

Furthermore, Ecuador even in present day is a country where the rich or famous have white skin, inherited money and a fine education acquired abroad. In contrast, Silva came from a poor family, of a multiracial black/mestizo background in a country that still relegates their black population to being soccer players or manual laborers, supported his mother through journalism after his father died while Silva was in his teens, never went to university (actually dropping out of high school) and taught himself French so he could read Verlaine, Rimbaud and Baudelaire and helped give a group of his contemporaries the name of the Decapitated Generation with his suicide on June 10, 1919.  

Before his death he published various journalism pieces, one book of poetry, a novella, but more importantly, a vast swath of poems remained unedited upon his death. A translation of his poems appeared in France in 1926, and to the best of my knowledge no available English translation exists.

II.

So I have decided to take on the project to bring Silva’s poems to an English audience as a labor of love. After reading Mi ciudad, I knew that one day the idea would overpower me and I would begin to translate his poems, even if I, unlike the thousands of Ecuadorian children born to immigrant parents in the United States, am not truly bilingual. I started learning Spanish at the ripe old age of 25 and learned Spanish walking the streets and talking to whomever I could under the grand cathedrals of Cuenca, Ecuador. Still I hope maybe someone will stumble across this and hear the beauty in Silva’s Spanish and see that it can at the very least roughly be translated into English.

I will be posting the bilingual versions of his poems as I edit them and will also print poems honoring him or some that he has inspired me to write. If anyone who has read all this way would like to offer alternate translations that would be welcome. Anything else including videos, pictures, recitations, and poems inspired by Silva would be wonderful. Email me at eevanvleet@gmail.com