HIGHER CALLING
It’s useless casting scorn while being scorned
It’s useless marching through heaven with a chip of sky on your shoulder
It’s useless being an ocean with wings as big as the night
Never the sole green feather in its ascendant music
That soothes your desires or assuages the planet’s violent stones
Wind traverses the skeleton
Echoing ivory in the bedrock of time and in my solitude
Trumpeting the shattered plateaus and the tears of distant lands
Its essence is the taste of wounded sky
The voice caressing itself like the shadow of a ship’s slow death
The trees will not sing on the shores of their desire
But the night still holds its smooth water
There are pure things like the dead among their candles
There are sweet things like vines growing over windows in the village
There are wretched things like lamps lighting the names of tombs
Bearing the scent of its planet
Wind penetrates the lives of men
VOCACIÓN DE ALTURA
Es inútil andar por el desprecio con el desprecio a cuestas
Es inútil marchar por el cielo y con el cielo al hombro
Es inútil ser mar con grandes alas como noches
Nunca la verde pluma solitaria tan alta y musical
Calmará sus anhelos ni las rocas violentas del planeta
El viento pasa a través del esqueleto
Hace sonar marfiles al fondo del tiempo y de mi soledad
Bate alturas derramadas y llantos de lejanas circunstancias
Tiene tanto sabor de cielo malherido
Que la voz se acaricia como la sombra de un barco muriéndose de angustia
Los árboles no cantan en sus orillas deseadas
Pero la noche tiene una agua suave
Hay cosas puras como el muerto entre sus velas
Hay cosas dulces como la aldea en sus ventanas y sus enredaderas
Hay cosas tristes como la lámpara de ciertas tumbas para leer un nombre
El viento pasa a través de los hombres
Y lleva el olor de su planeta
Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948) was a Chilean writer and a major figure of 20th century avant-garde poetry. Founder of the literary movement known as Creacionismo, he was a multilingual poet, playwright, novelist, war correspondent, screenwriter, and candidate for the presidency of Chile.
Jonathan Simkins is the co-translator with Kimrey Anna Batts of El Creacionismo by Vicente Huidobro (The Lune, forthcoming), the translator of The Treasure of the Llanganates (PUMAEDITORES, 2017), a play by Paúl Puma, and the author of the chapbooks This Is The Crucible (The Lune, 2017), and in collaboration with artist Justin Ankenbauer, Translucent Winds (Helikon Gallery & Studios, 2016). Recent translations have appeared or are forthcoming in The Chattahoochee Review, Eclectica Magazine, Ghost Town, Gulf Coast, and PANK. He is the publisher of Cigar City Poetry Journal: https://www.cigarcitypoetryjournal.org/.