Efraín Huerta: Some Minimal Poems, from “Poemínimos Completos”

Translations from Spanish by Jerome Rothenberg

calderoniana 

I was

A fool
& what
I loved
Has made
Me
      Into
           Two fools

no helping it

And from

Us
The
Beatified
Poets
Ariseth
The
Gloom
Of the
            Womb

insectarium

A

Place
Where
The
Sectarians
Are
Very
              In

ferocity

From the

Fallen
Poetree
Everyone
Makes
                        Ashes

gideana

Not

Having
Had
The guts
To kill himself
            Decides
            He’s dead
            Already

salem

As

Easy
As
Finding
A
Witch
In a
            Haystack

the barbarian

Always

I’ve
Sought
To descend
As far
Up
As possible

sterility

Theoretician

Of everything
Fighter
For nothing

a poem of shipwrecks

1/

Me here
Navigating
Through the
Civic
Waves

2/

Me here
No longer struggling
In the
Icy waters
Of the ego’s
Calculating
Mind

3/

That one
Drowns alone
And lonely
In a
Glass
Of water

4/

Then I
Keep on
Swimming
In betwixt
            Two waters

5/

One day
It won’t be raining
Into buckets
It will just be
Raining
Buckets

6/

You always
End up
Kicking off
Just like
            A drowned man

7/

impossibility

For now

I cannot go
To San Miguel
De Allende

I don’t have

The change to spare
Not even for
The landscape

threats

Blessèd be

The humble
Poets
Because
From them
Will rise
The kingdoms
Of the
Grass

saint francis (i)
a paraphrase

Everything’s

Fucked
Up
Except
For
Love

[note.  Born in the same year as his fellow poet Octavio Paz, Huerta (1914-1982) has come to be recognized as a pivotal figure in modern Mexican poetry.  His influence on later Mexican poets continues to grow, & if the Poemínimos aren’t typical of his prolific work in poetry and poetics, they’re a contribution nonetheless to the creation of a minimal & “impure” poetry as one aspect of 20th & 21st-century experimental modernism worldwide.  The translations-in-progress that I’m showing here are a reflection of my own pleasure in his work over all, behind which there’s also the following account by Huerta himself:

“I believe that every poem is a world.  A world & something still more special.  A sealed-off territory immune to interference from those without credentials, the censors & the lyrically disabled.  A poemínimo is a world, yes, but sometimes I have forebodings that I’ve discovered a new galaxy & that light years serve me only as a point of reference, a very fuzzy reference, because the poemínimo is like the turning of a corner or the next stop on the subway line.  A poemínimo is a crazy butterfly, captured sometimes, sometimes crammed into a straitjacket.  And you may no longer touch it, that’s the thing.  That crazy thing, that thing that’s unpredictable, that falls down onto you or just rubs up against you, still makes sense – as it has done already.”

Writes Octavio Paz: “Efraín Huerta has a central place in the poetry of the modern city.”  

And something more than that. (J.R.)]