Traductor invitado

SAMUEL BECKETT TRADUCE A RAMÓN LÓPEZ VELARDE


THE MALEFIC RETURN

Better not go back to the village,
to the ruined Eden lying silent
in the devastation of the shrapnel.

Even to the mutilated ash-trees,
dignataries of the swelling dome,
the lamentations must be borne of
the tower riddled in the slinging winds.

And on the chalk of all
the ghostly hamlet’s walls
the fusillade engraved
black and baneful maps,
whereon the prodigal son might trace,
returning to his threshold,
in a malefic nightfall,
by a wick’s petrol light,
his hopes destroyed.

When the clumsy mildewed key
Turns the creaking lock,
In the ancient
cloistered porch
the two chaste gyps
medallions will unseal narcotic lids,
look at each other and say: “Who is that?”

And I shall enter on intruding feet,
reach the fatidic court
where a well-curb broods
with a skin pail dripping
its categoric drop
like a sad refrain.

If the tonic, gay, inexorable sun
makes the catechumen fountains boil
in which my chronic dream was wont to bathe;
if the ants toil;
if on the roof the crawy call resounds
and grows aweary of the turtle-doves
and in the cobwebs murmurs on and on;
my thirst to love will then be like a ring
imbedded in the slabstone of a tomb.

The new swallows, renewing
with their new potter beaks
the early nests;
beneath the signal opal
of monachal eventides
the cry of calves newly calved
for the forbidden exuberant udder
of the cud-chewing Pharaonic cow
who awes her young;
belfry of new-aspiring peal;
renovated altars;
loving love
of well-paired pairs;
betrothals of young
humble girls, like humble kales;
some young lady
singing on some piano
some old song;
the policeman’s whistle…
…and a profound reactionary sorrow.