Poetry Thursday: In the City of Eternal Spring

Since 1991, the International Poetry Festival of Medelln has opened the ground for language and human dignity to blossom, focusing on contemporary poetry from Colombia.

The Festival's web site is one way that I discovered Luz Helena Cordero, a poet of deceptively simple statement who is well represented on the Poetry International web site.

I am currently searching for a copy of her most recent book, Cielo Ausente (Absent Heaven), which is published only in Spanish (Ediciones Sociedad de la Imaginacion, 2001). Any leads from my readers on how I can find her book (or the earlier Óyeme con los Ojos/Hear Me With Your Eyes) would be most appreciated.

Here is one of her works, in Spanish first and then English, from the translation of Nicolas Suescun, whose own writing you can sample here. I've appended some of my own arrogant commentary on aspects of this very good translation...I promise, no words were actually harmed in the close reading of these poems.

FANTASMAS (GHOSTS)
by Luz Helena Cordero V.

Los fantasmas nacen desnudos, como sus dueños,
pero luego se visten con ropas color atardecer
en los ojos de la muchacha que tiembla.
Son títeres que armamos en la infancia,
pedazos de piel, retazos de voces,
crecen como lama detrás de la frente
y nunca nos abandonan.
Son tan personales como la voz o la memoria.
Nadie ha visto un fantasma que no le pertenezca,
que no ame como a sus ojos cerrados ante el espejo.**
Los fantasmas tienen nombre y apellido,
son ciudadanos dentro de nuestros huesos.
Claro que existen. Tienen el rostro de tu miedo.

GHOSTS

Ghosts are born naked, like their owners
but then they dress with twilight-colored clothes*
in the eyes of the trembling girl.
They are puppets we assemble in childhood,
scraps of skin, snippets of voices,
they grow like moss behind our foreheads
and they never abandon us.
They are as personal as voice or memory.
No one has seen a ghost that doesn't belong to them
that does not love as their eyes close in front of the mirror. **
Ghosts have names and surnames,
they are citizens in our bones.
Of course, they exist. They wear the face of your fear.

[Image by Fernando Botero]

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My nitpicking notes:
* "dueños" might be translated as the sterner word "masters" instead of "owners." And the efficient verb form "atardecer" implies action, either "dusk coming on" or literally "afternoon growing." I might have opted for "but then they dress in clothes the color of dusk" or the simpler "but then they dress in dusky clothes."

** I might have translated this differently, to say "that doesn't love [them] like their own closed eyes before the mirror"