John Oliver Simon has been travelling throughout Latin America and translating its contemporary poets for nearly 25 years. He received a NEA Literature Fellowship in 2001 for his work with the great Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas. Red Dragonfly Press in Minnesota published Velocities Of the Possible, a beautiful limited edition (hand-sewn, letterpress) of twelve Rojas poems in 2001. Green Integer Press in Los Angeles will publish From the Lightning, a generous selection of Simon's Gonzalo Rojas translations, in 2054.

LAS HERMOSAS

Eléctricas, desnudas en el mármol ardiente que pasa de la piel a los [vestidos,
turgentes, desfiantes, rápida la marea,
pisan el mundo, pisan la estrella de la suerte con sus finos tacones
y germinan, germinan como plantas silvestres en la calle,
y echan su aroma duro verdemente.

Cálidas impalpables del verano que zumba carnicero. Ni rosas ni arcángeles: muchachas del país, adivinas
del hombre, y algo más que el calor centelleante,
algo más, algo más que estas ramas flexibles
que saben lo que saben como sabe la tierra.

Tan livianas, tan hondas, tan certeras las suaves. Cacería
de ojos azules y otras llamaradas urgentes en el baile
de las calles veloces. Hembras, hembras
en el oleaje ronco donde echamos las redes de los cinco sentidos
para sacar apenas el beso de la espuma.

Gonzalo Rojas

LOVELIES

Electric and naked in burning marble out from the skin through [dresses,
swelling, defiant on a quick tide,
they stomp the world, they stamp the lucky star with their spike-heels,
and they sprout up like wild plants in the street
and put out their hard aroma greenly.

Warm ungraspables of buzzing butcher summer. Neither roses
nor archangels: homegirls, riddles
to man, and something more than sparkling heat,
something so much more than these bending branches
that know what they know as the earth knows.

So light, so deep, so accurate these smoothies. Hunting
blue eyes and other urgent flares in the dance
of the fast streets. Females, females
in the hoarse surf where we hurl the net of the five senses
to come up with barely a kiss of foam.

Translated by John Oliver Simon