INTERIOR

Las cosas que entran por el silencio empiezan a llegar al cuarto. Lo sabemos, porque nos dejamos olvidados allá adentro los ojos. La soledad llega por los espejos vacíos; la muerte baja de los cuadros, rompiendo sus vitrinas de museo; los rincones se abren como granadas para que entre el grillo con sus alfileres; y, aunque nos olvidemos de apagar la luz, la oscuridad da una luz negra más potente que eclipsa a la otra.

Pero no son éstas las cosas que entran por el silencio, sino otras más sutiles aún; si nos hubiéramos dejado olvidada también la boca, sabríamos nombrarlas. Para sugerirlas, los preceptistas aconsejan hablar de paralelas que, sin dejar de serlo, se encuentran y se besan. Pero los niños que resuelven ecuaciones de segundo grado se suicidan siempre en cuanto llegan a los ochenta años, y preferimos por eso mirar sin nombres lo que entra por el silencio, y dejar que todos sigan afirmando que dos y dos son cuatro.

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The things that come in through the silence are beginning to reach the room. We know because we left our eyes in there. Loneliness arrives through empty mirrors; death climbs down from paintings, breaking the glass; corners open like pomegranates and welcome crickets with their pins; and although we neglected to turn off the lights, the darkness’s black light is so strong that the other one is eclipsed.

But these aren’t the things that come in through the silence—they are other, subtler things; if we’d left our mouths behind too, we could figure out their names. To evoke them, experts advise speaking of parallels which, without ever deviating, meet each other and kiss. But children who solve math problems when they’re in second grade always wind up killing themselves as soon as they turn eighty, and that’s why we prefer to look namelessly at what comes in through the silence, and let the rest keep affirming that two and two are four.

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from La Lancha–(New Mundo Press)

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Gilberto Owen (1904–1952) was born in El Rosario, a small town in Sinaloa, and died in Philadelphia. Associated with the Contemporáneos, a group of avant-garde writers in 1920s Mexico City, Owen wrote poetry, fiction, essays, and translations. In 1928, he moved to New York City to work at the Mexican Embassy, and spent much of the rest of his life abroad, living in Quito, Lima, Bogotá, and finally Philadelphia. His books include the short novels La llama fría (1925) and Novela como nube (1928) and the poetry collections Línea (1930) and Perseo vencido (1948).

Jack Chelgren is a writer from Seattle. His translations of Gilberto Owen have been published in Asymptote and New Mundo Press’s online magazine, La Lancha. Jack’s own poetry has appeared in Hot Pink Mag, Bedfellows, Tyger Quarterly, Blush, Pider, and SPAM. Critical writing has appeared in Chicago Review (where he edits the nonfiction section) as well as La Mariposa Mundial, Tripwire, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Northwest.