Click below on the icon next to a poem to read the original poem in Catalan
CARLES RIBA (1893-1959)
-
- [8] from Llibre segon d'Estances
(E-translation by Hillary Gardner)
- No more than a bird aloft alone am I,
-
- wings spread over the wide river
- where the boats pass slowly full of laughing people
-
- in the soft shade of the awnings,
- and a mountaineer, half-naked and nostalgic, wearily
-
- conducts his raft towards the cities
- that comb the open water between piers forgetful
- of how there once were green hills of trees and sheep
-
- and a happy steeple.
- Life passes, and the eye never tires of taking
-
- clear images into the heart.
- All in me becomes a dream: a little cloud of shadow and gold
-
- that floats and dies out far from my hand.
- He who dives into his heart like a greedy miner,
-
- or who from sorrow shuts himself up in there like a fish,
- has more than I who, estranged from myself,
- high above the others, watches the ceaseless wave as it grows
-
- and diminishes in the sea.
- What human motion has yet to undo
-
- this spell, to throw me with blood and feeling
- to the catch, our own, that we earned, between our fingers,
-
- or to the song, that from man to man comes and goes?
- Or does my destiny have to be that of the regal bird
-
- that in one shot, like a joke, falls from the sky,
- carried away by the indifferent water, a defeated rebel,
- one useless wing covering his eyes emptied of desire,
-
- without a single complaint for his suffering?
- [XXIII] from Salvatge cor
(Prose Translation by Sam Abrams)
- Song leads me on, and strange animals surround me, pure, accustomed to serve; I recognize them as children of my destiny, mild before fire and fierce to omens.
- I no longer need interpreters for death: it is upwards in life that my path is turning; if what I have learned will not bear fruit for me, what I have lived will not be counted in years.
- I feel the world is, like my footsteps, absolute: light reveals the cry of the deep heart and is its measure. What would wisdom
- be worth? Mad acts of mine which have made me, eager pack of hounds, I entrust to you my great suit; and we shall fill ourselves with love, as with a prey.
- [XVIII] from Salvatge cor
(E-translation by Hillary Gardner)
- What I have lost
- and will never know
- and do not now know
- that once was good to me
- is useless and absolute
- under the final veil;
- but the heart withdraws
- as if this were virtue.
- Lovers, rejoice!
- Would you smile, saints
- at the awful elation
- of so much indiscreet
- tempting of the secret,
- at so much hope?
- (Published in El Pont, no. 4, 1956)
(E-translation by Hillary Gardner)
- At night my years
- call out and wake me;
- they're like lost birds,
- I'm one and yet they don't know me;
- they're mine and yet errant,
- so that I can't understand myself
- whenever I get close in my heart
- to what's made me old and weak.
- What do you say, innocent child,
- still amazed by yourself,
- suddenly, with brusque delight,
- through the eyes you grew up in,
- and of whom I keep, like a hidden
- horn, minuscule ears
- tuned to listen to
- the tender voices that overcome me?
- How would you reply,
- child that was me,
- you who simply were,
- and who cannot understand
- how a heart can be heavy,
- things awry,
- dreams full of danger,
- and all love sadness?
- To ignore it, I,
- who, for a few minutes, relive
- within me forever
- your elemental luck,
- must give it up to you
- and pay for it by thinking
- and feeling like a fool,
- a fool who won't look back.
- Which one of us should smile,
- the old man that you didn't see
- in your future, oh child,
- or you, in innocence residing?
- I only know that I watch the river
- from along the riverbank
- and see myself always at the point
- where the water makes a pure
- beginning to lose itself.