Stuart Cooke translates Pablo de Rokha
Pablo de Rokha (1894-1968) was born as Pablo Díaz Loyola. Despite his profound influence upon subsequent generations of Latin American poets, he failed to achieve the international fame of his contemporary, Pablo Neruda (with whom he quarrelled fiercely and publicly). In 1965 he was awarded Chile’s National Literature Prize, deemed by many at the time to be long overdue. He committed suicide at the age of 73.
God
He made man, he made him in his IMAGE and semblance, and he’s enormously sad and an immense man, an immense man, the continuation of all men, all men, all the MOST manly men, the continuation of all men towards the infinite, a dream, all a dream or a TRIANGLE that dissolves in bright stars.
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How much pain, how much pain did the earth need to create you, God, to create you!.. how much pain! Gesture of the world’s anguish, of matter’s sickness and an enormous, enormous mania of enormities!
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God, that great human caricature, God, full of empty skies, sad consciences, sad consciences and GREAT anguish, his neutered cadaver’s voice brings together and sums up, FOR man, in his common and disconcerting attitude, the moaning of every object and, in addition, the other, the distant, the other, the other, like the words of a naive child, a naive child, a naive child; bad God, good God, wise God, stubborn God, God with passions and gestures, virtues and vices, concubines or ILLEGITIMATE sons, with an office like a pharmacist’s, like any hairdresser’s.
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The earth sculpted the earth’s ingenuous fruits for him, only for him, the earth’s ingenuous fruits, and man denied the enormous world, denied the world; who was, who was ever, who was more loved than him?… he, he was the most loved but never was anything, anyone, he never was, never, never was, never, never, never was!..
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Tragedy of God, God, God, the major disgrace of history, the lie, the PHENOMENAL blow to the rights of life, God.
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God answered smiling answered God, God answered the most tremendous, the most obscure, the most disastrous questions and the great question; BUT the most tremendous, the most obscure, the most disastrous questions and the great question still, still haven’t been, haven’t been, haven’t been answered yet, still haven’t been answered; God squashed the earth, oh! sacred hippopotamus, God squashed the earth with filthy feet, and the footprints survive until today, survive on the roads and in the tragic belly of the worlds.
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He blackened, he blackened, he blackened LIFE with the black paint of dreams and urinated the dignity of man.
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“God, God, God, do you exist?… God! God! God!..”, howl the towns and the old women, the old women and the towns across the theological plains… shut up! idiots, shut up! shut up!… God IS YOU.
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Great absurd wing, God extends himself over THE VOID…
The Pale Conquistadors
Epic characters, epic, executive or emphatic characters, emphatic, emphatic, and souls of bronze, steel, rock, wretched bones, wiry muscles, men of concise, energetic, simple, authentic, authoritative, exact language, and RED actions, RED burning a priori, hermit-swordsmen, swordsmen-hermits, adventurers who are transformed by hunger and the thirst for GOLD, glory, dashing exploits – glory! glory! – transformed from frauds into heroes, from frauds into heroes, the power of having a soul boiling, the power of having a soul boiling, the power of having a soul boiling at SEVENTY ONE degrees in the shade.
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Dim, illiterate, ignorant, ignorant soldiers, you predated the immense, contemporary urban estates and you were THE FIRST settlers of the dull brown, dull brown earth, dull brown, humble, agricultural, BLUSHING like a woman who is discovered naked; free to draw your daggers, you pursued two destinies: to be hung at the gallows or crowned with laurels.
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And you’re called Pedro de Valdivia, Hernán Cortés or Francisco Pizarro, Napoleon, you’re all the same: brave, drunken swine, demented or crazy geniuses, contradictory, bilious – that is, IRRESPONSIBLE instruments of cosmic DYNAMISM and LIFE’S nocturnal forces; CONQUISTADORS, I salute you because you were a lot of dreaming-poet-leaders crossing the horizon’s SEVEN HUNDRED hardships with your absurd, painted-on, metaphorical costumes and resonant, fantastical attitudes, full to the brim with illusions, ambitions, heroic, enormous emotions, eyes full of landscapes, sleeping in the shadow of a great, distant dream as BIG as THE SKIES, and not ten cents, not ten cents in your pockets!..
Stuart Cooke’s chapbook, Corrosions, was published by Vagabond Press in 2010, and his translation of Juan Garrido-Salgado’s Eleven Poems, September 1973 was published by Picaro Press in 2007. His first full-length collection, Edge Music, is forthcoming in 2011.