Translation of a Poem by Javier Vela

                

Here is my first attempt to translate a poem by Javier Vela into English.

I also worked up three rough translations of poems by Miguel Casado from his Tienda de Fieltro, but I want to play with them a little more. I like those poems quite a bit.

They're more Burning Deck than the Vela poem.

I'll probably work on this further but I wanted to get something down on (imaginary) paper.

The title seems to be a relatively obscure (or specialized) word in Spanish.

"Ocaso" is "the sunset, the setting of a star or another astronomical body."

For example, German Gotterdammerung is translated in Spanish as El ocaso de los dioses.

I chose the similarly specialized adjective heliacal as a title, since I couldn't come up with an appropriate astronomical term.

One could innovate "starset" or "helioset" I suppose.

Anyway, here is Vela's poem and my firstlings on translating it.

I found this in the online mag El Fantasma de la Glorieta (link in my blogroll at right).



      OCASO


Puente de luz que oscilas sobre el mar,

que tentador te meces con las olas

cuando envejece el día:

¿dónde terminas?

(¡Quién pudiera cruzar sobre el abismo

que sostiene tu cuerpo

en las horas confusas!)

Luz última, que besas a la orilla

con el destello blanco de la plata:

¿dónde te esconderás

cuando el azul te trague?


     --Javier Vela



     Heliacal


Bridge of light that sways over sea,

tempting, moving in time with those waves

as the day feels its age:

what's at your other end?

(Who could have made it across that abyss

which supports your body

in this random tumble of hours!)

Last light, you kiss on a shore--

tinsel, filigree, silver waterlight:

Light, where will you shelter

when blue swallows you?