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EARTH TURNED TO BRING US CLOSER
The earth turned to bring us
closer,
it spun on itself and within us,
and finally joined us together in this dream
as written in the Symposium.
Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;
time passed in minutes and millennia.
An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh
arrived in Nebraska.
A rooster was singing some distance from the world,
in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers.
The earth was spinning with its music
carrying us on board;
it didn't stop turning a single moment
as if so much love, so much that's miraculous
was only an adagio written long ago
in the Symposium's score.
- Eugenio Montejo
(translated by Peter Boyle)
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Poet's
Biography:
Eugenio Montejo was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1938.
He is the author of numerous books of poetry: Elegos
(1967), Muerte y memoria (1972), Algunas palabras (1976),
Terredad (1979), Trópico absoluto (1982), Alfabeto
del mundo (1986), Adios al siglo XX (1992), El azul
de la tierra (1997), Partitura de la cigarra (1999)
and Tiempo Transfigurado (2001). He has also published
two collections of essays: La ventana oblicua and El
taller blanco. In 1998 Eugenio Montejo received Venezuela's
National Prize for Literature.
Translator's Biography:
Peter Boyle is an Australian poet living in Sydney.
His three collections of poetry Coming home from the
world(1994), The Blue Cloud of Crying(1997), and What
the painter saw in our faces (2001) have received several
awards including the New South Wales Premier's Award,
the South Australian Festival award and the National
Book Council Award. He has read his poetry at several
festivals including the Medellín International
Poetry Festival, 1997, and the Festival de Poésie
anglo-français, Paris, 1999. His poems have been
published in slope magazine as well as Verse in the
USA, Heat, Island, Southerly, Salt, Poetry Review (UK).
His translations of French and Spanish poetry have appeared
in such reviews as American Poetry Review and Jubilat.
His next book as a translator is The Trees: selected
poems of Eugenio Montejo forthcoming with Salt Publishing.
Source
of biographical information: http://www.threecandles.org/poetry/emontejo.html
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