"Poems of Mexico" by Cesar Afif

The poet and critic Caesar Afif of Dar Nilsen has published his new book, Poems from Mexico, which includes a selection of poems from Mexican poets, which he has chosen to make available to the Arab reader. The book was preceded by an introduction to translation, published with some poems.

In the translation of poetry

Translation of poetry of love. He knows only his secrets and his sins. Only those who fell together in Grameen are: love of poetry and love of languages. Thus, poets and translators differed on its advantages and many aspects. Some, like the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, saw that if the writing itself was distorted, the translation distorted the distortion. The American poet Robert Frost wrote: "What we lose in translation is poetry." Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Why did you do this translation with my prior knowledge of difficulties, risks and suffering? Perhaps the most important reason is because I was and still think that poetry cuts civilization. If we want to discover the essence of a civilization, we must read the poetry that it has produced and produced. At Mexico's settlement decisions, I read poems published in cultural pages or in separate collections and selections. His day was a pleasure to read Tkvini. I have never thought of translating this rich legacy of the participation of others. But as the days went by, some Arab newspapers began asking me to translate poems for this or that poet.

Sometimes I meet poets who like what they write. Dialogue and dialogue, and with the dialogue to transmit part of their work enriching the dialogue.

In 1992, we started to publish the "Poetic Movement" and we adopted it as a way to help us publish certain translations, because translation is ultimately a bridge between culture and life, between life and life. other and between humans and others.

All the translations I have made and published in scattered newspapers have been scattered here and there and there. I never thought of collecting it and publishing it in an independent book before the Syrian poet Al-Homsi, Alaa Eddin Abdul Mawla, sent him to Mexico City. This is how a strong friendship was born between us, which strengthened love and bonds. He insisted on searching these anthologies. Research, collect, organize, format and badist in the preparation of the final printing and publishing. He alone is credited with their appearance and receives all the thanks and gratitude.

Since I started, I put Jorge Luis Borges in front of me. I always thought about what the American poet Robert Frost said, but I thought it was a fun and useful game. There are challenges, as in all games, fun, as in all readings, and benefits, as in all cultural activities. I realized very early that the poem was not words that become a significant building. Each poem has a special atmosphere that gives it its own spirit. The language of the poem is inspired by dictionary words, but the poet gives it other dimensions that he has not dreamed of dictionaries. The challenge lay before me: how can I convey the atmosphere of the poem, which is a real magic, from Spanish to Arabic? I wanted to say it with words and I was afraid of failure and yet I was reluctant.

I learned that the poem is not a set of words. Words are not things that exist independently of me. I realized that the word had actually arrived. The poem is thus also a set of overlapping, overlapping, and overlapping events that interact in close and intimate relationships to create the poem's atmosphere. My goal was to reach this atmosphere and transmit it in a simple Arabic language that does not disturb the mood of the reader and does not exhaust his mental powers in search of pleasure. My dear reader may have wondered how she had done it. Well, I will not reveal a secret if I tell you that I've learned the path of contemporary quantum physics. This physics says that the parts that make up the universe meet at the fundamental and deep level of existence and are directly related to a universe with all the elements. The words of the poem relate to all words in all languages ​​and all times. This is not a special moment in which the poem was written. This very moment, now, does not exist until the moment when a poet wrote a poem printed on paper in front of me. At this moment, all the moments are, if we prepare, we will find the experience. If we prepare the experiment, we find the first and original atmosphere that brought the poem to appear.

After reading the poem that I intend to translate, I tried to come back to the moment of writing it. In quantitative physics, they call the quantum leap. I jump to a moment that seems to be dead, the moment the poem was written, but no time has actually elapsed. All the time is every time. This jump helped me a lot in reaching the atmosphere of the original poem and its first climate. Then I come back to the attention to images, words and compositions.

The difficulty in transmitting poetic language? The poet in all languages ​​creates a language in one language. The words of the poem do not know the dictionaries and how to transfer them without betraying the text and betraying the meanings?

Transliteration has never been my approach or my approach. My intention was to preserve the luster and charm of the poem. This preserves the flavor of the poem and scented to benefit the reader in his new language. I tried all this without flowing the poem with the language strings from where I was leaving. I wanted to modify it so that it is simple and that it comes in Arab structures so as not to appear with a strange accent.

I leave these translations in the hands of the reader. Hoping that he can jump to the point of writing the poem to live in his atmosphere, I have no publication goal. I am satisfied with the happiness that I have felt in translating it and hope the reader will have it.

Tree in the interior

Octavio bath

I grew up on two trees

And grew up inland.

Its roots are veins.

Its branches are nerves.

His papers are chaotic ideas.

Your gaze burns the tree.

The fruits of the shade:

Orange of blood,

And the fire grenade,

You wake up in the night of the flesh

There, at home, on my forehead,

The tree speaks.

Come closer.

Hear?

***

We bring a book

Jaime Sabins

We bring a book

It's a testimony of what we do not say

We gather our time, our sorrows,

Our eyes and our hands were ours

And our hearts to which we are accustomed

Yet we remain the biggest

And more miserable than the book

The lament is not a pain

The zigzag is not the bird

The book is not me

Neither my son

Not even the shadow of my child

Time of the book

Temporary among all my enemies

That's the corn grain in the pine

A piece of hydra (*).

***

The last refuge

Alberto Blanco

Whenever you want to escape time

Come back instead

Whenever you want to escape to the place

Come back in time

Whenever you want to escape space and time

I come to me

Whenever I want to escape myself

God is my only refuge.