from Tiempo Lento
Translated from Spanish by Carlos Reyes
A small bird at my window
red
as a coal
it goes to the grass and returns
I give it all my attention
I don’t answer the telephone
Un pajarillo en mi ventana
rojo
como brasa
Va a la hierba y regresa
le presto toda la atención
no contesto el telélfono
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 4.
A lawyer with a master’s degree in political studies, Gustavo Adolfo Garcés has been a professor of literature and political science in several universities, and works in the National Solicitors office of Human Rights and Ethnic Matters. One of the most original of Colombian contemporary poets, he has published five books of remarkably condensed and deliciously ironic poems — quite opposed to the Spanish-American rhetorical tradition— the second of which, Breves días (Brief Days) was awarded the important Colombian Institute of Culture National Poetry Prize in 1992.
Carlos Reyes’s recent poetry includes: Osage Elegy (2021), The Ebbing Tide (2021), Lament for Us All (2021), Sea Smoke to Ashes (2020), Along the Flaggy Shore, (2018), Wrestling the Mistral (2022). Translations: Poemas de amor y locura/Poems of Love and Madness (2013). Memoir: The Keys to the Cottage, Stories from the West of Ireland (2015). He lives in Portland, Oregon.
See all items about Gustavo Adolfo Garcés
Visit Gustavo Adolfo Garcés’s contributors page.
See all items about Carlos Reyes
Visit Carlos Reyes’s contributors page.
