Fuegos Confundidos
BIOS
Tania Ganitsky is a Doctor of Philosophy and Literature. In 2009 she won the National Poetry Contest of the Universidad Externado de Colombia and in 2014 she received the Premio Nacional de Poesía Obra Inédita with her first book: dos cuerpos menos (“two bodies fewer”) (2015). She published Cráter (Crater), coauthored with the artist José Sarmiento, in 2017. Desastre lento (Slow Disaster) (2018 and 2019) was among five finalists nominated for the National Poetry Prize given by the Ministry of Culture in 2019. La suspensión de los objetos flotantes (The Suspension of the Floating Objects) (2020), with illustrations by Ana María Lozano and published by Cardumen, is her most recent poetry collection. She is the co editor of La trenza, a fanzine of illustrations, essays, and poetry written by Colombian women and she gives courses and poetry workshops in several universities in Bogotá.
Jackson Reed is an aspiring poetry translator and Aldous Huxley scholar. He has lived and taught English in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica. He finished his B.A. in literature at Weber State University after completing a study abroad program at Oxford’s Balliol College. He is currently working on his M.A. in literature at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, where he resides and enjoys rock climbing and backpacking in the mountains with his friends in his spare time.
El sol poniente descendió hasta el extremo
de perderse entre otros fuegos.
A la mañana siguiente
el cielo ardió distinto:
las nubes tomaron la forma de fantasmas
y se detuvieron a llover sobre sus tumbas;
en lugar de cantar, los pájaros gemían.
Si alguien una vez dijo hágase la luz
ese día dijo que la luz deshaga.
Los árboles fueron los primeros en quemarse;
sus inquilinos
se arrastraron por la hierba
que a mediodía estaba seca y despoblada.
¿Qué flores brotarían ese día en el infierno?
¿Qué condenado esconde,
entre el papeleo de sus culpas, un herbario?
Confused Fires
The
setting sun descended to the point
of
being lost in other forms of fire.
The
following morning
the
sky burned distinctly:
the
clouds became the silhouettes of spirits
and
stopped to rain over their tombs;
instead
of singing, the birds wailed.
If
someone once said let there be light
that
day spoke let light be undone.
The
trees were the first to burn;
their
inhabitants
crawled
through the grass
that at
midday was scorched and forsaken.
What
flowers bloom on that day of hell?
What
damned person hides,
between
the guilt of paperwork, an herbarium?