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Rodolfo Häsler was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1958. He left Cuba as child with his family and has lived in Switzerland and Spain. He studied French literature and art history in Lausanne, Switzerland. He has worked as a translator, writer and poet. He has lived for many years in Barcelona.
His books of poetry include: Poemas de arena (Barcelona, 1982); Tratado de licantropía (Madrid, 1988); Elleife (Barcelona, 1993); De la belleza del puro pensamiento (Barcelona, 1997); Paisaje, tiempo azul (Mexico City, 2001); Cabeza de ébano (Barcelona, 2007) Diario de la urraca (2013) and Lengua de lobo (2021). His poetry has been translated into German, Portuguese, Italian, French and Macedonian. His poetry is included in several anthologies in Spain and Latin America
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Previous Translations
THW 38: Slovenian • THW 37: Romanian • THW 36: Polish • 35 THW35: Bulgarian • THW34: Czech • THW33: Flemish • THW32: Marina Tsvetaeva • THW31: Greek • THW30: Swedish • THW29: Galician • THW28: Galician • THW27: Early Irish Poetry • THW26: French-language Poetry from Africa and the Arab World • THW25: Contemporary Hebrew • THW24: French • THW23: Italian • THW22: Russian • THW 21: Austrian • THW 20: Macedonian • THW 19: Swiss-German • THW 18: Spanish • THW 17: Franco-Canadian • THW 16: Modern Greek • THW 15: Kazakh • THW 14: Hungarian • THW 13: Polish • THW 12: Classics • THW 11: Catalan • THW10: Hispanic • THW 9: Hebrew • THW 8: Bulgarian • THW 7: Japanese • THW 6: Dutch • THW 5: Portuguese • THW 4: French THW 3: Italian • THW 2: German • THW 1: Italian
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Rodolfo Häsler: Six Poems
translated by Peter Boyle
HILDEGARD VON BINGEN’S OPENNESS OF VISION,
I’m looking for it in the stones
of the refectory wall, the eye
questioning the heart,
the voiceless expression
of the part of existence
that’s also burning, people
sit there waiting
to eat from a clay bowl,
water boils,
the farmhouse floor is green mud
and its reflection accentuates the toughness
of wild artichoke,
surrender is imminent,
the fire paralyses action, lines and more lines
criss-cross to weave
a nest for lying down,
the river lifts its current to the cell
and its foam washes away
all need to hurry,
if you don’t breathe
words spin in your head.
It’s about enduring the light
as it unfolds the flower’s petals,
lost to meaning
a product of madness,
step back, the blood pours out now —
there’s no stopping it.
AARAU
the city disappears in water,
a gate, the gate of peppers,
I take a break when I reach the small square,
a tree slowly losing its leaves
keeps only its golden apples,
the slight swaying of the fruit on their weak stems
invites me to cut them,
to bring them closer to my mouth or stomach,
an old woman sitting in Aarau’s circular garden
deciphers the enigma of the golden apples,
the bright yellow spinning of the branches
reproduces the aerial city,
a casket for opening, with no heart or brain
or womb, only doubt,
in the image of the sky
to decide the future I shift my balance from one foot to the other.
TO WATCH THE SWANS DRIFT PAST
ordered like a keyboard,
the wings sealed in their procession
as if they were printing the letters
that describe the landscape, that
let it be named on their necks,
so you can dream a work of art
is writing itself in Leman’s deep waters,
a place of perfection to
bring a diary, to let yourself
be swept along by their chattering bills
and to speak, to go on speaking,
so that everything enters a new life,
so a fragment finds support
in the notebook where you discover your maturity,
and you bind your hands
to frame the journey inside the poem,
so you can’t skip
the first letter, the swan
of a lakeside episode,
whose result is the pencil stroke,
and with every correction
you magnify the years that have passed.
ZUR BLAUEN SCHNECKE
I
Something moves
in the small blue forest where water
breaks through, a sharp pain
rises to your temples, a tiny jab of pain
that affects your walking, the way you twist your body.
It reveals the blue animal,
through the snail’s shell a certain colour
crawls out to become the earth’s symbol.
It doesn’t vanish at the horizon
but disappears through the wall of a lakeside city
in the heart of Europe.
Just by being there its body
gazes at the sky, instigates a certain roundness
to move forward, its offspring
continues on its path opposite the famous cabaret
shedding its radiance.
The living file past, the dead file past
and with its blue flesh the snail
appears unchanging in its emptiness,
provoking every type of supposition,
an unreliable vision of what’s untouchable.
Rain soaks the pedestrians,
the flâneur strides on down a side alley,
thirteenth and fourteenth century houses,
narrow, encrusted in totemic animals,
red oxen for strength, storks
carrying snakes in their beaks,
creatures lost in the afternoon light.
The blue animal slowly
disappears into the twilight.
II
The snail’s damp nature creates a refuge,
a world through which it wanders
to reach the unknown,
to take a break in the Rindmarkt or in Hirschplatz,
a golden ornament
from another realm, not the radiance
that’s consumed in one sip.
Frequently while seeking an exit
it stumbles upon its fated
hour, climbs up a wall
in Oberdorfstrasse and stops there
disguised as an ornament.
At sunset, light’s a boiling liquid
that can soften tough flesh,
the energizing muscle that moves forward,
that persists to become
brown patches, thought’s confusion,
who knows what it really is?
What postures wound the sign of the sun,
a dry, brutal game in search of
totality?
III
It could refer to a person, a city.
An inhabitant of that limbo where everyone circulates.
The vision surprises us, the fate
of that larger exemplar, father, mother,
the nucleus, its repetition.
In blue flesh Art lays down its plan
to side-step the land of the dead.
Life triggers its uncertainty.
Stuck to a wall it immolates itself.
By chance it may rain frequently,
a situation enabling this
tiny body of a duende to whisper to you.
It is dedicated to writing and goes
straight to the core, the longing,
the chance encounter.
Magic words, not written down,
left here and there like a light trail
to lead you to the meeting.
A needed caress, something
that on stage could be
a cut in the stone,
an unendurable pain,
free of any expectation,
the word’s illusory presence.
DEVASTATION IN THE HOTEL PACKARD
for Soleida Ríos
The coordinates mark a spot
on a crumpled map of the world,
it must be stressed, says one who always remembers,
you must bang the doorknocker, step beyond
the defunct city’s threshold,
what a lack of care demolished
disappears or turns into decoration,
a leaning construction
that maintains its yellow colour,
the word anxiety isn’t enough
and slips down the spine of a book
by the poet cobbler
Lorenzo García Vega: Devastación del Hotel San Luis,
a slug snuggles up in his textilandia
to tell the unexpected,
but you would never accept it, so you leave,
so much promiscuity exhausts you,
it’s possible to climb a tall tree
and speak a garbled version of bird language,
the hotel is hunger and devastation,
a place to spit out thirst’s sponge,
to fool around when face to face with the wolf’s snout,
the wolf’s tongue, the ferocious tongue
locked in a small box,
in a desk drawer
in my room in the Hotel Packard,
but it’s better not to strain your voice,
no need for words,
for babbling, silence,
may you be blessed
in all places.
(from Lengua de lobo)
TANGERINE
It isn’t just some accidental gesture,
the city murmurs words so difficult to grasp,
a round fruit with an intense acidic taste
floats in the air, prompting you to try and catch it,
an orange image of a time already conquered.
The street as it descends is light and evanescence,
in the souk thin coins are traded
and from the veranda of the café Fuentes,
meeting the daring reader,
the indescribable repetition of the well-thumbed globe
is the book of blindness’ precise diameter.
The acidic taste, the acidic taste
shattered on glazed tiles to scare the man,
what memory are you scratching into,
light and evanescence.
(from Cabeza de ébano)
Peter Boyle is an award-winning Australian Poet who is also a well respected translator of contemporary Spanish and Latin American poetry into English. The High Window has previously published several of his translations, such as his work on Spanish poet Juan Carlos Mestre.
