*****
Giovanni Quessep was born in 1939 in San Onofre, a small town in the Colombian Caribbean coast, in 1939. He is one of Colombia’s most significant living poets. He is the son of a Lebanese father and a mother from Bogotá. In a career that has spanned over sixty years, he has published fourteen books of original poetry. In addition, various publishing houses in Colombia have published several selected editions of his work and he has been included in many Colombian and Latin American anthologies of poetry. His work has been translated into Portuguese, Arab, German, Italian, French, English and Greek.
Quessep’s poetry is the result of the improbable encounter of elements from various different literary traditions: from the folk tales of the Arab world he heard from his Lebanese father and grandmother to the classic works of Colombian literature such as García Márquez’s novels, from the characters that populate Ancient Greek mythology to the philosophical convictions that underlie the Italian Renaissance and Shakespeare’s plays. His gaze is that of a perpetual foreigner who marvels at the strangeness the world reveals to him under the guise of history and legends.
*****
The poems presented below has been translated by Ranald Barnicot and Felipe Botero Quintana. Their selected edition of Quessep’s poems : A Greek Verse for Ophelia and Other Poems, 1968 – 2017 is available here.
*****
Giovanni Quessep: Twelve Poems
WHEN HE SAID HIS NAME
When I heard the story of his exile
I knew that impiety has no name,
and the harsh sun fell like iron
upon us, and I understood death.
When he said, full of innocence, that man is but
a zero to the left, zero to hope,
my flesh was shaken by love’s
white labyrinth, guilt’s time arose.
Blind words on the afternoon revealed
his struggle against the sea, and the sun rolled
like a dark festering rose.
When I heard the story of his exile
then came the great desolation, the mourning
that shuffled steps in the shadow,
dreams’ endless snare.
He pronounced his name and already a long
solitude had begun to separate us.
Note: It is probable that Quessep is making a play on words with a traditional Colombian saying: “x es un cero a la izquierda” (“x is a zero to the left”), which means that someone or something is nothing, means nothing, has no significance.
*
CUANDO DIJO SU NOMBRE
Cuando oí su relato del exilio
supe que la impiedad no tiene nombre,
y el recio sol caía como un hierro
sobre nosotros, y entendí la muerte.
Cuando dijo, inocente, el hombre es sólo
cero a la izquierda, cero a la esperanza,
movió mi carne un blanco laberinto
de amor, y creció el tiempo de la culpa.
Ciegas palabras en la tarde dieron
su lucha contra el mar, y sol rodaba
como una purulenta rosa oscura.
Cuando oí su relato del exilio
vino la gran desolación, el luto,
que movía los pasos en la sombra,
y la trampa del sueño, interminable.
El pronunció su nombre, ya una larga
soledad comenzaba a separarnos.
(From El ser no es una fábula / Being is not a fable. 1968)”
***
IN THE MOON I HAVE TOLD
In the moon I have related
Light of name and memory
In the rose all but history
Of garden fancy’s recreated
All in the past’s illuminated
In all that’s lost all is in flower
Music of a former hour
Or how unreal the tall tale teller
(White moon or cruel rose’s terror)
Walks as he talks towards oblivion’s power
*
EN LA LUNA QUE HE CONTADO
En la luna que he contado
Leve de nombre y memoria
En la rosa casi historia
Del jardín imaginado
Todo ilumina en pasado
Todo florece en perdido
Músicas de lo que ha sido
O irrealidad del que cuenta
Blanca luna o rosa cruenta
Contar es ir al olvido
(From Canto del extranjero / Song of the Foreigner, 1976)
***
SONG OF THE FOREIGNER
Castle’s twilight darkening in my dreamtime
Claudia’s tower warding off absence from me
Twilight love reflected in water’s shadow
Whitening lengthy
Voice in hiding tell me your hidden secret
Doubly threading fable and then unthreading
White-skinned sleep-starved wife of Odysseus scarcely
Soothed by the fairy
How to come within your domain if keeping
Close guard on yourself you have locked the garden
Gate against the foreigner lost to wander
Whiteness of island
Someone is approaching though through the forest
Where the deer are winged and the moon is foreign
Claudia’s island searching for so much sorrow
Seeking the sovereign
Real is the story with hands that open
Fruit of death abandoned and then forgotten
If a legend’s thread yet retains remembrance
Beauty in sleeping
On your shorelines time in its vespers sings out
Save me time of Claudia from night-time’s drumming
How to come within your domain white tower
Blocked to my coming
Nonetheless the word comprehends a walker
Blind song on the wing to enchantment’s country
Where to hide his voice that’s a flying vessel
Bound for your body
Castle, vessel is he in your remembrance
Sea of wine and prince of abolished princedom
Claudia’s body finally window onto
Paradise giving
If before an audience of stones he names you
That you may be moved so to drift in splendour
Course set fair to where a new realm will render
Tribute of wonder
What’s this voice awoken by you in dreaming?
Garden’s story over again repeating?
Where’s your body next to which shadow sliding
Taking a beating?
Water-borne Penelope you’ve forgotten
Now her beauty sleeping in ancient moonlight
Taking from the mirror another likeness
Alice’s profile
Tell me then the secret of rose or never
Lion paired with unicorn standing sentry
All the while the foreigner climbs your hillside
Ever more lonely
Steps repeat at dawn, are repeating while you
Are retreating, always your own song singing
Castle’s twilight marking the dark beginning
Age of the fairies
Through my hand your veins in their webs run coursing
Labyrinthine delta of desolation
And love’s fable, lost or abandoned, summons
You from oblivion
And the poet names you the one in many
Alice or Penelope yes forever
Garden mirror wine-sea reflect remember
Revenant Claudia
Hear him now descending within the forest
Where the deer are winged, and the moon is foreign
Feel him touch your hands let him raise the purple
Rose to your body
From what country whence and from what time comes his
Voice or comes the story he sings or chants you?
Claudia’s vessel draw me on to your shoreline
Tell him you love him
Claudia’s tower let not oblivion take him
Blue in whiteness now in the hour of dying
Claudia’s garden sky-dweller elemental
Claudia celestial
Castle vessel is he in your remembrance
Sea renewed and prince of abolished princedom
Claudia’s body finally window onto
Paradise giving
*
CANTO DEL EXTRANJERO
Penumbra de castillo por el sueño
Torre de Claudia aléjame la ausencia
Penumbra del amor en sombra de agua
Blancura lenta
Dime el secreto de tu voz oculta
La fábula que tejes y destejes
Dormida apenas por la voz del hada
Blanca Penélope
Cómo entrar a tu reino si has cerrado
La puerta del jardín y te vigilas
En tu noche se pierde el extranjero
Blancura de isla
Pero hay alguien que viene por el bosque
De alados ciervos y extranjera luna
Isla de Claudia para tanta pena
Viene en tu busca
Cuento de lo real donde las manos
Abren el fruto que olvidó la muerte
Si un hilo de leyenda es el recuerdo
Bella durmiente
La víspera del tiempo a tus orillas
Tiempo de Claudia aléjame la noche
Cómo entrar a tu reino si clausuras
La blanca torre
Pero hay un caminante en la palabra
Ciega canción que vuela hacia el encanto
Dónde ocultar su voz para tu cuerpo
Nave volando
Nave y castillo es él en tu memoria
El mar de vino príncipe abolido
Cuerpo de Claudia pero al fin ventana
Del paraíso
Si pronuncia tu nombre ante las piedras
Te mueve el esplendor y en él derivas
Hacia otro reino y un país te envuelve
La maravilla
¿Qué es esta voz despierta por tu sueño?
¿La historia del jardín que se repite?
¿Dónde tu cuerpo junto a qué penumbra
Vas en declive?
Ya te olvidas Penélope del agua
Bella durmiente de tu luna antigua
Y hacia otra forma vas en el espejo
Perfil de Alicia
Dime el secreto de esta rosa o nunca
Que guardan el león y el unicornio
El extranjero asciende a tu colina
Siempre más solo
Maravilloso cuerpo te deshaces
Y el cielo es tu fluir en lo contado
Sombra de algún azul de quien te sigue
Manos y labios
Los pasos en el alba se repiten
Vuelves a la canción tú misma cantas
Penumbra de castillo en el comienzo
Cuando las hadas
A través de mi mano por tu cauce
Discurre un desolado laberinto
Perdida fábula de amor te llama
Desde el olvido
Y el poeta te nombra sí la múltiple
Penélope o Alicia para siempre
El jardín o el espejo el mar de vino
Claudia que vuelve
Escucha al que desciende por el bosque
De alados ciervos y extranjera luna
Toca tus manos y a tu cuerpo eleva
La rosa púrpura
¿De qué país de dónde de qué tiempo
Viene su voz la historia que te canta?
Nave de Claudia acércame a tu orilla
Dile que lo amas
Torre de Claudia aléjale el olvido
Blancura azul la hora de la muerte
Jardín de Claudia como por el cielo
Claudia celeste
Nave y castillo es él en tu memoria
El mar de nuevo príncipe abolido
Cuerpo de Claudia pero al fin ventana
Del paraíso
(From Preludios / Preludes, 1980)
***
PRELUDE FOR AN ELEGY
Now I remember you,
how my passion trails behind you, mourning,
lost lily between the ruins
that rise up to the sky. The soul dreams
what we cannot find and out of it makes a song,
where love and beauty
are a single music of light,
placid leaf that in the air
reflects its garden and the other, flame
proclaiming that no blue can turn it to ash.
You strolled by my side
through the golden streets of Venice
in autumn, when the leaves and the moon
shroud palaces
with that dimly resplendent mirror sheen,
when a dove’s wing scarcely
troubles the peace of the canals
as an air that comes from the sky
and brings music to make
stone and our eyes recur.
How much loveliness and joy
in the streets, where between trees of magic shadow,
death already awaited
perhaps as a queen clad in white,
without you or me feeling
its paradisiacal lark’s murmur,
fable that threads itself
from time to our hands,
without nothing in us to reveal what we already are:
petals of the indecipherable rose.
Who can avoid losing himself within you, happiness,
in that courtyard or sky extending from soul to soul
a corridor through the abyss?
We believed in a soothing country
and in the song that purifies death.
Venice loved us, and loved you, lavishing you with flowers,
giving you that sea’s blue
presentiment of sorrow’s garden.
Now you are with yourself, alone in your night of passion,
and you rule over the island of golden cypresses.
*
PRELUDIO PARA UNA ELEGÍA
Ahora te recuerdo,
cómo va mi pasión tras tí, enlutada,
perdido lirio entre las ruinas
que se elevan al cielo. El alma sueña
lo que no hallamos y hace de ello un canto,
donde amor y belleza
son una sola luz de música,
plácida hoja que en el aire
refleja su jardín y el otro, llama
que en el azul no ha de ser ceniza.
Anduviste a mi lado
por las calles doradas de Venecia
en el otoño, cuando las hojas y la luna
envuelven los palacios
con ese resplandor tenue de los espejos,
cuando apenas un ala de paloma
turba la paz de los canales
como un aire que llega del cielo
y trae las músicas
que repiten la piedra y nuestros ojos.
Cuánta hermosura y dicha
por calles, donde entre árboles de sombra mágica,
la muerte ya esperaba
tal vez como una reina vestida de blanco,
sin que ni tú ni yo sintiéramos
su edénico rumor de alondra,
fábula que se teje
del tiempo a nuestras manos,
sin que nada en nosotros revele que ya somos
pétalos de la rosa indescifrable.
¿Quién no se pierde en tí, felicidad,
por ese patio o cielo que hay de alma a alma
como una pasarela en el abismo?
Creímos en un país balsámico
y en el canto que purifica de la muerte.
Venecia nos amaba, y a tí, colmándote de flores,
te dio ese azul del mar
que presiente el jardín de la desdicha.
Ahora estás contigo, sola en tu noche de pasión,
y reinas en la isla de cipreses dorados.
(From Muerte de Merlin / Death of Merlin, 1985)
***
DEATH OF MERLIN
In between woods the kingdom’s at an end.
It offers nothing but dust-corroded doors.
The spell was false, the sorcerers
lie under the white hawthorn.
Nonetheless – for those with eyes
to see through frost-encrusted lids –
there is an unknown corner yielded
by the constellation, by the rose.
Here the laurel does not dwell but
in the mandrake’s blue-tinged poison,
and time preserves its dragonflies
for the dead, to gild their eyes.
*
MUERTE DE MERLÍN
Entre bosques el reino ha concluido.
No tiene sino puertas con herrumbre.
El sortilegio era falso, los encantadores
yacen bajo el espino blanco.
Sin embargo —para quien pueda ver
a través de sus párpados de escarcha—,
existe un rincón desconocido
que brindan la constelación y la rosa.
Aquí el laurel no habita
sino el veneno azulado de la mandrágora,
y el tiempo guarda sus libélulas
para dorar los ojos de los muertos.
(From Un jardín y un desierto / A Garden and a Desert, 1993)
***
FRUIT
Branches at the window; the lemon tree
passes beyond the swaying, stirring air.
Death becomes fair in my expectancy,
dropping dust on the glass. Does it bloom there?
The weaver that weaves in the past
also in this hour weaves fruit for the weather.
It is noon. Now the ripened dust
in full bloom’s forced to wait and wither.
FRUTO
Ramas en la ventana; el limonero
va más allá del aire que lo mece.
La muerte se hace bella en lo que espero
y en el cristal da el polvo. ¿En él florece?
La hilandera que hila en el pasado
hila también el fruto en esta hora.
Es mediodía. El polvo ha madurado
y en plena flor aguarda y se desdora.
***
DEATH’S THRESHOLD
At dawn, the wind ― you can hear it drum ―
blue, strong at the window. There were
stars, fear and torment. Here and there
beautiful things there were. Death will come.
Death will come and in its depths, maybe,
we will find the treasure we have sought
in the arks of gold. Music caught
in passing, somewhere, on its way to be.
On its way, in passing, the moon, what’s lost,
what names and chooses, what’s been, what’s tossed
into the past with all that time makes vain.
No one knows the threads of the story, chance or will,
that turns in the window like a driven vane,
not the blue wind, nor the terrible waterwheel.
UMBRAL DE LA MUERTE
De madrugada el viento, azul y fuerte,
golpea la ventana. Había estrellas
y temor y tormento. Cosas bellas
había. Vendrá la muerte.
Vendrá la muerte y en su fondo, acaso,
hallemos el tesoro
que hemos buscado por el arca de oro.
Las músicas halladas van de paso.
Van de paso la luna, lo perdido,
lo que nombra y escoge, lo que ha sido,
todo lo que en el tiempo es cosa vana.
Nadie sabe los hilos de la historia
que gira en la ventana,
ni el viento azul, ni la terrible noria.
(From Carta imaginaria /Imaginary Letter, 1998)
***
ARS AMANDI
Across the desert they would glide or dart,
the birds – could you but write another art
of love among wild beasts –
reposing at your side to perch,
two or three of your orchard’s apples their rich feasts;
and could you but, once home, for your grieved heart,
espy your angel – quiet air’s doomed, dark jewel-torch –
from the impossible emerge
to bring the consolation you desire.
Yes, birds, across the sky martyred wildfire,
the threshold’s angel, door and fearsome verge.
And other goods and evils would arrive,
in the dark, wise, celestial night alighting
to say that final letters in their art contrive
a beautiful song but bitter in its writing.
*
ARS AMANDI
Vendrían, si escribieras
otro arte de amar entre las fieras,
los pájaros que cruzan el desierto
a posarse a tu lado
por dos o tres manzanas de tu huerto;
y al llegar a tu casa a tu ángel vieras
—joya aciaga que arde en el aire callado—
venir de lo imposible
a consolar tu duelo.
Sí, pájaros, martirio por el cielo,
ángel en el umbral, puerta temible.
Y vendrían otros bienes y otros males
en la sabia, celeste noche oscura,
a decir que en el arte de las letras finales
es bella la canción y amarga su escritura.
*****
CARPE DIEM
At mid-day, at the mid-point between summer
and autumn, leaf’s beauty, instant’s fable, in flow.
We are left only with the delight of its splendour
as it falls from the tree onto the diamond meadow.
*
CARPE DIEM
Al mediodía transcurre lo bello de la hoja
ente el verano y el otoño, fabula del instante,
sólo nos queda la delicia de su esplendor
mientras cae del árbol a la pradera de diamante.
(From El aire sin estrellas / The Starless Air, 2000)
***
VISION
I was keeping vigil in the garden last night
when the spring passed.
I saw a barque full of flowers.
That was all.
However, I am well aware that her flight
was and was not of this world;
in her there were lunar embers,
and precipices of diamond and dust.
It may be that she will return one day
from the kingdom I have lost, and that in the final
hour she will close my eyelids.
I saw her drifting away from the garden,
and in it the leaves, in the night,
undergo her grief and her grace.
Perhaps spring still retains
life, in her legend, passing away.
VELABA ANOCHE EN EL JARDÍN
Velaba anoche en el jardín
cuando pasó la primavera.
Vi una barca llena de flores.
Eso fue todo.
Mas, sé bien que su vuelo
era y no era de este mundo;
había en ella brasas lunares,
precipicios de diamante y polvo.
Quizá un día retorne
del reino que he perdido, y en la hora
final cierre mis párpados.
La vi alejarse del jardín,
y en él las hojas, en la noche,
sufren su dolor y su gracia.
Tal vez la primavera guarde
la vida, en su leyenda, cuando pasa.
(From El artista del silencio / The artist of silence, 2012)
***
THE LAST SHORE
How then to know if of itself the river comes or goes,
or whether the water’s but time’s canticle.
Ah, how can we make the cedar planted in this boat
flower in the last shore’s deserts.
Perhaps there was a time in which the dawn that blinds
us in the enemy night was not the pure dream
of one not lost, now already turned shadow,
who watches the flowering oars sink in the river.
*
LA ÚLTIMA ORILLA
Cómo saber si el río va o viene de sí mismo,
o si el agua no es sólo un cántico del tiempo.
Ah, cómo hacer que el cedro sembrado en esta barca
florezca en los desiertos de la última orilla.
Tal vez sería una vez si el alba que nos ciega
en la noche enemiga no fuese el puro sueño
de aquél que no se pierde porque, ya vuelto sombra,
mira hundirse en el río los remos florecidos.
***
THE ARTIST OF SILENCE
Should it be denied?
If I am the last man walking on the earth
I would have to deny it
if there are no birds to sing an autumn song
if there is no autumn if the time of the seasons has already passed
I would have to deny it
if there is no blue for me to tell my bewilderment
if I am where the colours have no name
in the gardens’ incessant final judgement
I am the last man shouting on the earth
who shouts to the sky that has hidden itself forever
and I would have to deny it to whom, to God?
God is perchance the artist of silence
for there are so many leaves that are not or keep falling into the abyss
and explode in the squalid air but what air.
*
EL ARTISTA DE SILENCIO
¿Habría de negarlo?
Si soy el último hombre que camina sobre la tierra
y habría de negarlo si no hay pájaros
que canten una canción en el otoño
si no hay otoño si ya ha pasado el tiempo de las estaciones
y habría de negarlo
si no hay azul a quien decirle mi desconcierto
si estoy donde los colores no tienen nombre
en el juicio final incesante de los jardines
Soy el último hombre que grita sobre la tierra
que grita al cielo que se ha ocultado para siempre
y habría de negarlo a quién ¿a Dios?
acaso Dios es el artista del silencio
de tantas hojas que no son o siguen cayendo al abismo
y estallan en el aire sucio pero en qué aire.
***
Translators
Ranald Barnicot (born 1948) has published original poems and translations from various languages (Ancient Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian) in journals such as Orbis, Cannon’s Mouth and Acumen. A Greek Verse for Ophelia and Other Poems by Giovanni Quessep, Selected Poems 1968 – 2017, Translated by Felipe Botero Quintana and Ranald Barnicot was published by Out-spoken Press in November 2018. By Me, Through Me (original poems and translations) was published by Alba Press in December 2018. His translation of Catullus’ shorter poems, Friendship, Love, Abuse etc. (Dempsey and Windle) came out in August 2020.
Felipe Botero (born 1990) is a writer, philosopher and translator from Colombia. He took a B.A. in Philosophy (Universidad Nacional of Colombia) and an M.A. with Distinction in Philosophy and the Arts (Warwick, UK). Felipe has translated into Spanish texts by writers such as Conrad, Pessoa and the French novelist Jean-Luc A. d’Asciano.
The High Window 