Literary translation is not something that I ordinarily do, and I might never have tried it if I had never been to Zacatecas. When I was there some years ago, it was not yet a destination point for American or Canadian tourists, and hardly anyone spoke English. My high school Spanish did not cut it; all that remained in my mind were fragments of poetry, and it seemed unlikely that I would want to tell anyone that I had olives in my saddlebags. I’d never been anywhere that made me feel as alien; yet there was also something enchanted about the place that hit me hard. I felt that there was an intensely personal reason for me to be there, but I didn’t know what it was. It was like a city I knew from my dreams.

High in the mountains of central Mexico, Zacatecas was once rich, its silver mine one of the most productive in the world. Pancho Villa kicked ass there in the revolution. The core of the city with its beautifully preserved 18th century buildings had been declared a World Heritage Site. It smelled utterly strange to me—a mixture of unfamiliar flowers, cloyingly sweet, and the toxic reek of automobile exhaust. Many of the streets were narrow and steep. Folks stood on small balconies, or in their windows, looking down on what might be the world’s most constant and impenetrable traffic jam. In a wedding party, we followed a donkey laden with barrels of mezcal through narrow alleys up and away from that traffic, stopped whenever there was a big enough space and danced like fools. Those who were inclined to do so had shots of mezcal. I don’t know what the band was—mariachi, tamborazo, whatever—I remember blazing hot Mexican trumpets. Eventually we climbed to a field high above the city where a laughing fellow handed us bottles of cervesa from an ice-crammed garbage can. I haven’t been a drinker since my forties, so I passed on the mezcal, but I’ve got to admit that cervesa went down just fine. Then, ignoring the tourist guide warnings, I headed for the food table and ate everything I saw. My god, I thought, I love this place!

The wealthy citizens of Zacatecas endowed their city with several stunningly good museums, and one day I went looking for souvenirs in the Pedro Coronel gift shop. By then I’d read in tourist guides that Zacatecas was the home of a famous poet I’d never heard of—Ramón López Velarde—and there were his collected poems on the shelf. A young man working in the gift shop came over to see if he could be of help. I held up the book and asked, “¿Es bueno?” He mistook my ridiculous question as a sign that I could speak Spanish and began to tell me just how bueno López Velarde was—better than bueno, a national treasure. Trying to convey the intensity of his emotions, the young man paced up and down. His face began to quiver. He waved his arms in the air. He recited some of López Velarde’s poetry from memory. His eyes flooded with tears. Of course I bought the book.

Written in a language I could not read, that book sat in my bookcase for years, suggesting to me that there was something I was supposed to do with it. I read López Velarde in translation. The translators often prided themselves on their accuracy, but their poems felt flat to me. They might have got literally what López Velarde said, but their English had no magic, and I never found a translated poem that might make anyone cry. Samuel Beckett’s translations—in Mexican Poetry: An Anthology compiled by Octavio Paz—were better, but Beckett made López Velarde sound overwrought, impenetrable, and Gothic in the worst sense of the word.

I read about the poet. López Velarde was both a devout Catholic and a man obsessively interested in the ladies, an unhappy combination. He was raised in the state of Zacatecas but then, as a young man, moved to Mexico City where, according to Octavio Paz, he “met the devil.” He seems to have spent much of his poetic energy staring into his own conflicted heart; one of his poetry collections was titled “Zozobra” which Paz translates as “Disquiet” but others translate as “Anguish.” A traditionalist not overly fond of the Revolution, López Velarde nonetheless transformed Mexican poetry so thoroughly that nothing was ever the same again. I gathered that his work with its brilliant and bizarre imagery is excruciatingly difficult to translate.

The summer of 2020 we were locked down for COVID, and I had lots of time on my hands. One of López Velarde’s poems, “Humildemente,” had attracted me from the first time I’d read it in the Paz anthology, and I thought, why don’t I try to translate it? Because this was a game I was playing with myself, I could set the rules. I was not allowed to consult any of the Spanish speakers I knew. I was not allowed to look at Beckett’s translation, or at anyone else’s, until I was finished.
I don’t know about the rest of López Velarde’s work, but that particular poem was excruciatingly difficult to translate. I was trying to follow the advice that Pound has famously given to translators: Don’t tell us what he said; tell us what he meant. Well, in order to take a stab at what he meant, I most certainly had to start with what he said.

Missing in any of the translations of López Velarde that I had read was any sense of music, and there was music aplenty in the Spanish, particularly in the first five and the last five stanzas. On the other hand the six stanzas in the middle—a report on the world when the Lord shuts off its power—are as flat and declarative as newspaper headlines. I would try to get the same effect—which meant that sometimes I would allow myself to depart a bit from a literal translation if I had to. It took forever.

Humbly

Ramón López Velarde (1888 – 1921)

Translation by Keith Maillard

For my mother and sisters


When the final weariness
overtakes me, I will return,
like the crane in the proverb,
home to my people
to kneel in the plaza among
the roses and children’s hoops
and the elaborate fringes
on the silken shawls of the ladies.

I’ll kneel in the midst
of the grassy sidewalks
to sanctify the clock
in its distant bell tower,
with its circle of sorrow,
and its hands of gold,
for man and for beast,
as luckily drunk
on the rays of the sun,
I see the Divine in his furnace.

Embraced in an afternoon
light that embroiders
like the luminous threads
of an apostolic spider,
I know that my honour
is humble and humbled
lower than the hooves
of the gentle mules
that carry the Holy Sacrament.

“I know you, O Lord,
though you’re travelling incognito.
At the scent of your incense
I am deafened and speechless,
paralyzed and blind,
bathed in the balm of your presence.

“Your plangent procession
shuts off the power
to these passing moments
as though the streets
were a toy shop
that’s sold out of string.

“My cousin, still holding her needle,
rises behind her high window
to stand as still as a statue.

“The reliable postman
who brings us news of the world
has fallen into his postal bag.

“Genoveva’s wet bodice,
hung out to dry,
no longer dances
on the roof top.

“The hen and her chicks,
battered by rain, have stopped
playing their fairy tales.

“Don Blas’s forehead
is petrified, becomes one
with the sidewalk that’s cracked
by the roots of the ash trees.

“The oranges stop growing.
Quivering beneath your gaze,
I don’t know how much longer
I can go on living.

“Lord, my reckless heart
that has long searched
for arrogant apparitions
is stunned, calls out to you
that I am your grateful plaything.

“Because you have set
in my heart a magnet
shaped like a clover
and the passionate red of a poppy.


“But that same magnet
is humble and hidden
like the magnetized comb
girls use to collect hairpins
as they electrify
their hair in the gloom.

“Lord, this toy
with a heart like a magnet
loves you and makes his confession
with the intimate passion
of the roots that push open
the cracks in the secular sidewalk.

“Everything is on its knees
with its forehead in the dust.
My life is the passionate poppy,
its stem laid out before you
to die beneath your wheels.”

Humildemente

—Ramón López Velarde
(1888 – 1921)
A mi madre y a mis hermanas


Cuando me sobrevenga
el cansancio del fin,
me iré, como la grulla
del refrán, a mi pueblo,
a arrodillarme entre
las rosas de la plaza,
los aros de los niños
y los flecos de seda de los tápalos.

A arrodillarme en medio
de una banqueta herbosa,
cuando sacramentando
al reloj de la torre,
de redondel de luto
y manecillas de oro,
al hombre y a la bestia,
al azar que embriaga
y a los rayos del sol,
aparece en su estufa el Divínisimo.

Abrazado a la luz
de la tarde que borda,
como el hilo de una
apostólica araña,
he de decir mi prez
humillada y humilde,
más que las herraduras
de las mansas acémilas
que conducen al Santo Sacramento.

«Te conozco, Señor,
aunque viajas de incógnito,
y a tu paso de aromas
me quedo sordomudo,
paralítico y ciego,
por gozar tu balsámica presencia.


»Tu carroza sonora
apaga repentina
el breve movimiento,
cual si fueran las calles
una juguetería
que se quedó sin cuerda.

»Mi prima, con la aguja
en alto, tras sus vidrios,
está inmóvil con un gesto de estatua.

»El cartero aldeano,
que trae nuevas del mundo,
se ha hincado en su valija.

»El húmedo corpiño
de Genoveva, puesto
a secar, ya no baila
arriba del tejado.

»La gallina y sus pollos
pintados de granizo
interrumpen su fábula.

»La frente de don Blas
petrificóse junto
a la hinchada baldosa
que agrietan las raíces de los fresnos.

»Las naranjas cesaron
de crecer, y yo apenas
si palpito a tus ojos
para poder vivir este minuto.

»Señor, mi temerario
corazón que buscaba
arrogantes quimeras,
se anonada y te grita
que yo soy tu juguete agradecido.

»Porque me acompasaste
en el pecho un imán
de figura de trébol
y apasionada tinta de amapola.


»Pero ese mismo imán
es humilde y oculto,
como el peine imantado
con que las señoritas
levantan alfileres
y electrizan su pelo en la penumbra.

»Señor, este juguete
de corazón de imán,
te ama y te confiesa
con el íntimo ardor
de la raíz que empuja
y agrieta las baldosas seculares.

»Todo está de rodillas
y en el polvo las frentes;
mi vida es la amapola
pasional, y su tallo
doblégase efusivo
para morir debajo de tus ruedas».

By and large I was able to follow López Velarde quite closely. Finally, when I thought that my version was finished—or at least getting there—I read Beckett’s translation again. To my astonishment, I found that his translation was bad—not mediocre or uninspired, but outright bad. I mean terrible. The great Beckett? I consulted with Professor Google again and discovered that although Beckett had studied Spanish, he was not terribly familiar with it. He had never been to Spain, and his interest in Mexico was somewhat less than zero. He took on the translation job because he needed the money.

The first stanza is not particularly challenging, and Beckett makes it through okay, but in the second stanza he dooms himself. If you’re in a hurry, it’s easy to grab a word that looks like a cognate but isn’t. López Velarde’s poet-narrator kneels in the middle of “una banqueta,” that is, a bench, a stool, or a sidewalk—in this case a sidewalk, as will become clear later in the poem—but Beckett mistakes “banqueta” for “banquete” that does mean banquet, and gives us the ridiculous opening, “To kneel in the midst/ of a grassy feast.”

I can forgive Beckett for the utter mess he made of the challenging second stanza, for using the ancient and obscure word “houseling,” although hardly any English speaker, except perhaps in Ireland, would know that it refers to the administration of the Holy Sacrament—for tossing in some “orange blossoms” even though there is not an orange blossom to be seen in the original—for ignoring the word “estufa” which means “stove.” But I can’t forgive him for missing the main thrust of the entire poem.
Beckett ends the twelfth stanza saying that the poet’s heart “grovels and cries/ that I am thy beholden chattel.” Nothing in the Spanish refers even remotely to groveling, and “chattel” is simply the wrong word. A chattel is property—a horse, a dog, a slave is chattel. Then, from the basket of possible English words for “agradecido” Beckett choses “beholden” with its legalistic implications, as though to underline his point. But in order to say what the poet meant, you have to start with what the poet said, and that is not what López Velarde said. “Juguete” does not mean “chattel.” It means “toy.”

When the poet returns home to his “pueblo”—his village, his people—he’s returning to his childhood to kneel among the roses and the children’s hoops (“los aros de los niños”). He does more than bless the clock in the tower with its sad circles of time (“de redondel de luto”)—he sanctifies it (“sacramentando”), and he does it for all of us, men and beasts (“al hombre y a la bestia”). Then he is randomly, fortuitously, luckily (“al azar”) positioned to see the Divine in his (“estufa”), his stove—his furnace.
“Se anonada” tells us that the poet is overwhelmed, annihilated, slapped silly, stunned; (“y te grita”) and he yells, screams, calls out, “que yo soy tu juguete agradecido” —that I am your grateful toy. I can hear the poet’s delight. He is grateful to the Lord. Why? Because the Lord has given him a special gift. The entire poem has been leading up to that special gift. Humble and hidden in López Velarde’s heart is that exquisite red flower of a magnet. What does it draw to itself? All of the passion, the attention to every passing moment, the awareness of living life that makes us fully human.

How could Beckett have screwed it up as badly as he did? Of course I don’t know, but I can imagine it was something like this. He’s doing the job for the money, and however much they’re paying him, it’s surely not enough for him to sweat blood over every poem. In a hurry—just as he’d grabbed for a cognate and misread “banqueta”—he might have thought he’d got the whole gist of the poem when he was only halfway through it. Right, a Catholic boyhood—I know all about that. What a miserable time that was, all that groveling. Okay, that’s it, the poem’s done. He’s personalized it, made it partially his. A Mexican childhood has become an Irish one. It’s one of those poems that should be called “after”—not a poem translating the original but inspired by it. If he’d labeled it like that—After López Velarde—I would have no problem with it.

Good poetry pushes the boundaries of language, and translating poetry must be among our most difficult literary exercises. Imagine a continuum. On one end is a dead literal translation, one that is meant to tell us exactly what the poem said, and as to anything else—the meter, the rhymes and half rhymes, the assonances, the word play, the music of the original—well, forget it. On the other end are attempts to write a beautiful poem in the target language, and as to getting exactly what the original said, well, forget that. Somewhere in the middle of the continuum is the brave attempt to do both—which is what I have tried to do. Then, as a project totally separate from this continuum, there is the “after” poem—a creative interaction between the original poet and the inspired poet.

My friend Robin Skelton published, under the title of Dark Seasons, a selection of Georg Trakl’s poems. Right there in the book, under the title, it says, “Translated from the German.” “Your German must be really good,” I said to Robin. No, he told me, it wasn’t, but he checked everything with a colleague at the university. Clearly, to Robin, the most important thing was writing beautiful poetry in English, and that’s what he did. He gave me a copy of his book. Some years later I was teaching a poetry class that had a native speaker of German in it. I chose several of the poems in Robin’s book and passed out copies of the originals and Robin’s translations of them. My German student was delighted. He had read Trakl and knew the poems. With thoroughness and gusto, he began to disassemble Trakl’s German and explain to us what was going on. The more he talked, the more inadequate Robin’s translations seemed to be. There were all manner of twists and turns and nuances in the German that Robin had either missed or ignored. Maybe Robin would have been better off—more honest—if, instead of “Translated from the German” he had written, “After Georg Trakl.”

While I was translating “Humildemente,” I had a go at an after-poem myself. It began easily enough. I have a good sense of what “the final weariness” will feel like, and then I will surely want to return to my hometown, if only in memory. In Appalachia, it’s not the crane that always comes back; it’s the cat, so—

When at last I’ve finally crapped out,
I’ll come slinking back
like a scruffy ole tomcat
to West by God Virginia
to kneel in the streets among
the kids’ marbles and skip ropes

—and on and on until I simply can’t make it work anymore. Yes, I do know you, O Lord, though you’re travelling incognito, but not from seeing your statue in a Catholic procession. I did not have a Catholic childhood, but a bland and boring Presbyterian one. Our church did not observe Ash Wednesday. And then there’s Death. Crying out in joyous gratitude to the Lord as he runs over you with his chariot is not how an old man imagines Death.

Some ten years after we were in Zacatecas, the officials of the city erected a splendid monument to López Velarde—a hyper-realistic bronze sculpture. He’s sitting on a park bench, his legs crossed. A conservative young gentleman of his time, he’s wearing a three-piece suit and a tie. His hair has been recently cut, and it’s immaculately parted; his neat little moustache is carefully trimmed; he’s holding a small notebook and what looks like a pencil, though it could be a delicate pen. He’s gazing off into the distance, not pretentiously into the heavens but simply into the sky above his home; his eyes tell us what he’s doing. With a shock, I recognize that distant gaze from having done the same thing myself—he’s searching for the next word or the next line. He’s doing exactly what a poet should be doing. He’s writing.

He was dead at thirty-three, of pneumonia, they say, but it might well have been our previous pandemic, the persisting 1918 flu. I can read more about him, but only in English because I don’t read Spanish. I can try to get some sense of the appallingly difficult mixture of passion and restraint—the old-school formality—of his relationship to his beloved lady. I can try to share his sense of loss, of utter devastation, at all that had changed in his hometown after the revolution. I stare at the photographs of his statue. It’s so realistic that if you came upon it at twilight, you might take it for a real person. “Ramón,” I address him, “yours is a hugely important voice. You deserve to be known in the English-speaking world as well as Rilke.”

Literary translation is not an amusing game one can play like whiling away the time with a cross-word puzzle. To do justice to Ramón López Velarde, a translator must begin with respect—must see the man sitting there on his park bench in Zacetecas, writing—and know him for who he is. To be able to do that, the translator must be utterly saturated in Mexican culture. What I have learned by now is that I am hardly the one to be able to do that.