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Miguel Hernández: Lullaby of the onion,    Translation by Renato Rosaldo

May 16, 2011 by PBQ

The onion is frost
closed and poor.
Frost of your days
and my nights.
Hunger and onion,
black ice and frost,
big and round.

My child was in
a cradle of hunger.
He nursed on
onion blood.
But your blood,
frosted with sugar,
onion and hunger.

Dissolved into moon,
a dark woman
pours thread by thread
over the cradle.
Laugh, child,
for you can swallow
the moon whenever you want.

Lark of my house,
laugh a lot,
the laughter in your eyes
is the light of the world,
laugh so much
that when my soul hears you,
it conquers space.

Your laughter frees me,
places wings on me,
removes my loneliness,
strips prison away.
Mouth that flies,
heart flashing lightning
on your lips.

Your laughter
is the most victorious sword,
conquerer of flowers
and larks,
rival of the sun,
future of my bones
and my love.

Fluttering flesh,
blinking eyelid,
life never before
so colorful.
How many goldfinches
rise, flutter
from your body!

I woke from being a child
–never wake up.
My mouth is sad
–laugh forever.
Forever in the cradle
–defend laughter
feather by feather.

Being who flies
so high and so wide,
your flesh is
a newborn heaven.
If only I could
rise to the origen
of your flight.

In your eighth month you laugh
with five orange blossoms,
with five tiny
ferocities,
with five teeth
like five adolescent
jazmine blossoms.

They’ll be a fenced border
for kisses tomorrow
when you’ll feel
those teeth are a weapon.
You’ll feel a fire
running down your teeth
in search of the center.

Child, fly in the double
moon of the breast,
it, sadness of onion,
you, satisfied.
Don’t fall down,
don’t learn the news,
or what’s happening.

Filed Under: contributors 69, Issue 69, Poetry, Poetry 69 Tagged With: Contributors 69, Miguel Hernández, Poetry, Poetry 69

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