Santos Domínguez is a Spanish and Literature teacher at Norba school. He has recently been awarded the important Villa de Aoíz Prize in its XXXV edition for his poem "Ayer no te vi en Babilonia".
Rick Hite, Professor Emeritus at Virginia Wesleyan College, has kindly translated this beautiful poem for our blog.
We offer the original version in Spanish followed by its English version.
Thank you, Rick. Congratulations, Santos.
AYER NO TE VI EN BABILONIA
(Tabla de arcilla, 3000 a. C)
Cinco mil años pesan sobre esta arcilla viva
en la que un hombre hablaba una lengua de barro.
Como la nieve al lobo, sus palabras delatan
su extrañeza de siglos, sus tiempos estelares
y el espacio incesante y fluvial, el latido
de un corazón ausente.
Miles de años después, otra lengua diría
-y era una voz de sombra-: “Te veré en Babilonia.”
Era una voz de sombra que anunciaba la muerte
y la pira encendida para un héroe sin tiempo.
Pasaron cazadores de serpientes,
se callaron los gallos del arrabal y el viento
fue bajando a los ríos y apagando las velas.
Tiempo, espacio y el nombre de una ciudad sin sueño.
Con música insondable,
cae la sombra del hielo en el desierto y lejos,
en arroyos secretos,
beberán los caballos lentamente en la orilla.
Las cúpulas de cuarzo brillan bajo la luna.
Bajo esa misma luna sigue temblando aún
-no te vi en Babilonia-
la voz de arcilla frágil que escribió su temblor
con un tallo sumerio, con un punzón de ausencia.
Con un punzón de angustia esas palabras lentas
y urgentes; no te vi en Babilonia.
Simples como una herida de escarcha en los planetas,
un pájaro de nieve sigue latiendo en ellas.
I MISSED YOU YESTERDAY IN BABYLON
(Clay Tablet, 3000 B.C.)
Five thousand years weigh heavy on this vibrant piece of clay
whereupon a man was speaking a language made of mud.
Like the wolf’s tracks in the snow, his very words give away
his century’s old strangeness, that so stellar age of his,
and all the space unceasing, ever flowing, the beating
of a heart now so absent.
Thousands of years afterwards, and another tongue would say
-- And it was a shadow’s voice -- : “I’ll meet you in Babylon.”
Yes, it was a shadow’s voice that was foretelling the death
and the pyre already ablaze for some timeless hero.
The hunters of serpents passed by on their way,
and the cocks in the slums of town fell silent, and the wind
went sweeping down to the rivers blowing out the candles.
Time and space and the name of a city always sleepless.
With music unsoundable,
the shadow of ice falls across the desert, and far off,
along hidden arroyos,
the horses will be drinking slowly at every bank side.
The cupolas of quartz are shinning bright beneath the moon.
And beneath that very moon still trembles even today
-- I missed you, in Babylon –
the voice in clay, so fragile which wrote down its own trembling
with some Sumerian reed, with indentions of absence.
With indentions of anguish, those words impressed so slowly,
so urgently: I missed you, in Babylon.
Words as simple as a wounding frostbite on the planets,
some bird with snowy feathers keeps beating deep inside them.
