César Silva (b. 1974)

translated by Anthony Seidman

The Anguish of What's Born

in a cheap bar i watch a movie about convicts
and the screen is like a sun though it's 10 o'clock
  at nite
a squandering of light, a stunning dove
like the woman tending the bar
whiskey embraces the scene and in the movie
  everything smells like new
no one eats or drinks because everything is
  circumstantial
because nobody will die during dinner
and nobody will escape when the convicts are drinking
everyone's like a centipede squeezing at danger,
the sumptuous rib that god immediately cloisters in
  a bubbling spring
and which in the evening nourishes birds in the patio
and nourishes the danger of a razor's edge into the
  astute brow
everyday they remember
those who once again will be important
they speak about the anguish of what's born
and guess that everything's alright
in the movie you can inexplicably hear an orchestra
you hear the ill-fated funereal dilate at the foot of
  the screen
but here on the outside Sinatra sings just for us
12 years have passed on T.V. and the actors are old
the same thing happened here
my woman grew out her hair, and the drapes are
  drab
fate is a lifeless body
and my cup drags in the years
i drink

César Silva: b. Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, 1974. Silva
is the author of several collections, among them
ABCDario, published by Tierra Adentro, and
currently in its second edition. He is one of the leading,
younger poets in Mexico, and is partly responsible
for a loosening of breath in some contemporary
Mexican poetry, a sense of play and utilization of
the vernacular, in reaction to the official aesthetics
imposed for so many years by poets imitating Paz.
He is also an award winning novelist and his work
has appeared in diverse journals in Mexico, the
United States and Spain.

César Silva © 2009
translated by Anthony Seidman © 2009

Inscriptions

I like not uttering your name, squeezing it within,
maintaining it in that continuous tumble toward my bones;

the tense arch of your name,
the sting of each letter shriveling, not making a sound:

first the sign
to first write the sign and never pronounce it;

to assemble the resurrection of the world's silences
in the voyage of your name.

Fire

phosphor of the world,
necklace of words:

the fingers loosen,
the fingers write;

they dictate what I think,

they forge what I dictate.

Werewolf

i'm a grappling iron
i'm the miracle in which fear crosses itself
the wound sniffing its own blood and devouring itself
i'm a thread that catches on fire vertically
open up the door

César Silva © 2009
translated by Anthony Seidman © 2009