Translated by Jeremy Paden
Spalding MFA Faculty Translation
Bandit’s Ballad From La conquista del aire By Alexandra Dominguez
It’s not easy to meet up with a man like Buffalo Bill but who isn’t Buffalo Bill. Who’s the strongest man in all of Michigan but doesn’t live in Michigan. Who’s the fastest quick-draw cowboy but keeps no bullets in his gun. Who comes galloping down from the prairies but has no horse, who enters a cantina but is not thirsty, who takes pity if someone draws with no other recourse than to be felled by a bullet. Truly it’s not easy to know a man like Buffalo Bill who isn’t Buffalo Bill. Who’s respected by Sioux chiefs in the way that the white eagle is still respected in the mountains. Who’s the most beautiful lover in all of Michigan, from Minnesota to New Mexico, from his silver belt buckle to the Rocky Mountains of Utah preachers. I’m trying to say it’s not easy to fall in love with a man who chases down horse thieves, it’s not easy to go to bed with him and sleep in his arms and dream of bison, a man who has a savage look in his eyes but who’s not a savage. A man in the vicinity of Buffalo Bill who’s not an old jackal forgotten beneath a sheriff’s badge, who robs warehouses and buys flowers on Saturdays with stolen money. A man who calls loss loss and failure he calls failure. I want to say, that’s what I want to say, it’s not easy.
Ancestors From Autumn’s Countersong in Bierzo Valley By Juan Carlos Mestre
My ancestors invented the Milky Way. They named that expanse necessity, hunger they called wall of hunger, they named poverty all that is not stranger to poverty. A man can only do so much when consumed by the thought of hunger, barely trace out a fish in the dusty road, barely sail the ocean on a wooden cross.
My ancestors sailed the ocean on a wooden cross, but they seek an audience with kings, so they wandered through the archives like hedgehogs and lizards that wander down village trails.
They landed on sand dunes, in the dunes the earth shines like fish scales, life in the dunes is seasons of rain followed by seasons of wind.
A man can only do so much when all he has had in life are these things: barely fall asleep reclined on the thought of hunger while listening to sparrows converse in the granary, barely plant flowering firewood in the bed sheets of gardens, walk barefooted over the shining earth and not bury in her his children.
My ancestors invented the Milky Way, they named that expanse necessity, they sailed the ocean on a wooden cross. Then they named hunger so that the master of hunger would be called the master of the house of hunger and they wandered the paths like hedgehogs and lizards that wander down village trails.
A man can only do so much with the crumbs of piety, eat soggy bread on rainy days knowing these are followed by seasons of wind and speak about necessities, speak about necessities as one speaks in the villages of all the small things that can be carefully wrapped in handkerchiefs.
Jeremy Paden received his Ph.D. in Spanish and Latin American literature from Emory University. In addition to teaching in Spalding’s MFA Program, Jeremy is an associate professor of Spanish at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he teaches classes on, among other topics, Latin American poetry and literary translation. In spring of 2015 he was awarded a Bingham Teaching Excellence Award, Transylvania’s highest honor for teaching.
He is the author of one chapbook of poems, Broken Tulips (Accents Publishing, 2013). His poems have appeared such places as Adirondack Review, Atlanta Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, California Quarterly, Cortland Review, Louisville Review, Rattle, and other journals and anthologies. He has been nominated for a Pushcart and was a 2013 finalist of the Nazim Hikmet poetry competition. His translations of poems from the Spanish have appeared in Words Without Borders and are forthcoming in other magazines and journals. His articles on Latin American and Spanish literature have appeared in Calíope: Journal for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, Colonial Latin American Review, Review of International American Studies, Romance Quarterly, and other journals and books of collected essays.