Bibliophilia Obscura: Two Poems by Alejandra Pizarnik

At the Wait of Obscurity - Translated by Johannes Anders

That moment one doesn’t forget

So void – I returned by the shadows

So empty – rejected by the timepieces

That skinflint instant nursed by my softness

Nuded, Naked of gored up vans[1]

Sans eyes to recall old anxieties

Sans lips to scoop the squash of violences

Lost in the song of the ice-cream bells.

Sheltered girl, blind woman of her vitals

Send your hair frosted by fire

Embrace the tiny statuette of terror.

Signal the convulsive globe at your feet

At your feet where swallows die

Shivering of fear to glimpse the future

Tell us that the sighs of the sea

Humidify the only words

Worth living for.

But that sweaty moment of nil

Nestled in the cave of endings

Sans hands to never speak with

Sans hands to gift butterflies

To the children already dead.

[1] Van: A wing with which the air is beaten

The Enamorada - Translated by Johannes Anders

This dismal hobbyhorse of life

This recondite humour of life

Alejandra drags you not to deny it

Today you watched in the mirror

And you were sad and alone

The light roared and the air sang

But your lover don’t return

Notes you’ll send will grin

Your hands’ll tremor to revolve

Your lover so desired

 Back to you

Hear the witless siren who stole

The boat with beards of froth

Where the laughing died

Recall the final hug -

Oh now nothing of anxiety -

Laughing in the handkerchief out loud

But lock the ports of your features

To secret them for later

With that lost love who lit you

You gnaw at the days

You blame the nights

Life wrings you so much

Desperate! Go where?

So Desperate.. Nothing left..

(Alejandra Pizarnik, the last innocent, 1956)

Alejandra Pizarnik was born on April 29, 1936 in Avellaneda, Buenos Aires Province, near the capital. Her parents, Jewish immigrants, travelled from Rovno, Ukraine (of the then Russian Empire), and had settled in Argentina against the 1915 Revolution.

A year after entering the department of Philosophy and Letters at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pizarnik published her first book of poetry, La tierra más ajena (1955). Soon after, she studied painting with Juan Batlle Planas. Pizarnik followed her debut work with two more volumes of poems, La última inocencia (1956) and Las aventuras perdidas (1958).

From 1960 to 1964 Pizarnik lived in Paris. There she worked for the journal Cuadernos, sat on the editorial board of the magazine Les Lettres Nouvelles, and moved in Parisian circles. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968 and in 1971 a Fulbright Scholarship.

Pizarnik ended her life on September 25, 1972 by taking an overdose of Secobarbital Sodium at the age of 36. She was buried in Cementerio La Tablada, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Johannes Anders 

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