jorge ortega

bedouins
bedouins
bedouins
translated from the Spanish by

Anthony Seidman

bedouins
jorge ortega

translated from the spanish by

anthony seidman

molossus
los angeles

poems copyright jorge ortega, 2014.

translation copyright anthony seidman, 2014.
http://moloss.us

introduction
Now a poet reaching his midcareer, Jorge Ortega (Mexicali, 1972)
has been a formidable presence in Mexican letters. Unique, baroque, traditional in the best sense of the wordincluding the
tendency among traditions to rupture with TraditionOrtegas
poetry opens up a thesaurus of tropes and allusions from which
the surrealism and deep imagism of his fellow countrymen, Octavio Paz or Montes de Oca, play in a fluid manner, like the liquidity of fire in zero gravity, with classical poetry, Medieval epics, the
poetry of Gngora, and which all wind and unwind around other
poets, including Eliot, Rimbaud, or Hart Crane, whose work Ortega has deftly translated into Spanish. It was Kenneth Rexroth who
noted that Hart Cranes syntax and imagery was the closest thing
in English to Rimbaud, and the reader who cant decipher Spanish
can sense a bit of what it is like to read Ortegas work in the original, especially in some of his earlier poems, by revisiting such
Crane poems as Legends, Stark Major or Garden Abstract.
It comes as no surprise that Ortega studied Hispanic philology at
the Universidad Autnoma de Barcelona, where he earned his PhD,
and that he has devoted his life to teaching poetry, with an emphasis
on the Siglo de Oro and contemporary Latin American verse. That
said, Ortegas work also alludes to his own place and time, and the
poems open like surprise boxes, containing other boxes that clearly
encapsulate his desert and border city. Though a poem like Treble unravels through a classical labyrinth, the poem also clearly alludes to the labyrinthine borders that separate Latin America from
Anglo-America, and to Ortegas condition as a poet from the North
of Mexico, who grew up, nurtured his imagination, and continues
to write in Mexicos northernmost city, that is, at the edge of Lat-

in America. Only a five minute drive from Ortegas neighborhood,

one reaches the fence which extends for two thousand miles through
deserts, rivers, diverse ecosystems, but which has done nothing to
reform the pain and misery of undocumented migration, drug trafficking, violence. In downtown Mexicali, the fence is composed of
twelve-foot-high metal planks; family members speak to one another through the chinks, pass documents, notes, money back and
forth. From either side, one can view the traffic in another country,
the pedestrians on errands, and then look up at the birds that fly over
the demarcation, and trees that freely arch.

As the reader studies these poems, he or she will note the
constant reappearance of the desert, codes, labyrinths, and languages, with their respective traditions. Of course, the homeland of the
poet is his language, and as the true poet knows, every poem is a sort
of palimpsest, or an aperture through which traditions meld with
other traditions and ages. And though, as Martnez Rivas writes, the
poet may at times envy the painter who has physical toolscanvas,
jars, brushes, and tangible colorOrtega knows that even though
the poet carves his work from language, from the most intangible
of creative matter, he is building a ladder of words, a transparent
bridge, which is as real and necessary as any thing. The poet and
reader are Bedouins, and language is the shaded oasis where we are
welcome.
Anthony Seidman, Los Angeles
February 2014

magisterio de signos

En vano me demoro deletreando

el alfabeto del mundo.

Eugenio Montejo

El cielo es un enorme silabario,

un vasto pizarrn de agua compacta
donde aviones y pjaros escriben
la efmera sentencia de su vuelo.
Las nubes amalgaman un dialecto
de vocablos errantes que la brisa
impulsa o desvanece cada tarde
como pasar la hoja del cuaderno.
Tomamos clase viendo para arriba;
lo fugitivo esconde algn ejemplo
de libertad o incitacin al viaje
dictado por el caracol del viento.
La noche deja escombros en la altura,
sublimes rocas, moles vaporosas
que ofrecen la lectura de su cuerpo
a cambio de un tributo: la vigilia.

magister of signs
In vain I stay awake decoding
the worlds alphabet.
Eugenio Montejo

The sky is a vast syllabary,

a great chalkboard of compact water
where aero-planes and birds inscribe
the fleeting sentence of their flight.
The clouds amalgamate a dialect
from errant vocables that the breeze
stirs or dissipates each evening,
like a finger turning the page of a journal.
We attend class by looking above;
something fugitive hides an example
of liberty or an invitation to a voyage
dictated by the winds shell.
Night leaves rubble in the heavens,
sublime boulders and vaporous masses
that offer the reading of its body
in exchange for tribute: keeping vigil.

discante
He entrado al laberinto y he salido de l herido de incredulidad.
Moj los odos en rumorosas fuentes que se dejaban escuchar desde
muy lejos y refresqu los ojos en el aura de barnices jams vistos, errando en poner nombre a lo que no lo tena. La exactitud de ciertos
tonos me ha redescubierto los innatos conjuros de la pigmentacin.
El trazo de los planos y las formasngulos, volutas, lneas rectas de
altura ciclpeadepuso en la pupila su aguja de mica deslumbrante.
La cada del agua me confi en una esquina rosada el lgebra de su
msica oculta, su esbelta cabellera de plateados y fugaces logaritmos.
He venido sin cmara al pas de yo-estuve-aqu, pero ni la palabra
sirve de espuela para retener la permanencia del instante. Es el intraducible palimpsesto de lo que se percibe, la ociosidad de la glosa,
ese no lenguaje que implica quedarse el testimonio o reservarse el
derecho a declarar; la insuficiencia del grabado, la inutilidad del vocabulario que corre en vano hacia el destello del peplo de una ninfa
en jardines ms bellos que lo imaginado. Cruc el arco de entrada
bajo mi propio riesgo y he regresado sumido en el largo silencio de
los desahuciados.

treble
I have entered the labyrinth and I have exited thence, wounded
by skepticism. I moistened my ears with gurgling springs that let
themselves be listened to from great distances, and I refreshed my
eyes with the aura of unseen glazes, and I erred by naming things
which were nameless. From the exactitude of certain pitches, I have
rediscovered the innate conjurations of pigmentation. The tracery
of maps and formsangles, volutes, straight lines of Cyclopean
heightsdisposed their pointer of dazzling mica in my pupil. In a
pink corner, the waterfall confided in me, its algebra of occult music, its graceful tresses of silvery and fleeting logarithms. Without a
camera, I have arrived at the country of I-was-here, yet not even language can click and capture the instant forever. Its the untranslatable palimpsest of what is perceived, the laziness of the footnote, that
un-language implying access to the case and to reserving ones rights
to testify; the insufficiency of an etching, the uselessness of the vocabulary that runs in vain towards the sparkling peplos of a nymph
in gardens more beautiful than what was imagined. Taking my own
risk, I crossed the entryways arch, and I have returned, bogged in
the boundless silence of the disconsolate.

beduinos
Cruzamos el umbral sin darnos cuenta
hasta llegar al centro.
Qu sabamos nosotros de fronteras?
Entramos al desierto
como entrar en el agua,
como salir del agua
y entrar de nuevo a lo seco.
Psele a lo barrido
pens uno de los dos.
Y sonreste a la nada que se abra
como un vasto parntesis
a la torpe
sintaxis
de nuestro paso confiado.
Ignoramos an
si estar dentro del crculo
es estar en el centro
o si el centro
es
el crculo.
La brisa que cabalga por tu frente
nos libra de indagarlo.

bedouins
Unawares, we cross the threshold,
until reaching the center.
What did we know about borders?
We enter the desert
like entering water,
like leaving water
and entering dryness once again.
Excuse the mess,
thought one of the two.
And you smiled before the vacancy that opened
like a vast parenthesis,
before the awkward
syntax
of our trusting step.
We have yet to discern
if being within the circle
is to be inside the center

or if the center
is
the circle.
The breeze galloping across your brow
frees us from inquiries.

rutas alternativas

And a time for living and for generation
T.S. Eliot

Ya no habr tiempo de entregarte

a lo que esquilma,
a lo que esquilma y vivifica,
vivifica y muerde.
Noche cincelada por la brisa.
Plazas abiertas al abismo
de los divertimentos.
Zcalos labrados
por el gusano de la contingencia.
Caminas al encuentro de un amigo
con bastante demora.
Tal vez ya no le alcances y la marcha
te obsequie por lo mismo
una nueva manera de perderte
en su intrincado bosque de tabernas.
No regreses tan pronto. No recules.
No des
media vuelta.
No renuncies al margen
de azar que te convida el desacierto:
detrs del promontorio de la duda
aguarda la ganancia
de la revelacin o el desengao.
Anclado en la escasez y su llanura
no habr ya laberinto en el cual extraviarse.
Elige, pues, el ms largo trayecto
para volver a casa.

alternative routes

And a time for living and for generation
T.S. Eliot

There will no longer be time to surrender yourself

to what reaps the harvest,
to what reaps the harvest and invigorates you,
invigorates, and bites you.
Breeze-chiseled night.
Public squares gaping before the abyss
of revelry.
Plazas carved by
the worm of uncertainty.
With slow gait,
you set off to see a friend.
Perhaps youll miss him, and the path
might offer you those obsequies
procured by a new way of
losing yourself in its intricate forest of taverns.
Do not return too quickly, nor retreat.
Do not
turn back.
Do not give up on the edge
of happenstance calling you to misadventures:
behind the promontory of doubt
there awaits the profit reaped
from both revelation and disillusionment.
When anchored to scarcity and its parched plains,
there will no longer exist a labyrinth where you may wander.
Choose, then, the longest road
to reach home.

el jarrn
Donde no hay un jarrn
hay un jarrn.
Es el jarrn
que fabrica el deseo, el jarrn
que no compraste en Npoles
pero que participa
de una memoria herida
por la desposesin.
Lo hurfano de ti,
aquello que anhelaba tu rescate
en el momento preciso
detona en la pupila, logra empinar el ro
del aire peregrino que traslada
las ofrendas de unos
a otros
territorios.
El jarrn que an te aguarda en Npoles
se acostumbra al espacio que no ocupa, crece
en la repisa austera de la sed
pintndose solo.
O es acaso el entorno el que se adapta
a la forma aorada?

the vase
Where there is no vase,
there is a vase.
It is the vase
that creates desire, the vase
you didnt purchase in Naples
yet which participates
in a memory wounded
by dispossession.
Your orphan, the one
yearning for your rescue
at the precise moment
explodes in your pupils, succeeds in raising the river
of the wandering wind that crosses
the reliquaries from one
territory

to another.
The vase which still holds you in Naples,
accustomed to the space it doesnt occupy, grows
on the austere mantelpiece of thirst,
glistening alone.
Or is it perhaps the surroundings
adapting
to the missing shape?

resistencia de materiales
LArt est long et le Temps est court.
Charles Baudelaire

La piedra estaba aqu

antes que yo naciera, antes
que naciera mi padre
y su padre, mi bisabuelo
y diez generaciones;
todos los seres vivos
que pueblan el planeta
al cierre de este instante.

No puedo sino hacer la reverencia,

venerar la humedad
que crece en el olfato
como un trozo de bosque,
esa humedad antigua
que emana de las cuevas
hundidas en el tiempo.
Nos iremos
y la piedra
seguir erguida en mitad de la plaza
sobre la pila de sus propios huesos
que no se deterioran
con la prisa
de nuestros
componentes.
Consistencia del mundo:
mira el sordo desgaste de la carne
frente a la solidez
de las texturas aosas;
ve la depreciacin de su envoltura,
la fragilidad de los andamios
que sostienen la carpa;

durability of materials
LArt est long et le Temps est court.
Charles Baudelaire

The stone was here

before my birth, before
the birth of my father
and his father, my grandfather
and ten generations preceding,
and all the living beings
that people this planet
until this closing moment.
I can only kneel,
venerate the moisture
growing stronger as I sniff
its odor: a chunk of forest,
that ancient moisture
emanating from caves
sunken deep in time.
We will depart

and the stone
will remain in the plaza, erect,
atop the pile of its own bones
which do not crumble
with haste
unlike our
body parts.

Consistence of the world:

regard the mute corrosion
of flesh, so unlike the solidity
of millennia-laden textures; look,
the wasting envelopment,
the brittle bones sustaining
a tattered coat;

el tallo, en fin, que somos

al pie de la cantera o el basalto
enfriados por la alquimia de los siglos.
El hombre no es ms viejo que la piedra
ni logra
subsistir
a lo que ha amontonado con su pulso.
No dura lo que duran sus creaciones.

the stem that we ultimately are,

unlike the quarry or basalt
chilled by the alchemy of centuries.
Man is not older than stone,
nor does he reach as far

or outlive
what he has erected with his living pulse.
He endures less than his creations.

primera llamada
Urge contar lo que sucede
no arriba en el lenguaje
y su costra de espuma
sino abajo, donde
la llama se doblega
o tiembla la raz.
Urge invertir el cono
y denunciar su fondo,
atraer el clamor de las arenas
que la corriente submarina
ondula.
Respira y sumrgete.
Asciende y recupera lo que has visto
para alivio de quienes esperamos
en el espejo de la superficie.
Mucha tinta ha corrido
y seguimos en ascuas.
Alumbra un poco ms tu circunstancia,
acerca la linterna a los abismos
para buscar la llave entre las rocas.

first call
One must recount what occurs
not in the upper registers of language
and its crust of foam
but on the lower registers where
the flame bends
or the root shudders.
One must turn the cone upside
down and denounce whats settled at rock-bottom,
summon the roar of the sands
that a deep sea current
sifts.
Take a breath, then dive.
Come up and tell what you have seen,
in order to relieve those waiting
by the mirror of the surface.
Much ink has smeared,
yet were still on tenterhooks.
So. Cast a little more light on your predicament,
raise your lantern over the abyss
as you seek a key among the rocks.

edad de bronce
Entre las cavidades de la sbana
tu corva es un edn desconocido,
playa de arena oscura, cenicienta,
bajo la eterna ronda de los astros.
Hay seas de solsticio en la clausura,
lo indica el tibio estanque de tu piel
bruida por el sol del nomadismo;
igual vibra el calor en la ventana.
Despertar junto al monte de tu cuerpo
mientras se desperezan las cigarras
y encienden con el ascua de su lira
la silenciosa mecha del presagio
Duermen las cosas y los seres vivos.
El dique de tu espalda me contempla
en el amanecer del primer hombre
arado por el pasmo y la extraeza.

bronze age
Amidst the cavities of the sheet,
your curved shape is an unknown Eden,
a beach of dark and ashen sand
beneath the stars making their eternal rounds.
There are signs of a solstice in this closing ceremony;
the warm pond of your skin polished by
the salt of nomadism suggests it,
just like the heat vibrating from the window.
To awaken beside the vast hill of your body,
while the cicadas flex themselves,
and light the silent match of premonitions
with the ember of their lyre
things, both living and inanimate, sleep.
Your shoulders dam regards me
during the dawn of this man when first
ploughed by a sudden chill, and estrangement.

guerra florida
Ya se acerca el verano:
te presiento
en la tibieza que insemina el aire
hervido con la pira del deseo
de quien esconde un sol bajo la lengua.
Tu nombre migra y llega a mis odos
como un rumor de rboles inmensos
movidos por la brisa de la tarde;
te anuncian los follajes, pero nadie
comprende ese lenguaje de elegidos.
La mente hilvana. En unas cuantas horas
coincidir contigo en algn punto
del atlas citadino que comprende
la suma de lugares que procuras.
No es necesario ponerse de acuerdo;
tan solo con salir, prender el auto
Los hilos del presagio habrn de guiarte
a ciegas por los fiordos de la noche
hasta endosar los labios en un sitio
del cual soy un vestigio desde ahora,
antes que ocurra lo que nos consume.

flowered war*
Summer approaches:
I await you
in the warmth that inseminates the air
boiling atop the sacrificial flames of desire
of one who slips a sun beneath his tongue.
Your name migrates, reaching my ears
like the rustle from immense trees stirred
by the evening breeze;
although the foliage proclaims you, no one
comprehends this lingua franca for the chosen
yet my mind understands. In a few hours,
we will meet on some corner
of the citadel walls that intuit
the sum total of places you procure.
One need not agree on details;
to leave is enough, to put the key in the ignition...
threads of premonition must guide
you blindly through nocturnal fjords
until lips may light upon a place
whose vestige I am at this very moment,
before something may come, ignite, and consume us.

* an allusion to Aztec ceremonial wars enacted in order to capture sacrificial

victims

epopeya de los confines

Caminas entre las nervudas races que asoman del subsuelo como
boas en torno al laurel de exuberante copa que presida las barbacoas
de la niez. Que emergen, que despuntan sobre el candente rastrojo
del desierto aliviado por sombras transitorias. Y un soplo tibio se
desprende de por estos pramos y resbala hacia el repecho de la
frente, ese blando paredn en que se curvan los augurios, rizando
incluso ms el impalpable rizo de las evocaciones. A un centenar
de metros un establo, una caseta o un almacn intrascendente que
el espejismo semeja disolver en los austeros latifundios de la arcilla,
resulta irnicamente llamativo a la mitad de un paisaje barrido por
su rida monotona. A la redonda el pastizal reseco del invierno, la
brizna quemada por la escarcha. Piensas: la dorada pelambre de la
maleza, el jaramago de los campos hispalenses alisado por el peso
milenario de un capitel que ha rodado como una cabeza en la emboscada. Indiscutibles pruebas de la permanencia. Cuerpos slidos
de toda laya esparcidos a diestra y siniestra durante la excursin de
la memoria. Fragmentos de una demolida arquitectura que el concilibulo del tiempo ha diseminado en el ilimitado jardn de las estatuas. Bajo el aceitunado bulbo del follaje el principio y el final son
visibles. De ah se aprecia bien la escuela a la que fuiste y la arboleda
del cementerio al que te diriges a paso de tortuga.

an epic of limits
You walk among the knotty roots that jut from the soil like boas
wrapped around the laurel tree with its exuberant crown that presided over childhood feasts. They emerge, sprout from the desert dust
soothed by transitory shadows. And a warm breeze rises across these
barren lands and floods itself against your forehead, that soft wall
which auguries bend across, curling the already impalpable curls of
conjurations. Far off, a stable, hut or rickety farmhouse which a mirage appears to dissolve across the sober estates of clay, strikes your
attention in the middle of this landscape swept by its arid monotony.
All about, the pasture parched by winter, the blades scorched by the
cold. You think: golden hair of the weeds, yellow jaramagos from the
fields of Seville, smoothed by the millennial weight of a columns capital, like a head rolling in an ambush. Indisputable proof of permanence. Solid bodies of all types, scattered wherever they may during
memorys excursion. Rubble of a demolished architecture that the
secret meeting spot of time has spread in the infinite garden of statues. Beneath the green foliage bulbs, the beginning and the end are
visible. From there you can clearly discern the school you attended,
and the cemetery grove towards which you travel at the pace of a
tortoise.

Jorge Ortega (Mexicali, 1972), studied Hispanic Philology at the

Universidad Autnoma de Barcelona, where he earned his doctorate. He has published over a dozen collections of poetry and essays,
among them Ajedrez de polvo (ts-ts, Buenos Aires, 2003), Estado
del tiempo (Hiperin, Madrid, 2005), and Catenaria (Pen Press, New
York, 2009). His poetry has been published in numerous journals
throughout Latin America and Europe, such as Crtica, Letras Libres,
The Black Herald Review and The Bitter Oleander. His collection of
poetry, Devocin por la piedra (Conaculta-Chiapas), won the 2010
international poetry prize named in honor of Jaime Sabines. In 2014,
Bonobos published his book Gua de forasteros.

Anthony Seidman is the author of A Sleeping Man Sits Up in Bed

(Eyewear Publishing), among four other collections of poetry. His
work has appeared in publications including Nimrod, The Black Herald Review, Beyond Baroque, Pearl, Rattle, World Literature Today,
Newsweek en espaol, and La jornada semanal.

jo