Rodolfo Häsler

Rodolfo Häsler

2586
0
SHARE

Rodolfo Häsler was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1958 and since 1968 leaves in Barcelona, Spain.

Study French Literature and Historical Art in Lausanne University and work as german translator (complete poetry of Novalis, Heine, short stories of Kafka, etc).

He published seven poetry books:

Poemas de arena (Editorial E.R., Barcelona, 1982);

Tratado de licantropía (Endymión, Madrid, 1988);

Elleife (Aula de Poesía of Barcelona Prize; El Bardo, Barcelona, 1993); (translated into italian)

De la belleza del puro pensamiento (Cintas Fellowship Prize, New York, 1997; El Bardo, Barcelona, 1997);

Paisaje, tiempo azul (Aldus, Mexico City, 2001);

Cabeza de ébano (Igitur, Barcelona, 2007); (translated into italian, french, macedonian and portuguese)

Diario de la urraca (Huerga y Fierro, Madrid, 2013; Mangos de Hacha, Mexico City, 2013 and Kalathos, Caracas, 2013); (translated into french, german and english)

And two anthologies of his own poetry: Antología de Tenerife (Tenerife, 2007; Entre perro y lobo (La Habana, 2017)

His poetry is included in several anthologies in Spain and Latin America.

 

Rodolfo Häsler

 

Translated by

Katherine M. Hedeen

and

Víctor Rodríguez Núñez

 

Quill View

 to Blanca Andreu

 

I find myself in a well-tended garden

with two lanceolate cypresses, a peach tree

in bloom and a fountain. In its perfection I take it

for a Persian orchard. As I ponder the

bursting of a rose lost in thought

a voice brings me back to the beauty of the grove,

a voice strange, hermaphrodite: take up the quill

and write, take up the quill and write all you know.

 

 

 Tuesday

 The word magpie: I read it in the mirror.

A smooth cut in the glass, what does it suggest to you?

The image slips through the mercury slot

and runs to a subway entrance, destination Jabaquara.

The land’s statuary shadow smooths down the lens,

uncovers nothing, only strangeness and pain.

A bird’s cawing,

and one cloudy day, perhaps today, maybe tomorrow,

its intention ends before the rhythm of the universe.

 

 The Poet

 What’s shining in his head? It must be a sounding violin,

an instrument that knows how to order, dictating to the ear

constant confidences, details of life dissolved in water,

I don’t know if he knows how to swim, still, it’s a traveler’s life,

a timbre, an indisposition of Maldoror.

 

 Havana

(in Lezama Lima’s house)

for Reina Maria Rodriguez

What an impressive silence in the small lobby,

the exact spot where the sonorous voice

demanded its coffee every afternoon, served

in a bone china cup by a loving mother. Infallible antidote

for easing the breathless pace, in between bursts of laughter

and recommending Gongora, a daily dose of French writers,

poets of the rose. Admiring Casal and cursing Virgilio,

he managed to extol the shadows in front of the dark window.

Oh the Maya, Ariosto, the unassailable Spanish legacy.

The shuttered window is now a takonoma of emptiness.

 

SHARE
Previous articleLeonardo Omar Onida
Next articleBranden B. Banko

LEAVE A REPLY