man who has stopped to contemplate the moon one beautiful night suddenly, without taking his eyes off the luminous disk, starts shouting:
- The moon reeks! The moon reeks!
He repeats this several times and finally stops looking at the moon to continue on his way. When he is long gone, the moon looks down at the spot where the man was watching it and with great disdain spits on a dead fish that had been left behind there.
(translated by Steven J. Stewart)
Carlos Edmundo de Ory is one of the major figures of twentieth-century Spanish literature. Primarily known as a poet, he was fundamental in modernizing post-Civil-War Spanish poetry by creating work that engaged the major twentieth-century European avant-gardes, such as Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. Though Ory's work has been widely translated and read in Europe, it has never been introduced to English-speaking readers. (Allen Ginsburg helped to translate a volume of his poetry, but the book never made it into circulation.) He currently lives with his wife, artist Laura Lachéroy, in the village of Thézy-Glimont in France.
Steven J. Stewart's poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including: jubilat, Hanging Loose, Quarter After Eight, Crazyhorse, Xconnect, Apalachee Review, spinning jenny, Runes Review, and Tampa Review. His Selected Poems of Rafael Pérez Estrada is forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press in Fall of 2003. His translations of three shorts shorts by Mr. Estrada appeared in Issue #8 of The Cafe Irreal.
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translation copyright 2003 by Steven J. Stewart