THE RIVERS
Translated By Aaron Coleman
Here is the serpents’ cage.
Coiled up on themselves,
the rivers, the sacred rivers, sleep.
The Mississippi with its Blacks,
the Amazon with its Indians.
They are like the powerful springs
of gigantic trailer trucks.
Laughing, children toss them
little green living islands,
parrot-painted jungles,
manned canoes,
and other rivers.
The great rivers wake up,
uncoil themselves slowly,
gobble down everything, swell, almost bursting,
and then go back to sleep.
Translated from the Spanish
Notes:
This poem is part of the portfolio “Nicolás Guillén: Maker and Breaker of Forms.” You can read the rest of the portfolio in the September 2024 issue. The poems in this folio come from The Great Zoo by Nicolás Guillén, translated by Aaron Coleman (University of Chicago Press, 2024). El Gran Zoo © 2023 by Nicolás Guillén, first published in 1967. Translation © 2024 by Aaron Coleman. Reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press and the Estate of Nicolás Guillén. All rights reserved.
Source: Poetry (September 2024)