ALBERTI, Rafael


The Bull Of Death / Negro toro, nostálgico de heridas

Black bull, nostalgic for wounds,

Charging your watery landscape,

Examining letters and luggage,

On those trains that run to arenas.

What do you dream in your dreams,

What hidden longings redden the journey,

What systems of watering and drainage

Rehearse your plunge in the sea?

Nostalgia for the man with a sword,

For gangrene and femoral blood;

Not even your keeper denies you.

Hurtle bull, to the sea: charge, at nothing,

And as you would wound, grant death

To a matador of salt, sand, and spray.


What I Left, For You / Dejé por ti mis bosques, mi perdida

For you I left my woods, my lost

Grove, my sleepless dogs,

My important years, those banished

Almost to my life’s winter.

I left a tremor, a shock

A brilliance of un-extinguished fire,

I left my shadow on the desperate

Blood-stained eyes of farewell.

I left sad doves beside a river,

Horses in the sand of the arena,

I left the scent of the sea, I left to see you.

For you, I left everything that was mine.

Give me, Rome, in exchange for my pains,

All I have left in order to attain you.