These
are the rest of my photographs from my visit to Kensal Green on the 15th
December, all taken just before sundown.
This is Mexican poet Xavier Villaurrutia’s poem ‘Cementerio en la nieve’ (Cemetery in the snow) from his book Nostalgia de la Muerte (1934). My translation (all errors mine, please feel to correct in the comments section)) is below:
A nada puede compararse
un cementerio en la nieve.
¿Qué nombre dar a la
blancura sobre lo blanco?
El cielo ha dejado caer
insensibles piedras de nieve
sobre las tumbas,
y ya no queda sino la
nieve sobre la nieve
como la mano sobre sí
misma eternamente posada.
Los pájaros prefieren
atravesar el cielo,
herir los invisibles corredores del aire
para dejar sola la nieve,
que es como dejarla intacta,
que es como dejarla nieve.
Porque no basta decir que
un cementerio en la nieve
es como un sueño sin
sueños
ni como unos ojos en
blanco.
Si algo tiene de un cuerpo insensible y dormido,
de la caída de un silencio sobre otro
y de la blanca persistencia del olvido,
¡a nada puede compararse un cementerio en la nieve!
Porque la nieve es sobre todo silenciosa,
más silenciosa aún sobre las losas exangües:
labios que ya no pueden
decir una palabra.
Nothing can compare to a cemetery in the snow. What name to give to whiteness on white? The sky has let fall unfeeling drifts of snow upon the tombs and now nothing is left but snow upon the snow like a hand left resting on itself for all eternity.
The
birds prefer to cross the sky, striking the invisible corridors of air, to
leave just the snow, which is like leaving it intact, which is like leaving it
snow
Because
it is not enough to say that a cemetery in the snow is like sleep without
dreams, nor like sightless eyes.
If
something has a sleeping insensible body, from the fall of one silence upon
another, and from the white persistence of oblivion, then nothing can be
compared to a cemetery in the snow!
Because
above all snow is silence, made even more silent on bloodless slabs: lips that
can no longer say a single word.
Beautiful. That oblique golden light really does the memorials justice. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThe light did all the work, the photos virtually took themselves.
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