Jose Emilio Pacheco, Mexico's most prominent poet, is a quiet but important presence at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he has taught one semester a year for more than a decade. He follows in the footsteps of another great Spanish-language poet who taught at Maryland in the '50s: the Nobel laureate Juan Ramon Jimenez.
Pacheco, who has received many of the highest literary honors Mexico bestows on its writers, including the National Journalism and National Poetry prizes, is also one of Mexico's leading intellectuals. He writes on a wide range of subjects, including politics and art, and he is a prolific translator, having recently finished a version of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets.
The poems Pacheco writes are difficult to categorize. They demonstrate a restless and omnivorous imagination and a preference for fables that portray the dark and absurd side of the human condition.
In one of his poems, Pacheco claims, "I belong to a fugitive age, a world that collapses before my eyes." In some ways, all of his poems reflect this collapse. He sees it even in the common change of seasons he writes about in "Two Poems from Sligo Creek" (presented here in the original Spanish and in an English translation). The stark and terrible beauty of the Sligo Creek poems reminds me of Robert Frost's famous poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and, in fact, Pacheco's "Frost" seems to play with this idea.
In this way, Pacheco speaks not only to the great tradition as embodied in poets such as Frost, but also to the present, which needs to be reminded that "there is no beauty / like that of a leaf about to wither / and fall to the ground."
Michael Collier is Maryland's poet laureate. His "Poet's Corner" column appears monthly in Arts & Society.
Dos Poemas de Sligo Creek
1. Arroyo
El arroyo de aguas clarisimas parte los bosques
en mitades de luz solar.
Se vuelven visibles
entre el silencio de las hojas.
Nada anuncia bajo el reposo tremulo que en su interior
el sol ha gestionado la combustion
de los colores otonales. Asi,
estas generaciones de las hojas
se despiden del mundo.
No hay belleza
como la de una hoja a punto de secarse
y caer al suelo
para que la tierra en donde sus restos van a ser vida
sea fecundada por la nieve.
2. Escarcha
Escarcha, tul o nieve de plata
en las ramas de filigrana: los arboles
que fueron y seran
-- a diferencia de nosotros.
Es hora
de ponerse de pie y guardarse otro ano
en el cuerpo que no da mas.
Orden cruel y perfecto de este mundo:
la simetria
de los cristales,
petrificados en el bosque muerto,
la nieve que sera nube, el desierto
del ya me voy en silencio.
Two Poems From Sligo Creek
1. Stream
The stream of pristine waters divides the forest
of sunlight in two.
They become visible
amidst the silence of the leaves.
There is nothing underneath their
trembling rest announcing inside
the sun has condoned the combustion
of the autumn colors. Thus,
this descent of leaves bids the world farewell.
There is no beauty
like that of a leaf about to wither
and fall to the ground
so the earth where its remains will live again
may be known by the snow.
2. Frost
Frost, veil or silver snow
on filigreed bows: the trees
that were and will be
-- unlike ourselves.
It is time
for the vanquished body to withstand
yet another year.
Cruel and perfect order of this world:
the symmetry
of the crystals,
petrified in the lifeless forest
the snow that will be cloud, the desert
of I'm leaving now in silence.
By Jose Emilio Pacheco, c Copyright 1989, Ediciones Era, S.A. de C.V. Reprinted by permission of the author. Translation by Tanya Huntington, Allison Krogel and Jose Ramon Ruisanchez, students of Pacheco at the University of Maryland, in collaboration with the poet.