Landscape with Beggars
Juan Manuel Roca
The good people wonder
Why a tattered rabble of beggars
Block their prospect of the lilies.
If they don’t receive their ration of manna,
It’s due to their savage custom
Of blighting the landscape and the view.
More ancient than their profession
The beggars emerge from ancient catacombs
Or from remote cathedrals that raise their domes
Between hospices and hospitals.
As they go by they wound and poison the landscape
And the people give way at their passing
As if they were parting a sea
Which they stain with taunts and devastation.
A procession of smells and a procession of dogs
Go past with the wretched hordes. Town mayors
Watch them with watery eyes
While spooning out soup as thick as lava.
The priests seek them out like food
From a kingdom in another world
And describe to them the quarries of hell,
Although they seem to have lived there forever.
They are of another race, another country,
The beggars are dark strangers
Who live on the invisible frontiers of language.
Between them and us a coin makes mock,
A dark commerce in scarcity
Beneath the trinket shop of a relative of God.
On festive days they stare at phantom ships:
They extend their bowls and rough beds to no one
And in the atriums they only pile up scraps of miracles.
There is something of the scarecrow about their trade
Something of falconry about the eyes,
In the way they look at the doves’ bread.
A drunk and downcast man told me at the exit to the bar:
They could send them off to war, to serve as barricades.
The beggars don’t know where to go
When we are ordered to confine the wounded shadows.
The tourist guides, so as not to worry travellers,
Inform them that the beggars are extras
For a film being shot on the streets.
Perhaps they have emerged from a bad dream, from a factory,
From a dockside, from a mine, from a squat.
From the bad dream they bring the surly gaze of those who flee,
From the factory they retain the complexion of a prisoner,
From the docks the vice of loading bales of nothing,
From the mine hard and aggressive eyes,
From the squat an echo carried from the land of Nobody.
Ridicule and Mockery, two faithful dogs, are their companions.
This translation by Richard Gwyn first appeared in Cyphers Magazine, Ireland, 2014.
Juan Manuel Roca (b. Medellín, Colombia, 1946) is one of the most widely read and respected figures in contemporary Colombian poetry. A successful journalist and social commentator, he has a long association with the world-famous poetry festival in the city of his birth, set up in defiance of the long years of war and civil strife in his country. He has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Spanish prize, Casa de Ameríca de Poesía Americana 2009, for his collection Biblia de Pobres, from which ‘Paisaje con mendigos’ is taken.
Paisaje con mendigos
Las buenas gentes se preguntan
Por qué los mendigos interponen,
Entre sus ojos y los nardos,
Su amasijo de harapos. Si no reciben
Su cuota de maná es por su feroz costumbre
De llagar el paisaje y la mirada.
Más antiguos que su oficio,
Los mendigos vienen de antiguas catacumbas
O de remotas catedrales que levantan sus cúpulas
Entre hospicios y hospitales.
Al cruzar hieren y enferman el paisaje
Y las gentes se abren a su paso
Como si partieran en dos un mar
Que tiñen de dicterios y quebrantos.
Un séquito de olor y un séquito de perros
Van tras las hordas miserables. Los alcaldes
Los miran con ojos acuosos
Mientras cucharean una sopa densa como lava.
Los sacerdotes los buscan como alimento
De un reino de otro mundo
Y les describen las canteras del infierno,
Aunque parezcan habitarlo desde siempre.
Son de otra raza, de otro país,
Los mendigos son oscuros forasteros
Que viven en las fronteras invisibles del lenguaje.
Entre ellos y nosotros una moneda nos escarnece,
Un oscuro comercio de penurias
Bajo la tienda de abalorios de un pariente de Dios.
Los días festivos escrutan buques fantasmas:
No encuentran a quien extender yacijas o escudillas
Y sólo amontan en los atrios migajas de milagro.
Algo de espantapájaros hay en su oficio,
Algo de cetrería en sus ojos,
En su manera de mirar el pan de las palomas.
Un hombre ebrio y compungido me dijo a la salida del bar:
Podrían mandarlos a la guerra, servir de barricadas.
Los mendigos no saben dónde ir
Cuando ordenan que acuartelemos las sombras malheridas
Los guías de turismo, para no inquietar a los viajeros,
Advierten que son actores de reparto
De una película que ruedan en las calles.
Quizá hayan salido de un mal sueño, de una factoría,
De un muelle, de una mina, de una casa usurpada.
Del mal sueño traen la mirada arisca de quien huye,
De la fábrica conservan un color de presidario,
Del muelle el vicio de cargar fardos de nada,
De la mina unos ojos duros y pugnaces,
De la casa usurpada en eco llegado de tierras de Nadie.
Escarnio y mofa, dos perros fieles, los acompañan.
