Woodcutter at dusk
who perfumes the stars as you pass
Keep up the rhythm good woodcutter
and pity the sunken sun
the blond swimmer’s one lifesaver
Keep up the rhythm
but never ever sing
Song beneath a bloodless grove
before a grieving sea
In the park there’s a disloyal tree
and my flowering poem’s a fruit
Musical woodcutter
My passionate parrot’s learned your song
and the minutes march to the beat of its rhythm
Who doesn’t know color’s secret
To shred the tunic of the wind
and pluck love’s fruit
from posthumous smoke
But you woodcutter of the stars
don’t scatter their leaves over the sea
for when the sun rescues ancient spring
your arm and your song will run dry
A member of the so-called “generation of ’27,” Gerardo Diego (1896-1987) was the Spanish poet among his peers who first became interested in avant-garde poetics. The mode he adopted in his experimental poems was “creacionismo” or “literary cubism.” An accomplished pianist and music critic, Diego went on to publish many books, and was an active editor including as the first anthologist of his co-hort. He earned his living as a high school French teacher. In 1979 he shared the Cervantes Prize—Spanish letters’ highest honor—with Jorge Luis Borges. The pieces published here were written in 1922 while living on the north coast of Spain in a bungalow on the beach. It forms part of his collection, Handbook of Foams/Manual de espumas, which Shearsman Books in the United Kingdom will be issuing in early 2026 in a dual-language edition with English translations by Francisco Aragón.
Francisco Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. A native of San Francisco, California, he is the author of After Rubén (Red Hen Press, 2020), Glow of Our Sweat (Scapegoat Press, 2010) and Puerta del Sol (Bilingual Press, 2005), as well as editor of the anthology The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007). As a translator from the Spanish, Aragón has had a hand in a number of books, including volumes by Francisco X. Alarcón (1954-2016), Federico García Lorca (1888-1936) and Gerardo Diego (1896-1987). More recently, he’s been rendering into English versions of Rubén Darío (1867-1916). His translations have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Chain, Chelsea, The Cortland Review, Jacket, Nimrod, and ZYZZYVA. For more information, visit: http://franciscoaragon.net