translated from the Catalan of the non-existent poet Alberto Cenas
I could have lingered, gentlemen, till the first drafts of the morning,
till the dawn with all its tangerine, its amber, caresses this old stain-glass partition.
I could have tarried in this candle-lit back section amid these cockles,
these slivers of octopus.
I could have given hour after hour to the appraisal of vermouths,
of variable vintages,
while skeins of cigarillo smoke hover about the ceiling fan.
Ah I could have lingered here!
But I, as a minor poet
of the Catalan neo-renaissance, am summoned to my duty now.
Oh Gonzalez, oh Pollina,
I must arise and leave you both.
I must forsake this raised and delicate soufflé of conversation,
must sway down Joaquin Costa Street; through the standing heat,
the weed lividity, sour canyons of the Raval.
I’ll go north. I’ll tend the grapes of metaphor, work my allotment of the language.
How I’ve tilled those ingrate terraces: the pared back squares of lavender, the topsoil perfumed and unyielding.
Slowly. Slowly.
My verses stretch and hesitate, scale their rickety trellises.
My fruit comes rust-red, grudging. My muse is the muse of chalk,
of ingratitude and lavender.