Since picking up a copy of Nicanor Parra's "Canciones Rusas" (Russian Songs) at the Feria Bio Bio a few weeks ago, I've become a big fan. He is Chile's most famous contemporary poet, and the brother of Violeta Parra (see below). His most famous collection of poems is "Poemas y Antipoemas" (Poems and Antipoems.) He writes in a very straightforward manner -- the meaning is transparent and the language is unadorned. I'm including a translation I made the other day for a friend of one of my favorite of his poems.
The Final Toast
Whether we like it or not
We only have three alternatives:
Yesterday, today and tomorrow
And not even three
Because as the philosopher says
Yesterday is yesterday
It belongs to us only in memory:
From the rose that has already lost its petals
You cannot take another petal from her.
The playing cards
Are only two:
The present and tomorrow
And not even two
Because it is a well-established fact
That the present does not exist
Except in so far as it makes itself past
And has already passed. . .,
like youth.
In short
Only tomorrow remains for us:
I lift my cup
For that day that never arrives
But that is the only
One actually available to us.
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