Breve muestra de poemas de Daniel Rojas Pachas traducidos al inglés por Arturo Ruiz

Breve fragmento del ensayo realizado por Arturo Ruiz, en relación a la traducción de mi poesía.

Flesh, Meat and Beef; Daniel Rojas Pachas Poetry

Why this poet? 

With his books and his magazine in electronic and printed format, Daniel is opening a new space for new reflections and new ways of revolutionary thinking and praxis. In the recent marches against the government, students had used pop culture characters to show their discontent against Piñera’s education policies. This year, the hammers of the British movie The Wall marched by Alameda –the main street of Santiago– it was a performance by the protesting students; zombies danced before the government palace, and Goku, the character of Dragonball Z, confronted the police forces in Santiago’s protests. Pop culture is revolutionary again. Long before, Daniel already understood the revolutionary potential of this pop culture and the Internet, and he began to use its images in his poetry. He was right.

Arturo Ruiz Ortega

Flesh, meat and beef; Daniel Rojas Pachas Poetry

Translated by  Arturo Ruiz Ortega

Like Tears in the Rain...

Iʹve seen things you people wouldnʹt believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C‐beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time...

(Blade Runner, Roy Batty)

Two of the most beautiful moments:

seeing my older brother

trying to mix the sound of a Blade Runner VHS

with the Original Sound Track of Vangelis

0n tape.

and years after…

taking my daughter out to ask for candy on Halloween,

costumed as ET with a sweater and a grey hood,

and carrying, through the alleys

in her tiny hands,

the plush Spielberg’s monster

that my old man bought for me at Universal Studios,

when I was just a little shit.

From the book Carne

City.

“Sun rises,/ The poem opens./ Birds open their wings. (…) The City

awakes. The city stands up. (…) Door-letters opens./ The journals open

 The wounds open”.

“Gonzalo Millán – The City”

The previous thing (((written)))

Has been a rehearsal for birth

…

The previous thing had no feet or hands

I had my retina like a boiler and a body that made its way

Barthes says about wrestling, with amazement and predilection he watched this sportive artifice, subject in its very structure to asyndeton and anacoluthon, figures of interruption and short-circuiting.

…

The street,

By the power of motorcycles, is full of violence

Clowns at 75 miles per hour

test our rage on one hand.

On the other hand the gong sounds

and she

loses control…

Another story of brothers interrupted: Ha! Do you like what you are hearing? Does it make you mad? Ok, Kaneda[1], WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?

Building of words; gunshots that break faces and machines; a Coca-Cola sign precedes the city of neon.

It is a whole experience to live on fear, isn’t it? That is being a slave.

The landscape of this factory (a tear in the rain) is nothing but a closing,

and she…

a traffic of proposed revelations

is like the sound for a blind man,

it is like drunken looks that lie before an origami unicorn…

…

Above the mountains there are plastic and verb…

A replicant, the gang, a clumsy boy and the detective

are giving birth to pain.

                                      All those moments will be lost in time…

---

[1]  Kaneda is the main character of Akira, the comic book and motion picture by Katsushiro Otomo.