Rafael Cadenas, 1930. Is Venezuela’s most renowned and celebrated living poet. Whether in the prose poems of the 1960s or his more condensed, at times aphoristic later production, Cadenas is also the author of essays on various subjects, ranging from the uses and abuses of the Spanish language in Venezuela to the mysticism of St. John of the Cross. He has translated to Spanish the poetry of D. H. Lawrence and Walt Whitman. Cadenas’s poems have been published in anthologies in Venezuela, Spain, and France, and Fondo de Cultura Económica of Mexico has collected his poetry and prose in Obra entera. Poesía y prosa 1958-1998 (2000, 2009). Cadenas has been awarded the National Prize for Literature and the National Prize for Essay in his country. Guadalajara’s International prize of literatura (Romance languages) (México, 2009). García Lorca Prize (2015). Queen Sophia’s Prize for Iberoamericana Poetry, 2018.

Ars poetica


 

Let each word carry what it says.
Let it be like the tremor that sustains it.
Let it maintain itself like a heartbeat.

I may not put forward ornate lies not apply doubtful ink nor add shine to what is.
This obliges me to hear myself. But we’re here to tell the truth.
Let’s be real.
I want terrifying exactitudes.
I tremble when I think I’m falsifying myself. I have to bear the weight of my words.

They possess me as much as I possess them.

You who know me, if I can’t see, tell me my lie, point out my imposture, rub in my fraud.

I’ll be grateful to you, seriously. I want madly to correspond to myself.
Be my eye, wait for me at night and spy on me, examine me, shake me.

 

Traducción: Rowena Hill