Alejandro Drewes is writer, translator (Catalan, English, German and French) and poet. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1963.
He is also editor of the literary review AERA, www.AERArevistadepoesia.yahoogroups.com His poems and prose were published in various anthologies, including: Confluencia Poética. (collective anthology, vol. I). Buenos Aires, Nubla, 1997; Vivencias Secretas (collective anthology). Madrid, Centropoético, 2004; Antología 55° Aniversario del Ateneo Poético Argentino (1950-2005). Buenos Aires, Creadores Argentinos, 2005; Pura Luz Contra la Noche. Buenos Aires, Editorial De los Cuatro Vientos, 2006 (book presented in the National Library (Buenos Aires), September 2006, Uvas del Paraíso (to be published), Buenos Aires, Editorial Francachela, 2007.
Selected poems and prose of Alejandro Drewes have been published in the literary reviews Rampa (Colombia), Adamar (Spain), La Pájara Pinta (Mexico), Palabras Diversas (Florida, USA), LaLupe (Mexico), Añil and Ser en la Cultura (Argentina), and LaBarcadePapel (Austria)
Critic essays on a couple of poets, including Sjöstrand, Malinowski., Montale and Pizarnik, have been published in the literary reviews Gibralfaro, (University of Malaga) and Francachela (Buenos Aires). He has directed (Buenos Aires, 2005-2007), the cycle of AERA’s monthly poetry lectures in S.A.D.E. (Argentine Writers Society), and is also Honorary Member of the World Poets Society
Some of his distinctions include the National Award (Buenos Aires, Grupo Editorial Sur, 1999), in prose and poetry; the Prize Award “Hugo Paulo de Oliveira” (Rio das Ostras, Brazil, 2007) ; as well as designations as finalist in the poetry contests “Misescritos” (Buenos Aires, 2005), and “Cardo”. (México DF, 2006).
POEMS OF ALEJANDRO DREWESHELLAS
Mis amargos guijarros cuento, me oyes
y es el tiempo una gran iglesia, me oyes
donde a veces en las imágenes, me oyes
de los santos
surgen lágrimas verdaderas, me oyes
y las campanas abren en lo alto, me oyes
un hondo pasaje que permita mi paso
Aguardan los ángeles con cirios y fúnebres salmos.
Odiseas Elitis: El monograma (fragmento)
Hunde tus dedos azules
en el anillo de las Islas,
y solamente calla:
porque la voz que me agita
no es ya ni un remo roto de mi voz,
ni vuelve Atenas a huir
de los persas al poniente.
Nada es como era,
ni sombra de alas
perdidas en el cielo, perdidas.
Hemos esperado a los bárbaros
hasta que subieron las aguas
sepultando los huesos de Jonia
y sólo esto queda: por eso
tú solamente calla,
y graba en la memoria
cada íntimo guijarro del mundo,
nuestro mundo que partió
al país de nunca jamás.
Y graba y graba, mar azul, en tu memoria.
Por todas las voces que suenan
en mitad del silencio
y por la oscura boca de los muertos
que viven aquí. Pero es tarde,
tan tarde, y se consume la última lámpara.
El viento y las zarzas sacuden
los viejos olivos de Lesbos:
donde la luna se ha ido a disgusto
y han caído las Pléyades,
errantes órbitas en tierra baldía.
Ya ni siquiera gritos de angustia
recorren las aguas celestes,
ni la cítara del viento en la noche
ilumina nuestro paso de polvo
entre tumbas egregias
y el mármol violado de Byron.
-Pero tú solamente calla-
Y escucha en demótico
la clave del tiempo
en relojes azules de estrellas.
Aquí vivieron sus sombras
oscuras o blancas,
entre sombras de zafiros.
-Y allí sobre la arena
una vez me diste tu mano-.
Extraños para otros oídos suenan
los números pares
en las múltiples rutas del arpa:
Pero tú calla: sí, calla y escucha crecer
azorado como ramas las columnas del silencio.
Translation
HELLAS
My bitter pebbles I count, do you her me?
and the time is a great church, do you hear me?
where sometimes in the icons, do you hear me?
of the saints
true tears appear, do you hear me?
and the bells open in the High, do you hear me?
a deep passage that allows me to pass
The angels wait, with candles and mournful chants.
Odysseas Elytis: The monogram (fragment)
Sink your blue fingers
in the ring of the Islands,
and then only shut up:
because the voice that agitates me
is not even a broken oar of my voice,
and won’t return Athens to shun
from the Persian to the west.
Nothing is now as it was,
any other wings’ shadow
lost in the sky, so lost.
We have waiting for the barbarians
until the waters went up
burying the bones of Ionia
and only this remains: then,
you must only shut up,
and then record in your memory
each innnermost world’s pebble,
from our world that departed
to the land of nevermore.
Let record and record, blue sea, in your memory.
For all the voices that are playing
in the very half of the silence
and for the dark mouth of dead men
who live here. But it’s late,
so late, and the last lamp consumes.
The wind and the blackberries shake now
the old olives of Lesbos:
where the moon has gone against its will
and the Pleiades dropped,
wandering orbits in a waste land.
Not even anguishing screams
pass over the heavenly waters,
nor the wind’s zither in the night
enlightens our step of dust
between all these eminent graves
and the violated Byron’s marble.
But you must only shut up-
And hear in Demotic
the key of the times
in the blue clocks of the stars.
Here did their shadows live,
the dark ones or the clear ones
between shadows of sapphire.
And there, over the sand
you gave me once your hand-
Strange for another ears
the even numbers are sounding
in the multiple routes of the harp:
But shut up: yes, shut up and hear
how do the columns of silence grow.
ENSAYO DE TINIEBLAS I
Y ahora esta suprema oscuridad
clavada en el madero del día.
Tres negaciones de palabras
que una vez te convocaron,
y ahora voces baldías apenas,
la ignorada por siempre
velada mitad de tu lecho.
Saber con la certeza más triste
que hoy comienza la oscura
noche insepulta del alma.
La larga, la dura, la lenta
implacable en los huesos
cuando ya nadie espera aquí,
como en tiempos esperara.
Sí, me pierden laberintos tan grises
como la hosca lluvia entre flores
arrancadas por fin de la tierra;
la vieja quebrada copa de oro
en vino trizado del último sueño,
bandera ignorada por el viento
en su melancólico paso,
y ahora la tensa calma contenida,
cristal de quebradas palabras
que una vez te soñaron, desnuda
y única en el difícil hotel de las horas;
porque suenan campanas oscuras
-en este instante agreste alguno ha partido,
alguien más, ayer entre los vivos-
Pero cómo decirle a la boca
que tú ya no estás, que me llevo
apenas la frágil ternura de tus pechos
en el preludio de la despedida,
que el tesoro de tus dedos
me arde en las manos, me lleva hasta nunca:
que me vuelvo nada, nada, nada.
Translation
ESSAY OF TENEBRAE I
And now it is this supreme darkness
nailed in the timber of day.
By three refusals of words
you have been once convoked,
and just now these waste voices,
the forever ignored
and veiled half of your bed.
To know with saddest certitude
That today is beginning the dark,
unburied, night for the soul.
The long and slow and hard one,
the inexorable night in the bones,
when there’s nobody here waiting for,
as in somewhere of the past it was.
Yes, I wander through a so gray mazes
like the sullen rain between the flowers
rooted out at last from the earth;
the old and rusted golden cup
with shredded wine of last dream.
Just like an ignored flag through the wind
in its long way of melancholy,
and now this sort of tense stillness,
the crystal of broken words
which once dreamed on you, nude
and unique in the hard hotel of hours;
because of this sound of dark bells
-in this wild minute somebody is departed,
and it was yesterday when still lived.
But how could I say to the mouth
that you are not still here, that I take
just your chest’s frail tenderness away
in the prelude of our farewell,
that your fingers’ treasure
is burning in my hands, and it drives me
to nevermore. That I became nothing, nothing.
A. POEMS IN ENGLISH
SOME TREES
A plain landscape
a probable vision of everness
with only three shadows.
No man's land under a high
vertical falling light,
just there, where the time
is still searching for the first mesh
of dark virginal woods,
for the days of grace.
I spoke about shadows
and light, about shadows
-and maybe not strictly about trees.
SHADOW OF THE EMPIRE
Lost in the far and hottest air,
the last clouds’ riders go.
Lead your food steps, that will go
from the night to the night, see
the slight footprint from those
before you. It’s unique this way
with yourself and its slow heavenly dust,
that’s all you have: any more for waiting,
any other changing signs under the sky.
But you have birth by a so gray belly given
in the times of great mechanical myths.
To a foggy borders of Empire you have come:
To the place where the mouth become dumb
and someone files your name under ‘nother despatch.
DEPTHS OF NIGHT
Just stay there, like the circular dream of this night passing by.
And hear: these growing shadows, beyond all of past lives
of believers and lovers, to the other side.
You can hardly know what's hidden in the darkness,
just a solitary crack loosing slowly from the burning house of love.
Words eternally flowing, like the song in a dark hearth.
Someone played a few notes on the piano - they softly fade,
like the blanks and the holes through the tent of this poem,
written by the naked moonlight, in the old-fashioned way.
They belong to the depths of night, so far from the fire days.
O beloved! Just stay there, tenderly rest over this uncertain bed of words
like other lovers did, before leaving.
Time is now -black pilgrim has come, from his no man's land-.
There is nobody out there, only the same traces of shadows on the grass,
the wind through the leaves, the hard question on God.
Words running so gently, from the I - land to the unknown,
from the scattered stones of the city to the next flood.
They will follow their heavenly way, under the last morning star.
As I said: Time is now, only now. Carpe diem.
Forgotten notes in a book of days, mystery waiting behind a closed door.
____________________________________________________________________________________
UNIQUELY THE OLD GREECE…
1
Uniquely the Old Greece could gave such a faces,
before the long days without greatness.
2
House of soul or land in the wind of a dream,
where all or maybe nothing is true,
so far from the breath, from Others’ footsteps
3
It’s surprising that so many looks
leaving any footprint in the mirror.
O you, silvery zero, ambiguous matter, so null !
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Trumpets of sun to silence fall
on house and barn and stack and wall.
Within the cottage, slowly wheeling,
the lamplight's gold turns on the ceiling.
Beneath the stark and windless vane
cattle stamp and munch their grain;
below the starry apple bough
leans the warped and clotted plow.
The moon rolls up, while far away
and thin with sorrow, the sheepdog' s bay
fills the valley with lonely sound.
Slow leaves of darkness steal around.
The watch the watchman, Death, will keep
and man in amnesty may sleep.
William Faulkner: A green bough
PASSING
Lord, so many times I walked
all around this place
-and it was not in those time
so dark as I can see it today-
could be this the same white house
where there was laugh, dazzling?
or terse house as a dream
in the book of the past days?
there became the pines,
so high in their fog,
a unique shadow of green,
waiting. And here, at sunset, a crystal
of hush is broken, beyond the birds,
in memory of the voices ready to leave
this night with myself,
with no other mercy nor return.
WE CALLED HIM...
We called Hans
to the fool of our town.
Nobody here forget
his big blue eyes,
the flourished pockets
of wild berries
-and just in these times,
his weak footsteps
had fear of us-
We called him…
IMAGES
1.
But in the house of love it’s late, so late.
There, where you leave your hearth, and thee was something brightening.
And finally the sun, like a fire against the Eastern windows.
2.
The poem and all that is can not be said.
The blanks and the holes dividing the words, as the air of the time in the net of the spider.
3.
One night, when the slow ship of the moon rolls up, just when the silence becomes a kind of everness.
4.
Somewhere, the water falls.
From time to time, the poet write some thing about its music.
