Behind the translator, there is the work of a poet. Here are three examples from

magazines in Canada and England:

Prism International (Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver), April 1984

Weeds

Anchored to socks,

They cede, travel,

Hook fine sandy

Stars to legs

Passing. Share wind‚s

Track, choking

Thyme and thistle,

One reeking musty

Woman, one raising

A silky wound.

They lunch on air.

Streamlined to lace

A lung‚s live shape,

They dance to times

Kept by one stray breath.

Nights are when anxious

Fingers stroke stems

Struck with fear,

Racing all day,

Exploding in splintered

Shrieks.

Birds cry,

Fly away.

Weathered fields

Left, last,

Grow wild, freed

In numbers. Herds

Drift over gold

Crests, dropping seed,

Loveless birth to comb

Castile, harsh stubble

For hardened people

Weaned on the lean meat

From dry dugs.

Where browns sing,

Where the dead ooze up

To air and sway,

Where cheeks become

Awns, and a memory

Trickles into sight,

Green spiders

Drink dark wine

From the rocky flanks.

Weeds poise,

Bow to a twist

Of searing light.

Clutch like climbers

To a patch of peace.

Moving fast, by guile

They root, breed,

And stay.

Louis Bourne

Outposts Poetry Quarterly (Walton on Thames), Summer 1985

For the Undying

(Segovia, Spain)

A sluggish swirl of feathers

Pirouettes before the rites of stone.

Salvation flurries to wings above.

Wings as passing shadows

Cross granite beneath the dome

Of lucid blue whose ocean depth

Returns to swallow summer‚s sun.

Luciano González cuts his breath

On the beveled annals of the void.

His faded capitals retreat

Down passageways to dawns.

So dated regrets leach memories

Beside the dream of plastic flowers

And strong young fates in crisp chords

Resound with endless boxes

Of guitars, on night in smoky

Taverns where mouths to bottles

Sob, and girls in tinny laughter

Go craving for a bed. The whispers

To drunken thought threaten

Sleep. Their rifles wait for

A command. The barracks

Tremble from the choice of choking feet.

„Death is an act of service,‰

The moon-eyed martyr moaned.

„The nation is the blood

Of fallen men,‰ the leader lowed.

History sucked the meat

Right off the bone.

A lone idea of order throbs

Through shrouded heads, unformed

From youth. In those small towns

Flags of blood and dust wave away

The weather of bright days.

A lazy fly, marooned by light,

Buzzes past a swollen bulb, hunting

For the carrion of a crumb.

Blessed are the passionate meek

In the constant anvil of an August heat.

Eternity‚s tribute to a rusted bouquet

Rots away their names,

Those who went ungently to the past:

Restores their rigor mortis into source.

You‚d never know on holiday they were dead.

These gentle dead disintegrate to life.

Louis Bourne

Orbis (Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England), Autumn 1992

Sailor at Seedtime

The frost that clings like lace

Knows nothing of ice trembling

In bones. Harvester and scythe,

Death leaves its cast in a pregnant song

When, in January‚s pale pulse,

You gather rhythms of fresh year

And sling a seasoned arm abroad.

Hand breaching windowed wealth

In dungeons of dead soil,

Not for a sunset wage do you

Sow the backs of plowed earth

With your dry seed, fling

From a burlap pouch fledgling

Green on a torn crust. When every

Branch grows lean, bare poles

Turning country eyes to jails

Of straw and strands of yellow

Stubble, birth begins in a beaten

Bed, climbs from its blind will

To a chill of air and trace of light.

The collector opens sleeping marl

With messages, till truth is told

In forgotten stories, tiny spheres

And skeins unraveling day.

Cold clods dream germinating love

Left by rugged fathers in plaid horizons.

You were last seen, Fenando Herrera,

Walking the brown waves of your plot,

Cutting gold surf on a summer afternoon,

Steering high arms on a gleaming wedge,

Sighting a bit of sea at Cifuentes. 

Louis Bourne