The Dreams of Scipio— A Spanish poem by Luis Cruz

Oct 20, 2022 | Poetry | 0 comments

Translated from the Spanish by James Storbakken

I imagined,
Yes, I imagined I was in a temple where
Everything known fit perfectly into its place. Each object against another
In essence, sweat, pestilence, and vileness;
The pure and the virtues howled and moaned in unison,
Suffering from the excess of their pleasure.

Outside the temple, ethereal music is heard emanating from the spheres,
Some large, others small, all beautiful and exhibiting
Lush, polished surfaces;
Without which, however, they would not lie to me,
For their music is simultaneously an example
Of the most perverse internal torture.

The howling of the sacrificial hoard and the movements of
The spheres are the enchanting melodies that are
Played around the temple hall’s sacrificial flames,
The flames fueled by bones and by memories.

Read another Spanish poem by Pedro Licona, translated to English by James Storbakken, and published in The Antonym.

A Spirit Mystified Within Its Own Labyrinth— Pedro Licona

Also, read two poems, written in Hindi by Kedarnath Singh, and translated to English by Sharmista De, published in The Antonym.

Two Hindi Poems by Kedarnath Singh

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About Author

Luis Cruz is a scholar, a historian, a Cicero fan, a fan of Rome’s foundations, etc. His poems seem the fragments of a leather-shoed historian-genius in hiding, whether he be sweltered somewhere within a university library or holed up in his own nook. They both hold their own in the massive burlesque world of Modern Poetics.

About Translator

James Harold Storbakken is an American poet, novelist, short story writer, and gastronomie/food writer. He is the author of a book of poems, A Portrait of Odysseus Under the Ithacan Sun, and his fiction, non-fiction, translations, and poetry have been published in a number of various anthologies, journals, and literary magazines. He currently lives in Andalusia.