Poems

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El Poema / The Poem

1940 –

^{a Octavio Paz}

El poema gira sobre la cabeza de un hombre 
en círculos ya próximos ya alejados

El hombre al descubrirlo trata de poseerlo 
pero el poema desaparece

Con lo que el hombre puede asir
hace el poema

Lo que se le escapa
pertenece a los hombres futuros

^{for Octavio Paz}

The poem spins over the head of a man
in circles close now now far

The man discovers it tries to possess it
but the poem disappears

The man makes his poem
from whatever he can grasp

That which escapes
will belong to future men

From Eyes To See Otherwise / Ojos De Otro Mirar by Homero Aridjis. Copyright © 2001 by Homero Aridjis. Translation copyright © 2002 by Eliot Weinberger. Reprinted by permission of New Directions. All rights reserved.

Writer, former ambassador, and environmental activist Homero Aridjis was born on April 6, 1940, in Contepec, Mexico, a small town in Michoacán state. He is the youngest of five sons. During the Mexican Revolution, Aridjis’s mother, Josefina Fuentes, narrowly eluded abduction by bandits when she was eight. His father, Nicias Aridjis, was a former captain in the Greek army. Nicias escaped from Smyrna shortly before Turkish soldiers ransacked the city, massacred local Greeks and Armenians, and set fire to the area.

About Homero Aridjis

Themes

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More by this poet

The Jungle Aflame

^{Translated by George McWhirter}

The saffron skies resemble tropical Turners.
The dancing palms are kissed by voracious tongues.
The howler monkeys leap from crest to crest.
Through the billows of smoke, companies of parrots
with singed tails go searching for the sun
that watches them covertly, like a putrid eye.

Homero Aridjis

2023

Un templo que no está en el templo / A temple not in the temple

Un templo que no está en el templo

Un templo que no está en el templo
un templo fuera de su forma
un templo más antiguo que las piedras
un templo que nos habla y no nos nombra
un templo inmóvil que sigue su camino
un templo más rápido que el pensamiento
me refiero al aire
al templo aire

A temple not in the temple

Homero Aridjis

2016

Meeting with My Father in the Orchard

Past noon. Past the cinema 
with the tall sorrowful walls 
on the point of coming down, I enter the orchard. 
Show over, all of them have gone: 
day laborers, dogs and doors. 
My father is standing in front of a fig tree. 
My mother has died. The children, grown old. 
He’s alone, small threads of air 
weave in and out of his tattered clothes. 
For fear of getting too close and startling him 
with my living presence, I want to go straight by, 
the strange one now with white hair whom he asks, 
“Who’s that there?”
“Father, it’s me, your son.”
“Does your mother know you’re back.

Homero Aridjis

2010

Poems

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El Poema / The Poem

More by this poet

The Jungle Aflame

Un templo que no está en el templo / A temple not in the temple

Meeting with My Father in the Orchard

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