Sobremesa
POESÍA
de Graciela Reyes
Tuve la impresión de que pasa mucho tiempo
pero cuando miré el reloj eran sólo las cuatro.
En la mesa quedaban nuestras copas de coñac y un cenicero que no habíamos usado.
La calle estaba mojada, quizá empezaba a oscurecer,
pero se reflejaba el sol en una ventana, en una ventana con una cortina blanca
y una lámpara encendida detrás.
Estábamos solos en el restaurante,
era un día de invierno
que luego olvidaríamos.
Me asombró que fueran solamente las cuatro de la tarde.
Habíamos cumplido una vida en unas horas, como tantas veces.
Y no nos habíamos saciado.
Sobremesa
POETRY
by Graciela Reyes
I had the feeling that a long time had passed
but when I looked at my watch it was only four.
Our glasses of cognac were still on the table with an ashtray we hadn’t used.
The street was wet, perhaps it was getting dark,
but a little sun shone through a window, a white-curtained window,
and behind it, a lamp glowed.
We were alone in the restaurant,
it was a winter day
that we’d later forget.
It surprised me that it was only four in the afternoon.
Like so many times before, we’d lived a full life-time in those few hours.
And still we were not sated.
(translated from the Spanish by Jackie K. White)
Graciela Reyes was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her book Poemas/Poems, a bilingual edition of selected poems, translated by Ruth El Saffar, was published by the Consulate of Argentina in Chicago in 1991. Her other books of poetry include Reflexiones de una mujer sola (Reflections of a Woman Alone) and Poemas para andar por casa (Poems for Walking Around the House), which were published in Buenos Aires in 1982 by Botella al Mar and El Archibrazo Editor, respectively, and Que la quiero ver bailar (How I Want to See Her Dance), which won both the Letras de Oro prize and the Premio Cuidad de Rota after its publication by University of Miami Press in 1989. Reyes, a scholar of linguistic theory, retired from her position as Professor of Spanish (Linguistics) at the University of Illinois Chicago in 2007. “Sobremesa” is published here, in both the original Spanish and the English translation, for the first time.
Jackie K. White earned her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois Chicago and was a Professor of English, now Professor Emerita, at Lewis University. She is the author of three chapbooks, and her poems and translations have appeared in ACM, Bayou, Fifth Wednesday, Folio, Spoon River, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Hex & Howl, White’s chapbook of collaborative poems with Simone Muench, and their full-length collection The Under Hum, were published by Black Lawrence Press in 2021 and 2024, respectively.
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