Kristin Dykstra translating Reina María Rodríguez

in Beckett’s South-Eastern Railway Terminus

it will be in the south
having followed long tracks
where we’ll meet.
the people who accompany us
don’t know, don’t want to know
the price of those rose windows
that filter light
intermittently
they drop their heads and walk
around
pretending they don’t see it.
we survive
with words subject to another loss
at the end of those tracks
carrying on contemporary life
a paradigm of human kind.
to be another thing, a style, some description
lacking ears, lacking voice and lacking being
changing class
(in my train car that has neglected
time and place, I think through
the breath in you; I think through
the blood in you) and I stroke your
hand in the gloomy daylight of the platforms
sheltered by Beckett’s South-Eastern Railway Terminus
at a time halfway to a greater time
blurring under the window
where the time of the real appears.
because the cities we’ve seen
aren’t eternal at November’s close
(and an observer has a single purpose
in the awareness of his own death:
to watch the present tense of things with
intensity) and to move unperceived
toward the place where
one day we’ll meet,
there, where life persists
where all of life has disappeared
along the tracks.

the difference
a haunted house on the corner of San Rafael
like a cedar in a line of cedars
mouths, destinies
in Beckett’s South-Eastern Railway Terminus
the one who’s diving (1978)

Kristin Dykstra Translating Reina María Rodríguez

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