This poem is taken from PN Review 240, Volume 44 Number 4, March - April 2018.
Best Translationtranslation from the Spanish of Manuel Vilas’s ‘Macbeth’
This morning I got on the ferry that runs to La Gomera
from Santa Cruz de Tenerife; I sat at the deck
bar and started on the Campari and the olives,
and after a while I was completely hammered; a Scottish woman
– scruffy and heavily made-up, around 40, fat inches of cleavage,
showing off her beautiful dark balanced breasts –
sat down to drink with me; she studied Spanish
at Madrid University, she said, and stuck out her tongue
as she did so; ‘Where is Scotland?’ I asked,
to which she replied, ‘And where’s your cock?’
And we switched from Campari to gin,
and after a while I spoke to this Scottish woman:
an inspired screed in Spanish, which she did not understand at all:
Blessed is everything that lies beneath the water,
from the shipwreck to the rhinestone necklace
that fell into the sea in an act of loving carelessness.
...
from Santa Cruz de Tenerife; I sat at the deck
bar and started on the Campari and the olives,
and after a while I was completely hammered; a Scottish woman
– scruffy and heavily made-up, around 40, fat inches of cleavage,
showing off her beautiful dark balanced breasts –
sat down to drink with me; she studied Spanish
at Madrid University, she said, and stuck out her tongue
as she did so; ‘Where is Scotland?’ I asked,
to which she replied, ‘And where’s your cock?’
And we switched from Campari to gin,
and after a while I spoke to this Scottish woman:
an inspired screed in Spanish, which she did not understand at all:
Blessed is everything that lies beneath the water,
from the shipwreck to the rhinestone necklace
that fell into the sea in an act of loving carelessness.
...
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