Squares, Angles

(from the Spanish of Alfonsina Storni)

Rows of houses, houses in rows,
rows of houses,
squares, rectangles,
houses in rows --

souls also,
ideas arranged and filed,
and shoulders, right-angled.

My God, yesterday, a tear
dangled,
it too a square --
a rectangle.



Cuadrados y ángulos (Alfonsina Storni)

Casas enfiladas, casas enfiladas,
casas enfiladas,
cuadrados, cuadrados, cuadrados,
casas enfiladas.
Las gentes ya tienen el alma cuadrada,
ideas en fila
y ángulo en la espalda;
yo misma he vertido
ayer una lágrima,
Dios mío, cuadrada.


(Original text online at: http://www.gavilan.edu/disted/html/2_02.html
I first translated this from a book end of 8th grade but no I did not have "dangled" all that simpler half-rhymes thus there; I liked the poem then but did not really realize how great it was, how neat the plays on words; I just thought 'oh nice, simple word plays, I can do this, it's at my level, not too many words to look up' No Storni does not say the ideas are in a file; they are arranged in single file, in a line thus; I just decided that the false cognate was nice in English)