Posts filed under 'pompeii'

Translation Tuesday: Poems by Martín López-Vega

Translated by the author and Genevieve Arlie

The corpses of Orto dei Fuggitivi speak

 

No bones or shreds of toga,

even less flesh, or blood, or semen:

what’s left of us is the shell

of our corpses in lava, and don’t say

lava saved us: rather condemned us

to eternal sudden death.

 

You won’t think of us often:

your century wants a culprit

to commemorate the dead.

We remain because our nothingness

remains: there’s the rub.

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