If One Afternoon

Catalan Poetry: Part 1 Miquel Bau^? Born in Felanitx on Mallorca, Miquel Bauca (1940-2005) resided in Barcelona. His eight books of poetry include Una bella historia (1961; A finestory) andElnoblejoc (1972;The noblegame), thesources of the present translations. He also wrote inventive prose works likeEl canvi (1998; The change), which combines narrative, essay, and aphorism inan alphabetical sequence. He later deployed this dictionary-like form in large collections of epigrammatic poems such as Els somnis (2003; The dreams). Ifone afternoon Ifone afternoon it's raining sadness and cars slicken in the steamwhile running through stoplights,dirt, revulsion in thehumid city if one afternoon you leave off work, beat, and it's raining, raining sadness, raining so hard theblind squint under theportals, how do you bear thedolls' eyes, theircrazy,hideous eyes? Indolence, dusk, rain, sorrow . . . thegeneral slump comes as such a refusalyou grab hold, wherever you are, of some banal love song, bespattered with spirit. Ricard was a lad Ricard was a ladwho led a particular life. Ricard did a ten-year stretch in prison and wasn't fussed by it- he said - because the whole shtick formedhis particular life. Ricard evenwanted todie a particular death, a nice little, home-style, neat and tidydeath. But his sidekicks didn't want that,not a bit, so onemorning theyhad Ricard spittingup blood in theprison ashpit. They shoved him out ofhis particular lifeand everything seemed tohorrifyhim drums , cowbells, breast milk. And so theguys concluded Ricard's particular life,stashing a particular piece of lead between his particular ribs, cleaned by starvation and fullofparticular shit. 44 i World Literature Today

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