The airplane tickets for the flight from Paris to Buenos
Aries, in two hours, 23 minutes, 8 seconds, are frozen.
The sun is frozen.
The fire at the center of the earth is frozen.
The father, meridian, and the son, parallel, are frozen.
The two deviations of history are frozen.
My manly minor act is frozen.
My sexual oscillation is frozen.
Translated from the Spanish
by
Clayton Eshleman,
with Jorge
Guzman
SUZANNE PAOLA
New Year's Eve
Seagulls in snow -
The new year comes
on white wings,
with incomprehensible cry -
Above the low palaver of the waves,
the gray sea gnawing its sugared shore.
Such consolations removed -
grandfather, child, home
buried or gone, though snow arcs
in a slow sift from the roof,
leaving us whole in a blotted landscape,
as if something would spare us for another year.
