Translations

Cañón del Colca

by Julia Wong Kcomt
Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue

Spanish

El cóndor se esconde
de ti, sagaz
no te mereces
ni las piedras reventando
al final del precipicio
palabras de lodo y plumas viejas
trasgreden
como acorde destemplado


Paraje lleno
de muerte y de miseria
vehemente
un corazón europeo está cerrado

Lince la luz
cuando babean de amor
los cráneos extranjeros.

Julia Wong Kcomt is a Chinese-Peruvian writer. Born in Chepén, Peru, she has lived on three continents. Her publications—a dozen volumes of poetry, three novels, one novella, one short-story collection, and two collections of hybrid prose work—include Ladrón de codornices, Doble felicidad, and Pessoa por Wong.

Jennifer Shyue is a translator from Spanish focusing on contemporary Cuban and Asian-Peruvian writers. She has an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa and a BA in comparative literature from Princeton University, and is the recipient of a 2019 Fulbright grant to Peru. Her translations have appeared in American Chordata and Inventory. She can be found on the web at shyue.co.

FROM Volume 69, Number 1

Related