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  • La Risa
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La Risa

José Watanabe

Una cuadrilla de obreros
está desmontando una vieja casona de Barranco.
Con una venia de paseante les pido su consentimiento para
mirarlos.
Desatan las paredes con barretas, ordenadamente,
hilada tras hilada
de adobe.
De repente un obrero llama a los ostros
y señala
una larga hilada con profundas huella de perro,
huellas fijadas por el sol de 1910
(según fecha en el frontis de la casa)
Todos acuden y ríen,
largamente ríen, incomprehensiblemente ríen.
Es que ellos saben,
han recibido la imagen de la adobería de entonces:
tendales de adobes frescos y un perro distraído
caminando sobre ellos, imprimiendo sus patas,
y alguien, acertándole con un poco de barro: “¡Zafa, perro zonzo!”,
y perro zonzo huyendo, asustado y loco, dejando sus huellas
en el barro fresco.
Y eso dio risa,
muy seguramente que dio risa en la adobería de entonces.
Hoy esa risa se oye aquí, en estas bocas,
como un eco que demoraba, hasta que vino.


José Watanabe

from Poesía completa. Madrid, Buenos Aires, Valencia: Editorial Pre-Textos (2008)

Reproduced by kind permission of the author.

Tags:

destruction dogs echo laughter Peru South American poetry work

Translations of this Poem

Laughter

A gang of workmen
is demolishing an old mansion in Barranco.
With the gesture of a passer-by I ask permission to watch
them.
In a systematic way they tear down the walls with crowbars,
layer after layer
of adobe.
Suddenly a worker calls to the others
and points
to a thick layer with the deep paw-prints of a dog,
tracks set by the sun in 1910
(according to the date on the mansion’s
facade).
They all gather round and laugh,
they laugh for a long time, laugh incomprehensibly.
It’s because they realize
they’ve received an image from the plaster of that time:
an area of wet adobe and an absent-minded dog
walking over it, imprinting its paws,
and someone, chucking a lump of mud: “Piss off, you stupid
animal!”
And the dog fleeing, scared and crazy, leaving its tracks
in the fresh adobe.
That made them laugh,
yes, it would certainly have made them laugh back then.
Today that laughter’s heard here, from these blokes,
like an echo that took a long time coming.

Source: from Path Through the Canefields (Edinburgh: White Adder, Edinburgh, 1997), translated by CA de Lomellini and David Tipton. Reproduced by kind permission of the translators.

About this poem

This poem, representing Peru, is part of The Written World – our collaboration with BBC radio to broadcast a poem from every single nation competing in London 2012.

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