Your Embrace/Tu abrazo.

Roemmers, Alejandro Guillermo ; Clark, David Draper

Tu abrazo

 a Mar

 Que remanso de amor guarda tu abrazo;
 dulce y sereno, tu querer no aflige
 yen el diario fragor la paz elige
 como un arroyo calmo en el ocaso.

 En el rostro moreno un fogonazo
 si brota la sonrisa y se dirige
 al semblante cansado y lo corrige
 con tu aire jovial, de un aletazo.

 No importe que la vida o esta hora
 cual suefio se disuelva con la aurora;
 o se esfume lo eterno en su fracaso

 de prolongar la luz del firmamento
 mas alla de este goce sonoliento
 que rodea mi frente con tu brazo.

Your Embrace

 for Mar

 What a pool of love your embrace possesses;
 sweet and serene, your love afflicts not,
 and in the daily clamor, peace prevails
 like a calm riverbed in the sunset.

 From your dark-skinned face I feel a hearth flash
 when your smile breaks, heading toward my
 tired expression and enlivening it
 with its jovial air, brisk as the flap of a wing.

 No matter that life--or this moment-should
 dissolve like a dream with the dawn;
 or that eternity's bubble should burst in its failure

 to sustain the light of the firmament
 any longer than this sleepy pleasure
 that surrounds my forehead with your arm.

Adaptations from the Spanish By David Draper Clark

Alejandro Guillermo Roemmers was born in Buenos Aires in 1958 and began writing at an early age. During his adolescence he moved to Spain, where, at the age of sixteen, he received the Segundo Premio de Poesia from the Autonomous University of Madrid. His first collection of verse, Sonadores, So'nad (1982), presents poems he wrote from ages twelve to sixteen. His other volumes include Ancla fugaz (1995), Espana en mi (1996), Mas alia (2001), Poesias eligidos (2006), and Como la arena (2006). Among Roemmers's many honors are the Cultura Viva prize and California State University's Hispanic Literary & Cultural Institute's AIba de America award. Roemmers is currently vice president of the Argentine Foundation for Poetry and honorary president of the American Association of Poetry.