Dandy by Lois Pereiro

The mirror of elegance before my eyes
and my eyelids sleep a sinewy sleep
in liquid lines of the expressions etched
on a face of cruelty close to mine.
I become fear the murderer
and while an angel passes un ange passe
all would like to see after the orgy
if what I have kept back is a thought
threaded through needles of irony.

 

(From Poems 1981-1991, 1992)

Lois Pereiro (1958-1996) published two collections in his lifetime: Poemas 1981-1991 and Poesía de amor e enfermidade (‘Poems of Love and Illness’). He edited the magazine La Naval and was responsible for introducing a certain central European aesthetic into Galician poetry.

In addition to translating Don Quixote and La regenta from Spanish to English, John Rutherford directs translation workshops at Oxford University’s Centre for Galician Studies, which have produced Them and other stories by Mendez Ferrín, Things by Castelao and From the beginning of the sea: An anthology of Galician contemporary
short stories.

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