Las techumbres alumbradas
las cucarachas de metal en los rincones del patio
y las urracas graznando su fastidio
con sus plumas marchitas
en la nieve sucia.
No – no hay estatuas ni vagabundos con quien hablar
este domingo
sólo alcohólicos enfadados que viven en esta
aldea fantasma
o ancianas escarchadas con sus sombreros sórdidos.
Este es un ecosistema saludable
de pájaros ancestrales y ermitaños taciturnos
como una pintura imaginaria donde
subsistimos algunos olvidados,
Un avión pasa volando hacia el aeropuerto
un extranjero hurguetea en los contenedores de residuos y saca del interior
unas sillas plásticas
y un tendedero de ropa.
El bosque de pinos se esconde tras la bruma
incluso alguna virgen perdida hace doscientos años
y nosotros los ascetas ahora agonizando
con excesiva desvergüenza.

Today I declare myself king of Snaeland,
in the thick fog that blinds the goodness of our eyes
before the quiet stones torn from their places
to hide the trace of those who disappeared into the earth.
Thunder clapped repeatedly in the emptiness of the silence
broke the humility visible in all the windows
and the years turned uncertain to pacify the stubbornness
of memory.
Many shut their mouths or turn their backs
wanting to use the logic of the memory that is lost,
to the solemnity of the vulture when it reaches the heights,
because even so it feeds on horror in its bird’s rapacity.
The beaches are still sandy,
where the shame of faceless bodies is hidden.
The bear savagely catches sight of its prey once more
between the rocks,
yet the blow of its paw will not have the same force as before.
My house is still, I am told, in the humble neighbourhood
of the low fires,
where the dizziness of the entire universe is reflected
in the dark opacity of the corners.
Mistaken, doubtful, I will remain the stranger,
the naïve one, the absurd one, the troublemaker.
So I return from a country with a name
that is seized with the promptness of lips,
being a strange pariah.
I tell stories, I am heard by old mates,
others tell with magnitude the story of their own epics,
and we tire of listening to one another
until the dawn, full of light, explodes in my brain.
Someone says that the winds still sweep death along
that the harsh one no longer belongs to this old neighbourhood:
Even so, today I declare myself king of Snaeland,
of the soil that is still green, in spite of the sadness,
when my parents stopped pleading and spoke to me with fury
to find out from where so much disconsolate pain comes.
There were others who looked away from the intensity
of the fire
and my steps suddenly turn from their path, up the fjord,
with my children, with Ture and his brothers
where solitude hides silently behind the stars.
Today I declare myself king of Snaeland.
A wintry flash of lightning tries to snatch away the certainty of my
language.
The years lose their meaning in the strangeness of another soil
and I think my bones are defiled,
are rusting away in the perpetuity of the skeleton
if truth does not achieve the usefulness of modesty.
There is then no other function than looking at the earth from below
to avoid the despair that memory brings on its banners.
Today I declare myself committed king of Snaeland.
The myth must not remain incomplete in the apathy of this time,
leaving no obvious trace of my earlier steps,
because I know that some ghost will haunt my dreams forever.
Perhaps I cry, remembering the old misfortunes,
and I stumble, with meticulous calm
when the props of my new house stubbornly get in the way
of the slowness of my clumsy steps:
darkness grows, silent and disorderly in my surroundings,
even so, I demand the dignity that the victor owes the
defeated.
There is no ceremony, no guests,
There are no pages, no servants:
only the dignity of one who returns
today, when I declare myself, finally, king of Snaeland.
Traducción al inglés
por Gilla Evans