The Fears of a Poet, Imprisoned and Unable to Write His Verse by Axel Pinpin

If a maker of verses exists only as a dream,
his imagery honed to the same ritual,
the fantasies of the thieving drowse and sleep are ever ready
to steal away the rawness of a readied thought,
the proximity of truth to the colors,
the dance,
the restive movements of rhyme,
the rhyming of the melodies.
The colors within his dreams, sing to him.

But a writer of verses exists not as a dream,
the poet awakens to his own--imprisoned,
                                                                                                         he struggles,
in hopes of escaping the shackles made of annoyance-boredom-heat
that tears away at the rationality of the spark and of the anger,
which finds its way to the truth inside the techniques,
                   the tactics,
                                counter-magics,
                                              the enchantments of his practice.
Practical are the geometries of his experiences.

-Translated by Aris Remollino
2009

[Originally published in Tugmaang Matatabil: Selected Poems in Translation, Southern Voices Printing Press, 2009]