Epilogue [Epílogo]

Poetry
Written By Jordi Doce

Translated from Spanish by Reginald Gibbons

They’re on the bedsheets,
uncertain,
undone,
flung like ragdolls. Just once
they spun so fast around each other they disappeared,
each one invisible to the other, but now
they retreat into their stilled blood,
into the inertia they share. The slanting
light of a June afternoon pulls at them,
the light and its delicate tongs,
poking the embers in them both.
Insomnia and voracity were in them,
their skin opened only to slam shut.
And a cold gust blew from nowhere
into their escaping faces.
That’s all. Nothing has changed.
And then their bodies,
the distance between their bodies.

[2007]

 
Jordi Doce

Jordi Doce (1967) holds a BA in English Literature and wrote a M. Phil Thesis on the work of English poet Peter Redgrove. He worked as Language Assistant at the University of Sheffield (1993-1996) and The University of Oxford (1997-2000). Currently he is Head of the Publishing Dept. at Madrid’s Círculo de Bellas Artes.

He has translated the poetry of W.H. Auden, William Blake, T.S. Eliot, Charles Simic and Charles Tomlinson, among others, and has published four volumes of his own poetry: Diálogo en la sombra (1997), Lección de permanencia (Pre-Textos, 2000), Otras lunas (dvd Ediciones, 2002) y Gran angular (dvd Ediciones, 2005). He is the author of a book of aphorisms (Hormigas blancas, Bartleby, 2005) and two book-length essays on the influence of English Romanticism in Spanish Modern Poetry
(Imán y desafío, Península, 2005) and the work of T.S. Eliot and W.H Auden (La ciudad consciente, Vaso Roto, 2010).

Since the summer of 2006 he runs the literary blog Perros en la playa at http://jordidoce.blogspot.com

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