cover
sólo durante los segundos
en que se desprende del pellejo,
el camaleón es libre.
el resto del tiempo,
se ve forzado a emular
la gama de voces
que lo reclaman.
apenas le queda
completa soltura en los ojos:
así podrá ver
la traición de la piel
arropándolo siempre.
porque no es suyo el color,
pertenece a un sombrío argot
asignado
a los leones de la tierra.
cover (trans.)
only during the seconds
when he gets rid of his skin,
is the chameleon free.
the rest of the time,
he’s forced to emulate
the gamut of voices
that claim him.
all he has left
is utter poise in his eyes:
that’s how he’ll get to see
the treachery of the skin
that covers him always.
because the color is not his,
it belongs to a dark argot
assigned
to the lions of the earth.
Nota de traducción
A translator himself, Álvarez Nieves writes poems that are finely attuned to the hues and tonalities of language. In that sense, the chameleon in this poem embodies the difficult freedom of poetry. A challenge I faced was capturing the many tonalities of phrases like “que lo reclaman,” which in addition to “that claim him” also summons additional meanings of reclamar, including “to clamor for” and “to protest.” I opted for the clarity of “that claim him” while acknowledging that, much as the chameleon is many things to different people, words in the original poem carry resonances that exceed translation.