Creakings (lyrics translation)

Listen first http://www.lyricsmania.com/crujidos_lyrics_nacho_vegas.html then read. Sorry, Nacho, I didn't mean to take away it's beauty.. it's really just an excuse to get you heard and to get me translating.

"If you don't have the strength to get out of here
I'll find it wherever I can and will go on without you"
You said something like this in a deep, resigned voice
I recorded your words and I got ready to begin

Day one, on foot, I begin walking
I have to hang on, I can do it.
Day two I make it to the end
Then comes day three and I ruin it again.
So starting all over again.

Day one, on foot, I mustn't think
It's already day two, Alprazolam.
I start to talk and don't make sense
Then comes day three and I ruin it again.


Don't ask why or why not,
Only I know the answer, and it's not pretty.


I'll move to another place
I'll leave this city
But now it's me
From where I want to escape.


Don't give me flowers where here there are irises and roses
I will want them one day when there is not one left
So, will you please me? and tell me, how will you do it?


Day one, on foot, what can I do
to find remains of faith?
Time passes painfully and slowly
And then in a moment I fuck it up again
Starting all over again


Day one, on foot, I feel myself thinking
How to avoid feeling, thinking,
Dying of thirst and drinking from the sea
And day two I fail again.


If I lie to you, it won't be out of meanness
These sorrows always come from clumsiness


Day one, on foot, what can I do
but hope to see it end?
The day finished with a creaking
I wake up hurt and I scream in loneliness

It's fucked, I know
But it's not dramatic
This is not so tragic
This isn't a drama, no
I'll tell a million things to cry over
This isn't a drama, no
This is not so tragic.

Como llegar

Evite ser requerido

Pone en una pared de un cemento de lo más banal

Qué no es un baño

Tampoco esta plaza tu salón, tu casa

sino una sala de espera de lo más comunal

Evite tropezar con contradicciones

Qué es lo que hay

Y lo que te construye.

Evite la formalidad

de todas las fronteras

que fabrican los ojos y mano de obra

acuérdate que soy apátrida

en estos tiempos que corren 

como un estribillo apurado y olas precipitadas

Constatamos que ya no existen países

sino ciudades

cuyas similitudes debes evitar

y diferencias debes exaltar

hasta que ya te dé igual

Hyped out

Anything can be in style
Based on the way they compliment
Our unconventional living of what we the happily contaged call love
My mother's leather purse from the fifties
Some Argentinean slippers
Soy milkers, the anit-soy milkers
Your accent is sexy, but not mine
They decide
Vinyl, gardening, knitting are back in style
So are kids, deacons, newly weds
The definition of hip
And the innate puckering of lips
No one blows kisses anymore
Only bodies can travel
People fake up answers
But points of view are true
Airlines are to blame
Airlines are to thank
Thank me that I blame them
For the anguish-building bond of distance and desire

(untitled)

Scattered like pennies sunk into a couch
Are glasses of water that taste of dust
Cordless phones in hiding
Material belongings struggling to be let go of
Voices overlapping
We tune each other out
Senses are dead
And if not dead, taken beyond their limits
This is passion at its most unbeautiful
In this house-shaped box of three people memories
Hope and postponement are at its boldest

Subtle Cities 5 (my translation of a chapter fragment in Italo Calvino´s Invisible Cities)

If you want to believe me, good. Now I will tell you how Ottavia, the spiderweb-city, is made. There is a precipice in the middle of two steep mountains: the city is over the gap, tied to both peaks by ropes and chains and catwalks. One walks on the wooden rail sleepers, careful not to put one’s feet in the open spaces, or one clings to the hemp mesh. Underneath there is nothing for hundreds and hundreds of metres: some cloud passes; one catches a glimpse of the bottom of the ravine further down below.

     This is the core of the city: a net that works as a crossing and a support. All the rest, instead of rising above, is hanging below: rope ladders, hammocks, houses made like sacks, clothes-hangers, terraces like spaceships, water bags, gas burners, roasters, baskets hung by string, hoists, showers, trapezes and rings for games, cable-cars, chandeliers, pots with vines.

      Suspended over the abyss, the life of Ottavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know that more often than not the net does not hold up.