Translation of 'La Cucaracha de Mala Sueña'
The cockroach of bad dreams
comes from beyond the stars.
You never heard of it
and yet it turns up in the sugar jar.
It never heard of you and yet
it turns up in your dressiest shoes.
As through your impossible hair
you are tugging the comb of your coming to be
it dashes up your arm
and on into your seashell-like ear
and inside starts to feed
on everything you know
and everything you thought
you ought to understand.
It has no pity, not a bit.
This cockroach of your dreams,
the bad ones to be sure,
soon ingests your diplomas,
memories, life stories,
even the haberdashery
of your personal characteristics
so carefully established
such a long time ago,
leaving you naked and bald
and at the same time beyond
being at all and then
POP, out your other ear squeezing,
more bloated than the annals of forever,
armored in all your incipient glory.
Goodbye, goodbye, oh love I would have shared!
20 March 2018
Texas Jim, from the Spanish of the celebrated Nadie Simismo
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