JAMES BOSCCO ANAMARIA (en anglais)

Merci, cher Norton, mon ami et immense poère, merci d'avoir traduit mon poème "Epigraphe sur la tombe du poète péruvien James Boscco Anamaria";


Inscription on the Tomb of the Peruvian Poet James Oscco Anamaría

'See how great is the mercy he has shown us'

Homily, Second Century

Traveller, this is the last resting place
of the just voice, the virtuous heart of Peru,
the magical songmaker
James Oscco Anamarìa.

Immortal now, he smiles at eternity
with eyes wide open,
his aquiline nose sculpted
by the mountain breezes,
his skin bronzed by the ocean swell.

Finally at peace,
today his soul can listen to
the Andean summer walking barefoot
in the meadows full of anemones!

He is alivein the air breathed by doves,
in the freedom that grows in secret on the lips
of the martyred peoples of the Americas!

Triumphant,
he is the pure poem
that divine Time will never cease to write
on the eyes of children!

And his love?
It endures in every tiny shiver of light
with which morning wraps the words
Freedom and Justice,
in every atom of the universe
that journeys to the heart of human dreams!

Arise, beloved Friend, come tonight
with your soul of snow,
your face covered in cyclamens
and soothe the feverish tenderness
of the immense breast of Peru!

Ah, my friend, a poet
speaks of light and air
and carries the weight of the earth!

I dedicate this poem to my brother, the brilliant poet, the man who loved the people of Peru to the point of death, the apostle of the poor savagely tortured and murdered by a bloodthirsty government! He left traces of his evangelical purity on the face of the times that pass with a firm step through the streets, the squares, the churches, the fields, the ports, the mines of a country he wanted to be innocent of all injustice.

Translated from the French of Athanase Vantchev de Thracy by Norton Hodges
March 2009