“Translating a piece of verse can be the sincerest way of reading it.”
Huda J. Fakhreddine
No sé. I don’t know. They’re important words in any language. I know that I feel, if not what I feel, when a poem goads me into articulating what skirts the edges of speech. That sentence cloaks confusion in some kind of dress. It may be to say that I don’t know what the poem says other than it speaks to me — and this is irony — wordlessly. What’s conveyed floats over, under, around and through the friction it generates on the page. Azurea’s Spanish has a pellucid, propulsive quality that crests like a swell summoning me to body-surf it in English. That’s the unruliest simile I can fabricate for the sweet consternation induced by intruding upon someone else’s fugitive lyric.
OCTOBER WITH WINGS
by Azurea20 translated from Spanish by JMN
Before her
the greatest certitude lacks
importance
and the voice which names her
ceases to be mine.
How to abandon the me.
How to abandon the me,
to create from nothing.
To be a god, or goddess.
To dig down deep
where pronouns don’t exist,
digging to where the verb is,
where the act is conjugated,
where the tatters of life
are mute, at rest,
ceasing to air their rifts.
What’s conjured steers between
a school of synchronized fish,
a forest of silent beeches,
an unfathomed ocean,
a mountain sheltering misfortune.
I don’t know.
Maybe the embrace
of river with sea…
and Certitude.
Certitude, I say.
Like an October with wings.
OCTUBRE CON ALAS
Azurea20
Frente a ella,
la mayor certeza carece
de importancia
y la voz que la nombra
deja de ser mía.
Cómo abandonar el yo.
Cómo abandonar el yo,
crear de la nada.
Ser un dios, una diosa.
Cavar hondo donde
no existen los pronombres;
cavar donde existe el verbo,
donde el acto se conjuga,
donde los harapos de la vida
enmudezcan, reposen,
dejen de airear sus desgarros.
Camina el conjuro entre
un bancal de peces sincronizados,
un bosque de hayas silenciosas,
un océano incomprendido,
un monte que acoja la desdicha.
No sé.
Tal vez el abrazo
del río con el mar…
y la Certeza.
Digo: la Certeza.
Como un octubre con alas.
(c) 2026 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
Fire in the Casus Belly
The Secretary of War and the Commander of War mustered the Brass at the Department of War.
First the SOW
Then the COW
Settled the hash
Good and proper
Of the Brass
At the DOW.
B-B-B-BOOM!
K-K-K-POW!
NOBEL FOR PEACE!
N-N-N-NOW!
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved