To celebrate our heading off to Spain soon, here’s another bit of translation – my version of the classic poem Mar Adentro, by Ramón Sampedro. The movie’s good stuff, if not necessarily Saturday night viewing. Unless a story of assisted suicide in deepest Galicia is your idea of Saturday night viewing, in which case, go for it.

The original film version of the poem, with subtitles, is on YouTube, so you can compare and contrast the official translation (there’s also a lovely bit of Celtic-stylee soundtrack going on there, and of course it sounds ten times better in Spanish read by Javier Bardem)

I’ve also put this up on the In Translation page.

Mar Adentro (by Ramón Sampedro)

Out at sea,

the sea inside.

 

And in the weightless depths,

where dreams resolve,

two wills combine

with one wish.

 

A kiss sets life on fire,

Lightning, then thunder,

and in a metamorphosis,

my body no longer is my body,

like diving to the universe’s core.

 

A childish embrace,

the purest kiss,

till we see ourselves reduced

to a single desire.

 

We gaze at each other,

an echo repeating, with no words

‘further inside,’ ‘further inside,’

beyond everything

through our bones and our blood.

 

But always I wake,

wishing for a state of death

that would mean going on being

with your hair

tangled in my mouth.