2018 GC Prize in Translation Honorable Mention:
Nobility

Álvaro Lasso transl. by Kelsi Vanada


When it comes to decapitations I just have to say one thing:
it’s tough to learn to perfect a smile for the executioner.
The executioner’s nobility, like a beauty pageant, has been
forged by long tradition.

Also present is the public, they haven’t paid admission,
they’ve endorsed justice without understanding it. They
listen to the leader’s voice without any sign of approval
whatsoever, just waiting to find out what a body with
no head is like.

But the show lasts only seconds. They know this: think
about second chances, about past lives, parallel worlds,
the beyond, and meanwhile, all the great ideologies can fit
into a refrigerator.

That’s why a poem isn’t a poem if it doesn’t know how to
suspend death. That’s why the axe never makes it to the
neck, but it’s there, at the point of dismembering it.