Two poems by Nicanor Parra

Acacias
Strolling many years ago

Down a street taken over by acacias in bloom

I found out from a friend who knows everything

That you had just gotten married.

I told him that I really

Had nothing to do with it.

I never loved you

— You know that better than I do —

Yet each time the acacias bloom

— Can you believe it? —

I get the very same feeling I had

When they hit me point-blank

With the heartbreaking news

That you had married someone else.
— translated by David Unger

I Take Back Everything I’ve Said
Before I go

I’m supposed to get a last wish:

Generous reader

burn this book

It’s not at all what I wanted to say

Though it was written in blood

It’s not what I wanted to say.

No lot could be sadder than mine

I was defeated by my own shadow:

My words took vengeance on me.

Forgive me, reader, good reader

If I cannot leave you

With a warm embrace, I leave you

With a forced and sad smile.

Maybe that’s all I am

But listen to my last word:

I take back everything I’ve said.

With the greatest bitterness in the world

I take back everything I’ve said.
— translated by Miller Williams

Nicanor Parra, who was a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Chile in Santiago, is one of Latin America’s most notable and innovative poets. Describing himself as an “antipoet,” he writes in a wry, colloquial, and accessible mode that eschews the rhetorical inflation and florid gestures associated in the popular mind with verse. His sister Violeta was one of Chile’s most renowned folk singers. Born in 1914, Parra is now in his mid-90s. These poems are from Antipoems: New and Selected, edited by David Unger and published by New Directions. “Acacias” copyright © 1973 by David Unger, and “I Take Back Everything I’ve Said” copyright © 1972 by Nicanor Parra and Miller Williams. The poems are reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.