Harry Martinson translated from Swedish by Robert Hedin
Letter from a Cattle Boat
We met Ogden Armour’s yacht
off the Balearics.
He’s the owner of this tub, as you know.
He has five slaughterhouses for hogs in Chicago
and eight more for oxen outside La Plata.
He lifted his telescope to his eye and must’ve said,
“Oh, hell! It’s just my old cattle boat, the Chattanooga.”
We lowered our flag and all the oxen began bellowing,
like a thousand hoarse sirens over the endless sea.
It almost made us ill,
and I was inclined to call it: the law of all flesh.
Soon after we hit a patch of bad weather,
and the oxen having four stomachs, as you know,
suffered a nasty bout of seasickness.
from Trade Wind
The Iberians called the route of the trade wind the Sea of Ladies:
el Golfo de las Damas.
They took their ladies out there to dance.
That’s how they sailed to the New World.
Their ships had exotic names.
Names from an era intoxicated with the sea.
Nuestra Senora de la Encarnacion Desengana.
Nuestra Madre del caba Donga.
And they bowed to their ships as if to ladies
on the dance floor of the world,
el Golfo de las Damas.
And they took them out to dance on the Antillean route,
the route of the trade wind.
