Cólera buey / Oxen Rage
Poesia , 1971
Ed. La Rosa Blindada
why beneath the glory of this sun
do i sorrow like an ox?
A bull awakes one day to the realization that he's a castrated, browbeaten ox but is then briefly abstracted from this sorrow as the morning sun gently warms his hide and lifts heady aromas from the grass; while a man, graced with human cogitation, but burdened with the general suffering that surrounds him, delights in gorgeous women walking through flowery plats, who fleetingly offer distraction: this ambivalent oxen attitude pervades Juan Gelman's Oxen Rage. Rife with speculation and uncertainty, this is a book of ruminations, written in language at times unorthodox and full of quirky coinages, often playful and paradoxical, always musical and richly imaginative.