Juan Lamillar

trans. by Dan Bogen

Names for Time

One of these is light. Another height.
Another is the certainty of death.
It's also the dark pendulum pointing out
the weakness in the structures we erect.

We do not know its silent, changing face.
Its name is our astonishment at life.
While we are captured in its fixed design
it works behind the mirrors to keep its pace

with absolute precision and begins
to aim the searing brilliance of its one
glance, the very last that it will send.

Its name is clarity already spent:
a too-soon glow at sunset that pretends
to be the nothingness that follows death.

You can read more of Juan Lamillar’s work in the print edition of The Arkansas International 8.

Born in Seville in 1957, Juan Lamillar is the author of ten books of poetry, including Entretiempo (Renacimiento, 2015), a volume of selected poems. Prizes for his poetry include the Premio Luis Cernuda, the Premio Vicente Nuñez, and the Premio Villa de Rota. 

Don Bogen is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Immediate Song (Milkweed, 2019), and the translator of Europa: Selected Poems of Julio Martínez Mesanza (Diálogos, 2016). His recent poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, the Yale Review, and other journals. His website is www.donbogen.com.