Beatriz Hausner is the author of several poetry collections, including Enter the Raccoon and Sew Him Up. Her work has been translated into several languages, including Spanish, her mother tongue: La costurera y el muñeco viviente (trans. Julio César Aguilar: Mantis Editores, Mexico, 2012). Hausner’s career as a literary translator has focused on the poetry of César Moro, Olga Orozco, Rosamel del Valle, the poets of the Chilean group Mandrágora, and many others associated with Spanish American surrealism. She has also translated the early fiction of Alvaro Mutis, and most recently, the poetry of Abigael Bohórquez. She has been President of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and was one of the founders of the Banff Literary Translation Centre. For several years she was one of the publishers of Quattro Books, where she oversaw the publication of many works of literature in translation. Her poem “Poetic Twin Man” appeared originally in her collection Sew Him Up, and appears now in Diálogos for the first time in a Spanish translation by Marta Rota Nuñez.

Poetic Twin Man

Scatter me in the rain in the smoke of torrents passing 
Beyond the night where we meet — César Moro

Breakaway man adopted son
of Moorish queens wrote love
mantras with salt on his tongue
saliva seas breaking against
his final house straddling
the rocks of a cruel coast.

Man of anguish of hard sex
giving me his song
diamonds crashing
in my ear where
the north country hums.

Love on Fridays but not
on Tuesdays the disunited
states of the Americas
growing wings for the lover
of ideal men always coming
attendant weavers of
French finery entering
his umbilical Lima
of mist and sorrow.

He opens the door
pours his brow into mine
so we may drink portions
of the scandalous life
conjure up rooms where
his men and mine can
swing from chandeliers
like strange sea animals
that moan with pleasure.

My twin made
of flesh made of lust
made of tongue.

(Originally published in: Sew Him Up. Toronto: Quattro Books, 2010)