MY WIFE AND I TRANSLATE "SKETCH IN THE SAND" FROM OLIVERIO GIRONDO, AN ARGENTINE POET OF THE 20's and 30's

SKETCH IN THE SAND

The morning is passed on the beach, dusted by the sun.

Arms.
Amputated legs.
Bodies that reintegrate.
Floating craniums of tire tread.

As the bathers turn their bodies, the waves elongate their nautical shavings over the beach of sawdust that is the beach itself.

Everything is gold and blue!

The shade of the tarps. The eyes of the girls that inject themselves with novels and horizons. My happiness, of shoes with rubber soles, which make me bounce on the sand.

For .80¢ photographers sell the bodies of the women who bathe.

There are bodegas that exploit the dramatic nature of the breaking. Broody maids. Irascible siphons with sea extracts! Breakers and rocks with algaed breasts of mariners and hearts painted with a fencer’s foil.

Gangs of seagulls that fake their flight, destroyed by a white piece of paper.

And, before everything, that sea!