September 19, 2020

Pegasus Autopsy

Julio Pazos Barrera

^{translated by Bryan Mendoza}

It’s a spacious chamber.
Well lit.
A light that refracts the distant woodland.

Over the table lies
the body and the wings
outspread
like sails of a shipwreck.

They’ve stitched together the carnage
with no other motive
than something comparable to mercy.

Soon the volunteers will arrive
and they’ll take the body,
including the wings
to the landfill.

Disección del cadáver de Pegaso

Es una sala espaciosa.
Muy clara.
Es luz que refracta el bosque lejano.
Sobre la mesa yacen
el cuerpo y las alas
extendidas
como velas de bajeles deshechos.
Han hilvanado el despojo
sin otro motivo
que algo semejante a la caridad.
Pronto llegarán los voluntarios
y se llevarán el cuerpo,
incluidas las alas,
al basural.

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Celebrating National Translation Month

Today’s Poem-a-Day poem is presented in partnership with Words Without Borders and is a winner of their Poems in Translation Contest judged by David Tomas Martinez. We will feature each of the four winning translations on Poem-a-Day every remaining Saturday in September, which is National Translation Month, and the first Saturday of October.

“Poems written with mythologic motives are visions that arise from both vital and literary concerns. In ‘Pegasus Autopsy,’ one of these mythological episodes is evoked. In mythology, the winged horse relates to the muses, the goddesses of artistic inspiration. In my poem, the pegasus corpse could signify the decomposition of the arts, especially poetry, in the current materialized society we live in.”
—Julio Pazos Barrera, translated by Bryan Mendoza

“Los poemas escritos con motivos mitológicos son visiones que surgen de inquietudes vitales y literarias. En Disección del cadáver de Pegaso se evoca un episodio mitológico. En la Mitología, el caballo alado se vincula con la fuente de las musas, divinidades de las artes. En mi poema, el cadáver de Pegaso puede significar el deceso de las artes, especialmente de la poesía, en la materializada sociedad actual.”
—Julio Pazos Barrera

Julio Pazos Barrera is a poet and literary critic. The recipient of Ecuador’s National Prize in Literature by president Rafael Correa, he has worked as a professor at various universities around the world.

Bryan Mendoza is a senior at Yale University studying Literature and Comparative Cultures. A volunteer instructor for Yale’s Splash and Sprout teaching programs, Mendoza works at the Sterling Memorial library.

Judge’s Citation by David Tomas Martinez

“‘Pegasus Autopsy’ is a clinical precision of a poem. The wonder hum of fluorescent light fixtures can be felt in each sparse line. In this wholly modern poem, myth perishes in the cathedral of modern science, the hospital. The only simile is an anachronistic mode of travel, sailing, where it too, perishes after having suffered a shipwreck. Everywhere here the old falls to the new. This poem is as tragic as it is beautiful, and every word feels purposeful. In the culmination of the poem, after the lifeless body of Pegasus has been inspected, drained of any usefulness to the modern, utilitarian obsessed world, its wings, the physical symbol of its transcendence, are to be aggregated into a landfill, the modern monument to mystery, which is to say it is ‘including the wings’ with our other secrets. Knowledge and beauty are commodified. Accessing and ultimately discarding is the process of this world’s growth to this poem. Show me the lie.”
—David Tomas Martinez

Black Lives Matter Anthology

“I will no longer lightly walk behind

a one of you who fear me”

—“I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies” by June Jordan

“Predictions of the Material” by Jessica Guzman

read more

“La Pelona as Birdwoman [excerpt]” by Rigoberto González

read more

Thanks to David Tomas Martinez, author of Post Traumatic Hood Disorder (Sarabande Books, 2018), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a Q&A about Martinez’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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"Pegasus Autopsy" by Julio Pazos Barrera, translated by Bryan Mendoza

Pegasus Autopsy

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast

Celebrating National Translation Month

Judge’s Citation by David Tomas Martinez

Black Lives Matter Anthology

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"A Pile of Fish" by Tomás Q. Morín

"From Barrio Obrero to La Quince" by Nicole Cecilia Delgado, translated by Urayoán Noel

"Give Me This" by Ada Limón

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