Excerpt from Edward Hopper

Self Portrait, 1925-1930

On the spot where I write all this hodgepodge of verse
       stands Edward Hopper, in fact, who engenders them
       and who, neatly transcending space-time, sends me
       the signals.
                          His self-portrait creates,
as would bring delight to Borges the fantasist,
       a mirror that reproduces not so much
       the painter’s face as the static reflection
       of my image. Make no bones about it:
Hopper and I form one single person.

       His pose, relaxed and sober,
       the curves of the face, the surfeit of enchantment
       that shaped his eyes without a doubt
show my concerns. If Goethe was reincarnated in Kafka,
       Hopper in a transmigration most apt
       pulled it off in me and thus, assuming
       a poet’s body, he will succeed
in extending his artistic legacy in time
       (in the end, only the word remains,
       poetry).
                     The man in the picture no longer is
       that painter thin as a sliver of onion
who came to Europe young to break the ice,
       but the married painter, his life settled,
       who will exhibit his personal world profusely
       reflecting cities, landscapes, women.
(“I’m just trying to paint myself,” he said.)
       You’re off the track to see representations
       of North America where what really stirs
       is the agitation of human solitude,
where we intuit the fears, obsessions, anxieties,
       dilemmas or states of mind of the artist
       and Jo appears, the omnipresent wife.
       Like the framed paining, the scads
of windows and doors and mirrors too.
      “I’m just trying to paint myself.”
       Don’t poets express their own thoughts?
       With all the sundry condemned to be a single thing,
he and I were fused in a living creature:
       his anxieties and states of mind are mine
       and mine, in the same breath, belong to everybody
       in the light of the same moon all over the world.

Nighthawks, 1942

(It isn’t a classic spot sought by tourists who go cruising for thrills. Nor an establishment where you’ll find celebrities, elbow on the counter, chatting with a waiter or the owner. Nor a haunt of intellectuals and artists who posture amid drinks and clouds of smoke. Nor a bar with a clientele of fat-cheeked young guys fortifying themselves before pursuing their interminable nightly routine. It is simply a modest café with plate-glass windows behind which a few strays take shelter around midnight while myriad shadows command the streets, a nest of night birds where the occasional noctambulist effloresces. Tonight, for example, we have seated at the counter a slender man in a felt hat wearing a three-piece suit and beside him a skinny woman with neatly combed hair the reddish color of mahogany, sporting a dress that is also a shade of red. You can take it for granted that he desires her, but he is an overly indecisive man.)

Man:      I’ve sure got it written in my eyes.
Woman:                                                         You bet.
Man:      Am I really sending out the wrong signals?
Woman: Fact is, you seem jumpy, in a stew.
Man (taking a deep breath): I had no idea.
Woman: Let’s drop it.
Man:                           I’ve had
   some lousy days
   and I agonize over everything.
Woman: If that’s all you can do,
   try not to think about it.
Man:      That sounds just fine, but--
Woman: What did thinking ever get you?
Man (after a pause): Want something else?
Woman:  I thought you’d never ask.
Man (resolved, to the waiter): Give us another round.
Waiter:   Right away.
Man (to the woman): I’ll bet you whatever you want
   I can guess what you’re thinking. I read minds too.
Woman (smiling): You don’t have the faintest idea of what I’m thinking.
Man:      It’s a snap because we wear it written in our eyes.
   I can look in yours and know everything.
Woman: I don’t give a damn what you say: you can’t know.
Man:      OK. I’ll show you if you sit across from me.
Woman: So what do you suppose I’ve got on my mind?
Man:      Your problem is you’ve realized
   no one at work is irreplaceable,
   everything is relative, everything is temporary.
Woman: How can you be so sure that’s the problem?
Man:      Or maybe your problem is you’ve realized
   nothing in life is irreplaceable?
   You’ve got me in your sights but you just button up.
Woman: The rough patches always come back, at work, in life . . .
Man:       I’m thinking this isn’t the best time for you.
Woman: (raising her eyebrows): I don’t want to get into it. At night
   I sleep like a top.
Man (realizing): We’ve got to cheer up
   a little.
Woman: We’re both very touchy.
Man:      Yeah, I’ve picked up on it.
Woman: And tense and anxious.
Man:      We’ve got good reason to be.
Woman: Work is a problem,
   and life, more or less
   the same.
Man:          That’s for sure.
Woman: Let’s try not to think about it.
Man:      Right. It don’t matter.

Sun in an Empty Room, 1963

In this bedroom devoid of furniture
and unpolluted the action is set.
It is filled with sunlight admitted
by the window and my footsteps resound
as if something were walking with me.
I stand up straight, my eyes intent
on something (on what is clearly
unimportant). Floating in the nuptial
flow of afternoon (sun already waning)
I noted the presence of a shadow,
a pulse, a breath. It’s just me:
tending to be invisible,
I rediscover myself and leave a sign.

The bareness of this space, cut straight
down by the light that comes delineated
from outside, is the bareness of life.

Which is strange. If you saw it before,
with the torches of desire ablaze
so many times, the hopes
and dreams, the satisfactions
and chiaroscuro of captivating people . . .
Later, without your noticing the pain,
life gets bogged down by deaf ears,
the highs and low, monotony.
Suddenly they evict you, or leave you,
and the new landlady is emptiness.

All the same, I’m not moving very far.
No matter where you go, you never find
the way out of the labyrinth.

From Edward Hopper by Ernest Farrés, translated by Lawrence Venuti. Translation © 2009 by Lawrence Venuti. All rights reserved.