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Marta López-Luaces
translated from the Spanish by Alexandra van de Kamp and Juan Manuel López Ramos             
                                                                     


                                                                        Nomad

I come from a people who are condemned
to wander through strange lands.
Three days they walked
                                            in the shadow of Babel
lost among the fog of its speech.
                                                           I inherit from their time
the stuttering of their attempts.

Of my race
I possess the trait of the absence that gives me away.
You ask me therefore to declare myself
                                                                                                    beyond my blood
but,
before the storm,
before the floods,
before the gaze,
before my orphanhood,
before the fires,
before the shadows that preceded those fires,
there was a before
that my memory asks a ransom for,
but,
my accent cannot
return to its song.

I have arrived too late
                             the rains have passed,
                             the rivers have returned to their source,
                             the cities have raised themselves on the horizon,
                             and the entrance is forbidden to me

Here, at its doors
                                         I wait for
                             the resurrection of my memory
                             into an I that I was

And therefore you ask me
                                          to renounce
                                                         my names
                                                         my blood
                                                        my heritage
and to disguise myself with your voice
and declare myself beyond it all

                                                                                         in this language
                                                                                         foreign to my heart
my race continues in search of the tongue
lost
                 before infancy.

                                                           

 The Exiles of Olga Orozco

                                                                        And sometimes the scent of countries
                                                                        where I have never been comes alive in my
                                                                        memory
                                                                        (Olga Orozco)

Olga,
the sense of smell betrays you:
the salt of the sea has also arrived to me
with an infected wind.
And do you know that all of us are exiles
from the countries of childhood?

In autumn,
                  yellow reigns.
The impurity of the sky
contaminates the rain
                             and its breeze.

Don’t be afraid,
                             rest.

As  residents of wandering
we listen to you.

Beyond your stones,
            don’t give in
            either to your doubt
            or your death.

I  want to think
that with Alexandra at your side
you  pass
through the infinite gardens
                                    of memory.






Diana

Against your own nature
                          the solitude you believe in.

Within you an uninhabited
                                           plague
translates sorrow into distance.

Return to your mountains
             recovered
by origins
and by abysses.

Against your own nature
the wrath that spreads
through the soul’s lineage.

Arrive
with pride at your failures.


 

The secret of the gods

                                                                                    “The secrets of the gods is stored
                                                                                      in man’s very speech”
                                                                                                                        (H.D.)

The key
               is not in the mystery
               but in the encounter
of the prophet
               with his language.

You will see the words
               and you will be satisfied
You will ask
               and it will be provided.


copyright © 2014 Talisman,
     A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
✕