LUISA FUTORANSKY
Storks Road: Two Poems
Translated from the Spanish by the author
Ruta de cigüeñas
Por mayo los campanarios de Navarra y Aragón lucen nidos con cigüeñas. Espléndidas y sabias, las parejas prefieren las iglesias abandonadas más suntuosas, si son catedrales, mejor.
En el altar de Santa Ana de Tudela las alitas de los ángeles están pintadas de bermellón violento. Con el tiempo, el polvo lo ha convertido todo en borravino sangre. Se sabe: polvo y sangre impiden volar.
Aquí los cirios destinados al culto son eléctricos. Tantas monedas pones, tanta gracia e iluminaciones te concedo.
Las cigueñas tienen cría.
Los pichones empiezan a volar.
Mi presencia ha dejado de ser necesaria.
Es hora de emigrar.
Storks Road
In May the bell towers of Navarre and Aragon bear nests of storks. Splendid and wise, the couples prefer the most sumptuous abandoned churches, if they are cathedrals, the better.
In the altar of Santa Ana de Tudela the wings of the angels are painted in violent vermilion. Over time, the dust has turned everything into blood-red. It is known: dust and blood prevent flying.
Here the candles destined to the cult are electric. So many coins you put, so much grace and illuminations I grant you.
The storks have offspring.
The chicks begin to fly.
My presence is no longer necessary.
It's time to migrate.
Riodínidos y quirópteros
Poco se sabe de doscientas y pico especies de mariposas panameñas. Lo cierto es que a diferencia de las diurnas no pliegan las alas para descansar.
Ligeras de equipaje y siempre listas.
Ellas sabrán por qué se quedan
por qué y dónde se van.
Al anochecer, entre marzo y noviembre millones de murciélagos migratorios se
congregan bajo el puente de la avenida del Congreso, en Austin, y se echan hora y
media a volar hasta un lago de la vecindad.
En Austin los murciélagos duplican el número de la gente.
Contra mariposas, murciélagos y termitas no hay quien pueda.
Y las fronteras menos.
Rhyodinids and Chiroptera
Little is known about the 200 or so species of Panamanian butterflies. What is certain is that, unlike diurnal butterflies, they do not fold their wings to rest.
Very lightweight and always at the ready.
They must know why they stay, why and where they go, why and where they leave.
At dusk between March and November, millions of migratory bats congregate under
the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin and fly for an hour and a half to a nearby lake.
In Austin, bats outnumber people twice as much.
Against butterflies, bats and termites there is no one who can.
And borders even less so.
Luisa Futoransky is an Argentine writer born in Buenos Aires, 1939. She has been living in Paris for about 40 years. In France she was a lecturer at the Pompidou Center in Paris and a journalist for the AFP press agency. She was decorated by the French government with the rank of Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. For five years she lived in China and Japan where she worked as a journalist at Radio Beijing, NHK and at the Musashino University of Music, Tokyo, as a professor of opera staging. Her novels Son cuentos chinos and De Pe a Pa o De Pekín a París are the result of that stay. Currently, since 2008, she has been in charge of the Spanish edition of the quarterly magazine Patrimonio Mundial de la UNESCO.