River Mouth: Six Poems from Three Books
Translated from the Spanish by Anna Deeny Morales.
Éramos los elegidos
la gran familia del pan inagotable
que cantaban a voz en cuello los profetas.
Tú y yo los escuchamos todavía
desde esta ciudad más pequeña que el mundo.
Los escuchamos,
no para creernos el viejo paraíso
(tenemos demasiados siglos de intemperie encima)
pero sus palabras tienen la solemnidad
que queremos para nuestras pobres esperanzas
sus palabras eran divinas como la noche
y el pueblo las seguía.
Hoy que no tenemos profetas
y apenas podemos con la desgracia
de estar abandonados,
los escuchamos
con la terrible convicción
de que el dolor es el único lenguaje
que traspasará la historia.
(De En Lugar de Morir, 1986)
We were the chosen ones
the great family of boundless bread
sung by prophets resoundingly.
You and I still hear them
from this the world’s smallest city.
We hear them,
not to think ourselves the old paradise
(for too many centuries we’ve taken on the cold)
but their words bear the solemnity
we are in need of for our poor hopes
their words were divine like night
and towns abode by them.
Now that we no longer have prophets
and can barely stand the misery
of having been abandoned,
we hear them
with the awful conviction
that pain is the one language
that pierces history.
(From Instead of Dying, 1986)
Chacao
Se acerca una ciudad navegando
con las ventanas abiertas.
Estoy lavando pañales en bordemar.
Me sacudo las algas para mirar sus afanes,
son cientos,
hijos buscando una madre que cuelgue el sol
del que será su puerto para siempre.
Chacao
A city draws near navigating
with windows open.
I wash the linens at seas edge.
And shake off the algae to see its toils,
they are hundreds,
daughters, sons, seeking a mother to hang the sun
that would forever be their harbor.
Chequeten
Y los nombres,
con ellos se conquista o se muere
en el más completo abandono.
Dónde encontraré nombres,
palabras como lunares
de plata que iluminen el encuentro
en la noche del mal.
Chequeten
And the names,
with them comes conquest or death
in the fullest abandonment.
Where will I find names,
words like silver lunes
that illuminate the find
in evil’s night.
Chaulinec
Pensamos en los años que vivimos
desterrados de hijos.
El padre responde nimiedades
ajeno y cabizbajo.
Me enternezco por el hombre que era
antes de que el tiempo hiciera saltar las defensas.
(From De Hijos, 1991)
Chaulinec
We think on the years we live
exiled of our children.
The father answers trifles
distant with head down.
I’m moved by the man he was
before time ushered forth his defenses.
(From Daughters and Sons, 1991)
Boca de rio
Ay del cuerpo abierto en canal
despojado de su niño
en operación de urgencia
(sobre la mesa de la cocina).
Ay de la que se entierra un palillo
o un tallo de apio o una rama de espino.
Ay de la que se toma una taza de cloro.
Ay de la que se acuesta boca abajo
mientras su amiga le salta encima.
Ay de la boca de río que la contiene
y de esa agua ya para siempre turbia.
Aquel cuyo espanto le obliga a volver la vista
habrá de inclinarse y anegar sus ojos
ante la niña de vientre hinchado.
Habrá de dolerse.
Ahora no es tiempo de amarrar la lengua.
River Mouth
Why the body canal gaping
stripped of her child
in a crash c-section
(on the kitchen table).
Why the one who shoved a clothespin
a stalk of celery or hawthorn stem.
Why the one who drank up a cup of chlorine.
Why the one lying prone
as her friend heaves her body with blows.
Why the river mouth that holds her
and that water now forever dregs.
The one whose fright makes him look away
should bend down and drown his own eyes
facing the girl with belly swollen.
He has to grieve.
Now’s not the time to tie your tongue.
Vuelo y caida
Fue un año de exterminio.
Cisnes de cuello negro
caían en bandada;
muertas ya las frágiles raíces
los nenúfares sostenían a duras penas
sus hojas flotantes.
Y las sardinas
por cientos varaban en las playas.
El mar arrastró medusas
todavía agitando delicados tentáculos.
Como las aves
ciertas muchachitas respiraron
un aire cargado de toxinas
y curvaron el gracioso cuello
sobre el altar del placer.
Vacías las pupilas
perdida la majestad del gesto,
sus cuerpos expulsan ahora
cuanto en ellos se contuvo.
Y añoran
(ah cómo desean)
otra liviana posibilidad de ser.
(De En nombre de ninguna, 2005)
Flight and Fall
It was a year of extermination.
Black-necked swans
fell in flocks:
by that time dead fragile roots
of water lilies just barely held
their buoyant leaves.
And the sardines
by the hundreds were run ashore.
The sea heaved medusas
their delicate tentacles still stirring.
Like the birds
some young girls inhaled
an air full of toxins
and bent their lovely necks
over the altar of pleasure.
Their pupils emptied
the gesture’s majesty gone,
their bodies now expel
all held in them.
And they long for
(ah how they yearn)
an other lighter way of being.
(From In Nobody’s Name, 2005)
The poems found here by Rosabetty Muñoz were published in Polvo de Huesos: Antología, edited by Kurt Folch (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Tácitas) in 2012
Rosabetty Muñoz Serón (born 9 September 1960) is a Chilean poet and professor who is linked to the cultural movements Chaicura from Ancud, Aumens from Castro and Índice and Matra from Valdivia. She is a recipient of the Pablo Neruda Award and the Poetry Altazor Award.
Anna Deeny Morales is a dramatist, translator of poetry, and literary critic. Original works for contemporary dance, theater, and opera include La straniera (1997); Tela di Ragno (1999–2002); Cecilia Valdés (2018); and La Paloma at the Wall (2019). Her one-act opera libretto, ¡ZAVALA-ZAVALA!: an opera in v cuts, recently commissioned by the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and composer Brian Arreola, will debut in 2021. A 2018 National Endowment for the Arts recipient for the translation of Tala by Gabriela Mistral, Deeny Morales has translated works by Raúl Zurita, Mercedes Roffé, Alejandra Pizarnik, Nicanor Parra, Amanda Berenguer, Malú Urriola, and Marosa di Giorgio, among others. She received a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and has taught at Harvard University and Dartmouth College. She currently teaches at Georgetown University, and her book manuscript, Other Solitudes, considers transamerican dialogues on consciousness and poetry throughout the last century.