REINA MARÍA RODRÍGUEZ

Pendant: Three Poems 

Translated from the Spanish by Kristin Dykstra. 

Pendant

Four names set in metal
gleam against the silver on my chest
where a ruby fell out,
decapitated
and rapidly lost.
Its compact silver bar,
“not fake” they said,
will accompany me through this time
turning a corner on the square
of the years.
I didn’t know how long
the E starting each of their names
would mark distance between them
on this pendulum drifting
from side to side,
bumping me –
startled to see them grow
away from my neck
and sweep a useless
attempt out of sight,
the attempt to go back
and see them through a tiny loop, united,
pummeled by:
a saber
a loaf of bread
a toy
like siblings
once more.

El dije

Cuatro nombres engarzados al metal
brillan contra la plata del pecho  
donde ha caído un rubí
decapitado
que se perdió temprano.
La plata, una barra compacta
“que no es falsa” –dijeron–,
me acompañará este tiempo
a la vuelta del cuadrado
de los años.
No sabía cuánto
esa E de sus nombres
marcaría la distancia entre ellos
sobre un péndulo que flota
de lado a lado,
golpeándome
azorada al verlos crecer
separados de mi cuello
y embarajar el esfuerzo
inútil
de volver atrás
y verlos juntos por una rendijita
fajados por:
un sable
un pan
un juguete
como hermanos
otra vez.

Isle of Wight

I was like that girl from the Isle of Wight
—the poem wasn’t finished
it was the middle of the poem that was never finished
she had searched
desperately
for some sign of its rigging.
she had searched . . .
until she had neither answers nor questions
and was the same as anyone else
under matter’s indifference
to her need. the I cracks.
(a criminal and ludic I who embraces her
through dry, ochre, summer grasses)
she had searched for “the universe’s blue infinity in the self.”
—what they say revolves around her early years
when her father died without knowing too much
about the poem.
I know that the lie she’s been looking for
gathers meaning when it melts
inside her dark eyes. she has looked for the abrupt sense of sensing
that surrounds her.
(a poem is the precise thing, the accurate thing, the unrepeatable thing
within the chaos that one tries to arrange and become)
and she has arranged it so the poem won’t be necessary.
stripped of the poem and of me
she goes on looking with her passion for pursuing
duality. she has lost, she has searched.
she has counterposed antagonistic animals that have come to die
under my apparent neutrality with regard to species
a cat, a fish, a bird . . . only provocations.
—I’m telling you to look at them—
to find something else in that devastating line of shapes
that collide as they sense their resonance.
here too it deals with the passage of time,
with the ocean traveling through the poem—
wherever they were going, the poems hadn’t yet arrived.
I was like that girl from the Isle of Wight
I had searched foreignness
for escape and the permanence of definition and I find myself
disposed to let her know through the crossed-out words
whether the poem had existed materially at any time
whether that paper had been written
to preserve a place for waiting.

la isla de Wight

yo era como aquella chica de la isla de Wight
—el poema no estaba terminado
era el centro del poema lo que nunca estaba terminado—
ella había buscado
desesperadamente
ese indicio de la arboladura.
había buscado . . .
hasta no tener respuestas ni preguntas
y ser lo mismo que cualquiera
bajo esa indiferencia de la materia
a su necesidad.  el yo se agrieta.
(un yo criminal y lúdico que la abraza
a través de los pastos ocres y resecos del verano)
ella había buscado “la infinitud azul del universo en el ser”.
—lo que dicen gira en torno a sus primeros años
cuando el padre murió sin haber tenido demasiado
conocimiento del poema—.
sé que esa mentira que ha buscado
obtiene algún sentido al derretirse
en sus ojos oscuros.  ha buscado el abrupto sentido del sentir
que la rodea.
(un poema es lo justo, lo exacto, lo irrepetible,
dentro del caos que uno intenta ordenar y ser)
y lo ha ordenado para que el poema no sea necesario.
despojada del poema y de mí
va buscando con su pasión de perseguir
la dualidad.  ha perdido, ha buscado.
ha contrapuesto animales antagónicos que han venido a morir
bajo mi aparente neutralidad de especie,
un gato, un pez, un pájaro . . . sólo provocaciones.
—te digo que los mires—
para hallar otra cosa entre esa línea demoledora de las formas
que chocan al sentir su resonancia.
—también aquí se trata del paso del tiempo,
de la travesía del mar por el poema—
adonde ellos iban, los poemas no habían llegado todavía.
yo era como aquella chica de la isla de Wight
había buscado en lo advenedizo
la fuga y la permanencia de lo fijo y me hallo
dispuesta a compartir con ella a través de las tachaduras
si el poema había existido alguna vez materialmente
si había sido escrito ese papel
para conservar el lugar de una espera.

the chosen one

in this green-dust land, the Taj Mahal
is the guardian of death,
the sepulcher of the beloved dead in childbirth
one winter morning along the Agra.
the marble’s luminosity attracts
pilgrims. they come in the rainy season
when the rest of the earth is dry
and only a reflection is left
on the waters (we don’t know in which direction to move
if the surface of reality is liquid,
or if it’s submerged; whether we should decipher it from back
to front in order to still make meaning;
how it is that we will make meaning) or do we wait,
in this land where green dust is life,
for the climate to make the first move
there, where dead in childbirth
one winter morning along the Agra
there’s a statue, not the brilliance of daylight;
there’s a shadow, a falsification,
that looks like the truth.

la elegida

en esta tierra de polvo verde el Taj Mahal
es el guardián de la muerte
el sepulcro de la bien amada fallecida de parto
una mañana de invierno en el Agra.
la luminosidad del mármol atrae
a los peregrinos que acuden en la estación de las lluvias
cuando el resto de la tierra está seca
y sólo queda un reflejo
sobre las aguas (no sabemos hacia dónde movernos
si la superficie de la realidad es líquida,
o está sumergida; si la descifraremos de atrás hacia
adelante, para que todavía podamos significar
y en qué sentido significaremos) o esperar,
sobre esta tierra de polvo verde que es la vida
a que el clima haga el primer movimiento
en aquel lugar, donde fallecida de parto
una mañana de invierno en el Agra
hay una estatua, no la lucidez de un día;
hay una sombra, una falsificación,
que se parece a la verdad.

“Pendant” from the unpublished manuscript “Mazorcas” (Corncobs). English translation © Kristin Dykstra, 2021.

“Isle of Wight” & “the chosen one” © Reina María Rodríguez, Translation © Kristin Dykstra, from The Winter Garden Photograph (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019).

Reina María Rodríguez is the author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose. She was a Finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Among other awards too numerous to list in full, Rodríguez holds two Casas de las Américas Awards for Poetry (1984, 1998), the Alejo Carpentier Medal for Cuban literature (2002), Cuba’s 2013 National Prize for Literature, and the 2014 Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Award for Poetry. France named her Chevalier in its Order of Arts and Letters in 1999. Her recent books include Achicar (U. Autónoma de Querétero, 2021), Luciérnagas (U. Autónoma de Querétero, 2017), El piano (Bokeh, 2016), Prosas de La Habana: Variedades de Galiano (U. de Valparaíso, 2015), and The Winter Garden Photograph / La foto del invernadero (bilingual; Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019). The Princeton University Library holds her papers.

Kristin Dykstra is a writer, literary translator, and scholar. Dykstra is principal translator of The Winter Garden Photograph, by Reina María Rodríguez, Winner of the 2020 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and Finalist for the National Translation Award. She organized and introduced a May 2021 dossier dedicated to Rodríguez in the digital magazine Latin American Literature Today. Previously she translated numerous poetry editions, such as books by Juan Carlos Flores, Marcelo Morales, Tina Escaja, Rodríguez, and others. Her most recent scholarly chapters examine contemporary poetry by Daniel Borzutzky (US) and Soleida Ríos (Cuba). Selections from Dykstra’s own current poetry manuscript appear in Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion, Seedings, Clade Song, The Hopper, La Noria (with translation to Spanish by Escaja), and Acrobata (with translations to Portuguese by Floriano Martins). Her essay “Ensenada,” co-translated with Juan Manuel Tabío, appeared in Rialta in September 2021.