Poem by SILVIA GUERRA
Translated from the Spanish by JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL and JEANNINE MARIE PITAS
Poem appears in both Spanish and English.
Silvia Guerra
Translators’ Note
“Moss on a Smooth Rock” is from Un mar en madrugada (A Sea at Dawn), by the Uruguayan poet Silvia Guerra, published in 2018 by Hilos Editora, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The English version of this book is forthcoming from Eulalia Books in 2022.
Guerra’s work is notorious for its complexity, its concreteness of image and abstraction of thought, and its convention-defying syntax, capitalization and punctuation. With a long-standing interest in linguistics and psychology as well as a deep affinity for the natural world, Guerra’s poems go beyond the self in an effort to imagine the world from the standpoint of other beings, living and nonliving. For centuries, humans have assumed a monopoly on consciousness, even arrogantly denying the subjective experience of other mammals. But scientists are at last confirming what any dog or cat owner has always known: animals are not unfeeling automata any more than we are. But while only some creatures are proven to be sentient, can we be so certain that others are not? “How can we be so sure that plants feel no pain?” asks Polish poet Wisława Szymborska. What about rocks? Guerra dares to imagine they are.
We suggest that Guerra’s writing—which is always challenging—is itself a translation. As Virginia Woolf and the other early twentieth-century modernists attempted to translate the flow of consciousness into their writing, as Hélène Cixous urged women to transform their subjectivity into language for écriture féminine, Guerra shatters clichés, breaks through grammatical and stylistic conventions, and digs as deeply as she can into the shifting sands of language to seek the truths that lie beneath. But as it turns out, these truths are just as amorphous and fleeting; images or emotions appear before the reader like an exquisite piece of driftwood before being swept back to sea.
In the Uruguayan literary context, we see Guerra as a bridge between the well-known Generation of ’45—known for such poets as Amanda Berenguer, Idea Vilariño, and Ida Vitale—and many of the younger poets keeping Uruguay’s literary scene vibrant today. In addition to writing, Guerra has dedicated herself to building and maintaining a space for Uruguayan poetry, particularly for poetry by women. From 2009 to 2011, she was the coeditor of the seminal Uruguayan poetry press La Flauta Mágica. She has long served on the board of the Nancy Bacelo Foundation, organizing and hosting countless readings, discussions, and encounters, and she is now on the Mario Benedetti Foundation board as well. But the young poets love her, not for this work, but for her poetry, which engages deeply with what it means to be Uruguayan and to be a woman in Uruguay.
We decided to translate Guerra as a team due to our shared love of Uruguayan poetry and the fact that this work is very challenging. Sometimes two heads are better than one—or indeed, when translating the work of a living poet, that three heads are better than two! It is our pleasure and privilege to share the work of this poet with an English-speaking audience, and we are honored to publish this poem in The Common.
—Jeannine Marie Pitas and Jesse Lee Kercheval
Musgo sobre una roca lisa
Nocturnamente atados
la casuarina acuática y
el jilguero del fondo
Sobre el tormento prieto
de ser uno De ser dos
de quererse
Las aguadas
los cisnes
La laguna
El horizonte fino
y paja estremecida
En los costados de
la línea
(No habrá agua
en la lira
No habrá aforismo)
No llegará esa cima
a rebasar la acequia.
Cercado cada cual
Los ojos en la nuca
el corazón sin ritmo
Perdida la inocencia
de este lado
La constancia de aquel
Perdido El rumbo de
ambas partes Desordena
la brisa lo que dura
Cualquier brote no tendrá
Sentido.
Cualquier intento
Un cuerpo muerto.
Queda un hueco
que se bate en la tarde
contra un poste con los
golpes del viento.
Guardémoslo.
Ese manto de
Adentro me Convida.
Moss on a Smooth Rock
Nocturnally tied
The aquatic whistling pine
and the goldfinch in the garden
Over the dark torment
of being one Of being two
of loving
The waters
the swans
The lagoon
The thin horizon
and shivering straw
At the sides of
the line
(There will be no water
on the lyre.
There will be no aphorism)
That summit will not reach
the ditch.
Each one fenced
Eyes on the nape of the neck
the heart without rhythm
Lost the innocence
of this side
The constancy of that one
Lost The course of
both parties Dishevels
the breeze that lasts
Any outbreak will mean
Nothing.
Any attempt
A dead body.
In the afternoon,
there remains a hole
that beats against a post
with each blow of the wind.
Let’s keep it.
That mantle of
Inside invites Me.
Jesse Lee Kercheval is a poet and writer as well as a translator, specializing in Uruguayan poetry. Her translations include The Invisible Bridge/ El puente invisible: SelectedPoems of Circe Maia for which she was awarded an NEA Fellowship in Translation and Poemas de amor/ Love Poems by Idea Vilariño both from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is the Zona Gale Professor of Poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. More information at jlkercheval.com.
Jeannine Marie Pitas is the author of the poetry collection Things Seen and Unseen (Mosaic Press, 2019). She is the translator of the Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio’s I Remember Nightfall (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017) and Carnation and Tenebrae Candle (Cardboard House Press, 2020). Another recent translation, We Do Not Live In Vain by Uruguayan poet Selva Casal, was published in 2020 by Veliz Books. She lives in Iowa and teaches at the University of Dubuque.
Silvia Guerra (1961, Maldonado, Uruguay) is an Uruguayan poet, critic and editor whose books include Un mar en madrugada (2018); Pulso (2011); Estampas de un tapiz (2006); Nada de nadie (2001); La sombra de la azucena (2000); Replicantes astrales (1993); Idea de la aventura (1990); De la arena nace el agua (1986) and Fuera del relato (2007), a fictionalized biography of Lautréamont. She is a member of the executive boards of both the Mario Benedetti Foundation and the Nancy Bacelo Foundation. In 2012 she was awarded the Morosoli Prize in Poetry for her career.
