By DOLORS MIQUEL
Translated by MARY ANN NEWMAN
Sparrowhearts
The women of my family family
hunted hunted birds, sparrows, birds, sparrows, and they made them sing
sing day in day out day in day out day in as the pots boiled, inner courtyards
wide open,
washtubs soaked old naked motheaten watery
unrinsed firstwashed clothes
and the windows opened, gave birth, opened
so beauty would regale them with songs and flowers and flowers and songs,
buzzing, zigzagging, chirping, whispering,
not understanding that they understood nothing. Nothing at all. They only knew, enjoyed, died for beauty.
I will be smothered by a hitch of light, a pitch of light, a ditch of light.
And so they decapitated the animal,
they saw its blood run rivulet of blood, run, run
with life run, down the drain run, trickle, fickle girl blood,
altar girl blood,
and they didn’t get it but they ate it so as not to die
and they made me eat it so as not to die.
And so thanks to death we didn’t die. The blood was inside us.
Caged. Protected.
Assimilated, encircled, the blood inside and not out,
Little daughter, they called me, little darling, they said, apple of my
eyes, my little blood, they said to me said-said
moving anxiously, nervously, rushing back and forth and back
in those little apartments where I
was imagining jungles full of animals, flaming volcanoes, the earth
opening beneath my feet, the rain ravaging life,
the thunder and lightning burning down the houses, the snow destroying
hearts, I imagined
I or the blood imagined always enclosed within the circuit
blood shut in not spilt
and they
sewed. They sewed a lot of things. They patched up sheets the way
they patched up lives. And they patched up shadows and words
and men and mountains they patched up as if
they had been told a handful of mean truths,
a handful of coins worth of truths, a sprinkling of truth, a
couple of pinches of truths, a few threads of very mean
truths, little hapless truths, impoverished, much poorer than poor than
those beggars who knocked on the door every day. Knock knock.
Yes? Could you give me something? It’s cold and I’m hungry.
If you wait a few minutes I will make you an omelet on bread and you will become
angels and in this way
amid angels and without answers they lived. It is as if they knew that no one knew
anything.
And so they opened their legs and were inseminated
plowed, used up, tanned, possessed,
allowing a new being to inhabit them. In the burrow, close
to the bones, stuffed between their organs, wet with their
liquids, swallowed up by their blood, protected by a bag, pelted by the heart and the
voices that came from the other world, with lots of names spoken backwards, the
names of mystery.
Our Mother
Our mother who art in heat
blessed be your cunt
your epidural, your midwife,
may your screams reach us,
your love, your strength.
Your will be done in our uterus
on earth.
Give us this day our everydays,
and let not the sons of bitches
abort love, make war,
no, deliver us from them
now and forever,
Vagina.
A[wo]men…
White Soul
Night crossing toward Hostalets d’Organyà with my grandmother
when she was a 10-year-old girl
In the ravine the river roars
the rocks seem made of glass,
the snow swaddles it all,
icy hands on the reins.
In the ravine time demands
in a deep invisible voice
just one human life
to turn into flesh and be free.
Just one human life.
On the cliffs of my soul
recalling narrow rooms,
memory takes flight
to where the glacial night
becomes dark eternal ether.
Through this valley of absence
all of life will pass,
with vivid sobs or tears of grief,
all of life will pass.
My heart takes me to the place
and the path keeps me on course.
Memory becomes legend
and legend a black ballad.
What the branches obscure
the Segre River whispers:
“Now you are a white soul,
still to be conceived.
Now you are a white soul.”
In the ravine the snow is bewitched
by the raving ridge of frost.
A night bird cries out for
a love never to be conquered
by the rays of the morning sun.
The path feels like a footstep
hung between two silences.
Life is this footstep
hung between two silences.
Through the still nocturnal valley
at the turn of that century
they return, they return home
they always return, we always return.
With fear lodged in my eyes
I must cross these waters,
from here to the other side.
But there is no bridge to take me
from here to the other side.
If life should take the plunge,
the life I am yet to birth,
and the beast falls, and the saddle,
and the essence and I take the fall!
But her skin is so very white…,
and death is loath to take her.
She has laughter in her pannier,
and death is loath to take her.
Not knowing where I head nor to what house,
the mountains are immense,
amid the ragged forest
harsh spirits nest.
A chamois gives me hope,
a blind vulture removes it.
No one need ever see me
In the house I’m headed for,
no one need ever see me.
One shore gleans the other
as life gleans a dream.
Through this ford I now am crossing
I will gain on the sleeping dame.
The night bird on the branch
looks at me without looking.
It saw me in the other life
crossing the Segre River,
It saw me in the other life.
The wet steps are a flawless fit
for the old feet of an old silence.
Dark shadows come from afar
to haunt me, the dark reign
of non-human nature.
On the far horizon, a house
and a small, weakly star…
How many are not saved and saved
by a small, weakly star!
As soon as I drew near
the fierce barking, the chains.
As soon as I drew closer,
all the joys and pains.
The trees, the barren rocks,
the reefs on the savage peaks…
Time has been left behind.
We sail beneath the earth,
time has been left behind.
So white and tiny, she,
her hair blond and silken,
scared, terrified, she seems,
when she opens the door to enter.
I want to go in, to go with her,
but the hounds hold me back:
“You cannot go in, white soul,
for you’re yet to be conceived.
You cannot go in, white soul.”
Dolors Miquel is a leading Catalan poet. She has published over twenty collections and has won the Rosa Leveroni Catalan Poetry Award, City of Barcelona Award, Gabriel Ferrater Poetry Award, and Ausiàs March de Gandia Poetry Prize. In 2020, her book Ichthyosaur won the Serra d’Or Critic Award and Catalan Poetry Critic Award.
Mary Ann Newman is the executive director of the Farragut Fund for Catalan Culture in the US and co-chair of the PEN Translation Committee. She translates from Catalan and Spanish and has published works by Quim Monzó, Josep Carner, and Josep Maria de Sagarra. She was awarded the 2017 North American Catalan Society Award for her translation of de Sagarra’s novel Private Life.
