By ZORAIDA BURGOS
Translated by PETER BUSH
OUR VERY OWN EQUILIBRIUM
Wearily, but firmly, we twisted
our feeble trunks
around a stump
alone but not sad amid other trees,
entangled roots
clinging till the last
to our rough stony ground.
We grow two shoots
bringing hope to our landscape
when a ruddy wing on the bare
mountain horizon
heralds a threatening wind downstream.
Thoughtfully, carefully,
we’ve been turning our mud,
our clay, bare-fingered,
with the strength of truth,
of harsh truth dead reborn,
our hands tightly clasped.
And nothing, no wind, no clouds, no rain, no threats
will shake
the stump, clay or mud, and these shoots,
for wearily,
but firmly,
we’ve made them our own.
MY UNCERTAIN PATH
I now feel I’m on mountain peaks
abandoning
distant landscapes and silence amid mists,
you cannot recognize the places,
the islands the river gently shapes,
the olive groves, the dusty paths,
the earthen, shapeless, blunted city.
Nor the hills slipping towards the horizon
and nearer, underfoot, the crags,
the shortcut, dense bracken and darkness.
I now feel I’m on mountain peaks,
on a windy hill, and see the coast below
and a peak surging alone
from the low bank of clouds.
And I feel dizzy, a little sad and bitter,
to have walked so much, so empty-handed,
the uncertain path entering the shadows.
Now and then, a hand, a friendly ray of sun,
filters through the mist and renews my hope.
BY THE GRACE OF GOD, IT’S OFFICIAL
By the grace of God, it’s official:
I’ve drunk from the spring of the Spanish tongue
from the first lines of epic songs.
But my roots cling daily more deeply
to this difficult land of ours.
I sink my roots slowly in fertile valleys,
into gentle slopes of old olive trees,
into earth claimed inch by inch
from steep, sheer stone.
I sink my roots, impotent and raging,
while I seek other springs geographically closer.
I take a chisel and carve,
I polish daily stubborn and hard
words and syntax
that should spurt effortlessly,
as water surges from a spring.
I seek carefully other classics
to wipe the dust from everyday dusty words.
That’s why I say I angrily bite the earth,
I work words that have turned into granite,
the language in which I speak to my children,
in which at least I dream,
and that by the grace of God, it’s official,
I’ve found so hard to polish,
to make supple, to free of dust.
OH, BOY! OH, BOY!
(lullaby of resignation)
Because I’m only four I lie here resigned
not getting out of bed it’s just before nine
outside the stars tell me about astronauts
and the loveliest journeys across expanses of blue.
Oh, boy! Oh, boy!
If I wasn’t four I’d grab
colored crayons no matter the time,
to make a world of dreams and fun plans.
Oh, boy! Oh, boy!
My mother writes and my father sleeps,
both choose almost always what they do or don’t do.
I hear other children’s voices tell me
to keep doing the things we all like.
Oh, boy! Oh, boy!
We don’t like the issues adults like,
we don’t like ghettoes, we don’t look at skin,
we don’t like wars, we don’t like hunger,
we don’t want lies or the system as it is.
I’m in a rush to go out and start being me.
Because I’m only four I lie here resigned
not getting out of bed it’s just before nine.
Oh, boy! Oh, boy!
Zoraida Burgos is a graphologist, painter, and writer who has spent most of her working life in libraries. She has published several books, including Of Loves, Longings, and Other Things, which won the first Màrius Torres Poetry Prize, and The Obsession of the Dunes, winner of the Pin i Soler Award.
Peter Bush‘s most recent translations from Catalan are The Pink Plastic Glove by Dolors Miquel and Wenling’s by Gemma Ruiz Palà. His translation of Balzac’s The Lily in the Valley has just been published by the New York Review of Books. He is a former director of the British Center for Literary Translation.
