Zoraida Burgos: Poems

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.

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Zoraida Burgos: Poems

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