Aug '02 [Home]
Carilda Oliver Labra
Translation by Daniela Gioseffi
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Aug '02 [Home] Carilda Oliver Labra Translation by Daniela Gioseffi |
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Desaparece el Polvo Ahora sí sonrío, sí comercio, sí callo, sí enluto, sí perezco en un rayo de ternura, sí me endiablo con los asesinos, si cumplo una naranja estoy diciendo abril. ¿Has visto qué moneda para pagarle a la hermosura? ¿Has visto qué sueño tan extraño? ¿Como lo enterramos, dime? Yo he probado a echarle el porvenir de la neblina, también le puse arañas, y míralo: perenne como el fondo del amor … Ay, insepulto, formidable; tinta para los estertores y las siembras. En los aniversarios, cuando abril vuelve a regar besos y resucita la música en el cuarto del árbol desaparece el polvo, es de repente y otra vez y ahora y desde luego y definitivamente. En los aniversarios cuando abril va entretenido, casi de otros, vuelvo al secreto, vuelvo a establecer mi sangre bajo la victoria, vuelvo al delirio insomne, a la felicidad de habernos sobrecogido juntos. En los aniversarios cuando abril pelea con cualquier incidente una hoja amarilla perfecciona el milagro; es por eso que no creo en desolaciones, es por eso que no me asustan los alfileres, es por eso que estoy reservada para algo inalterable y la noche comprende. En los aniversarios todo puede suceder: una lágrima o el carbón. Edo: arde esta salud de virgen derruída, felicito el horror, se me caen los restratos; ah, pero siempre una palabra progresa desde al dado violento, una espiga se desdobla y canta. |
Dust Disappears Now, if I smile, if I make commerce, if I remain silent, if I mourn, if I die in a ray of tenderness, if I become angry with killers, if a finish an orange, I'm uttering April. Have you noticed which coin buys beauty? Have you seen what eccentric dream? How did we bury my beloved, tell me? I've tried to throw a future of mist at him and place spiders on him and look at him eternallike the bottom of love … But, ah, he's not buried; he's formidable; ink of the moans and the harvest. At the anniversaries of our love when April reappears to throw away kisses and music resuscitates in the trunk of a tree, dust disappears and suddenly returns and again and now and of course and definitely. At the anniversaries, when distracted April belongs to others, I return to our secret, I return to establish my blood under our victory, I return to insomniac delirium to the happiness of coming together. At the anniversaries when April fights with every incident and the yellow leaf perfects her miracle; because I don't believe in solitudes, because I'm not afraid of the prick of fate, because I'm salvaged for something that can't be changed and the night understands. At the anniversaries anything can happen: a tear or an ash. Anything: burns this health of a ruined virgin. I congratulate the horror. The images fall from me. Ah, but always a word progresses from the violent giving, and the stalk that bends sings. (Transl. © 2002 Daniela Gioseffi) |
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Carilda Oliver Labra was born in 1922 in a provincial area of Matanzas in a Colonial home now under preservation by the state. She earned a degree in civil law from the University of Havana and went home to practice. In 1950, she won the National Prize for poetry with Al sur de mi garganta (At the South of My Throat). Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, said, in 1953, that Oliver's poetry was "profound like metal, durable like the high plateaus." Her work was also lauded by Pablo Neruda. —DG |