Rehearsal / 58. Maria Josep Escrivá
Translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush
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Eleanor Antin, ‘100 Boots’ (1971-1973) /
Eleanor Antin, © 2005.
(Six Poems.)
Translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush
Eleanor Antin, ‘100 Boots’ (1971-1973) /
Eleanor Antin, © 2005.
(Six Poems.)
ALWAYS, ON THE PATH
Plumtree, after the rain
Breeze flickers red between branches.
Merciful
has brought light
into my house.
Miramar, April 2022
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Who
Who has ever felt the shock of a beck
being sucked dry by the warm earth?
Who has ever felt the shock of the last
house falling apart in the mountains, mineral
corpse, stone by stone, bone by bone
of each man banished?
Who has ever felt the shock of the sky
at the crimson hour when a swallow
like a kite fleetingly swoops to drink
from the beck, that is no longer there?
And who else, with their own shock, can travel that way?
Plumtree, after the rain
Breeze flickers red between branches.
Merciful
has brought light
into my house.
Miramar, April 2022
Who
Who has ever felt the shock of a beck
being sucked dry by the warm earth?
Who has ever felt the shock of the last
house falling apart in the mountains, mineral
corpse, stone by stone, bone by bone
of each man banished?
Who has ever felt the shock of the sky
at the crimson hour when a swallow
like a kite fleetingly swoops to drink
from the beck, that is no longer there?
And who else, with their own shock, can travel that way?
Veil of glass
murky is the belly of the creek
where our existence drowns
Jordí Solà Coll
murky is the belly of the creek
where our existence drowns
Jordí Solà Coll
On the quiet water of a creek,
inverted illusion—where is the water?
Where is the sky?—An airplane’s path
is traced. Remote and so real
a wonder to our eyes. Until,
like a veil of glass, mist lodges
in the valley, and in the mouth to the stomach
the turmoil of twilight engulfs us.
We follow the course of the river that still
flies over us, shrouded in darkness,
sharing silently the certainty
of the farewell that wounds and binds
and justifies us, always, on the path.
La Drova-Barx, la Safor
December 2015
Octopus
Little remains.
We were very near.
Nothing remains.
Fran García
Group of individuals
who inhabit the depths of the sea
hanging
in the substrata
or slipping along the surface.
Benthic species, by name.
With two big eyes giving them
excellent vision
changing shape and texture
all dependent on what luck brings
Why speak of octopus if I want to speak of the shipwrecked?
Men and women who float in the sea
like colored buoys
In one year, two thousand six hundred buoys:
the same number as inhabitants of my village
There’s no shore to bring them close, deep
shadows dreaming of another promised
land and cursing.
Genealogical Tree
from the earth where memories are marooned
Smell of snail’s flesh, bodies of animals: all summer, from creeks to dikes. From leeches hooked on legs. From leeches and phosphorescent kingfishers. From wrinkled heels like cracked dikes. From dikes and silt, from hen shit. From yellow lilies and water rats. From a canebrake’s ancient roots. From pools, whirlpools and streams. From the bleeding mallard plummeting. From the feared swamp sawgrass that bloodies them. I am made of all that they were. And of the black earth where I will plunge seeking the truth.
(To my father and mother)
March 2019
Bees
And I asked myself,
where does death begin?
Mercè Rodoreda
The verge crumbling in dead of night.
The frost
burning shoots on almond trees.
The first name that’s forgotten. And all
the oblivion that ensues.
The comet trapped between branches.
The disconsolate
child.
The bitter honey
who can say which sick flowers
the bees sucked.
The last leaf of the elm
eaten by disease
The orange trees
strangled by weeds.
The slow lucidity
of disillusion.
The empty house, the abandoned,
garden.
even
the crows
have flown.
only
the fountain
spurts
in the shade
as ever: pure
presence
of no one
sine die, 7
Miramar, la Safor,
March-May
Maria Josep Escrivà is a poet, fiction writer and cultural activist. She has published five collections of poems, the first of which, Remor alè, received the Senyoriu d'Ausiàs March Prize of Beniarjó. Her most recent book of poems, Serena barca, won the Valencia Writers’ Critics Award in 2017.
Peter Bush’s first literary translation was Juan Goytisolo’s Forbidden Territory (North Point Press, 1989). His most recent are The Teacher and the Beast by Imma Monsó (Gretton Books) and Take Six: Six Catalan Women Writers in Translation (Dedalus Books).
