Six Poems—
Plumtree, after the rain
Who
Veil of glass
Octopus
Genealogical Tree
& Bees.

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

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


                                       & 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.)

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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).    


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