Douglas Suttle 

Translator

And now, I’m not sure why, I think
of a family episode
That, as a protagonist, stars
my own eldest son: being a baby,
spending his time sleeping,
often unaware, stretched out,
squirming - lazily - on the short
mattress that cushioned him
- the child’s life, left there in slumber,
so very brief, spent sleeping -,
and he didn’t stop until his head
- seeking like a mole’s quivering
snout - still not able to touch
the soft reaches of the padded canes.
One time he felt, I imagine,
within his tender-boned skull
- still not completely fixed -
the confines of his first bed
- the inaugural limit, so close,
a tested limit -, and, then, his sleepiness
was quiet for the whole night
and nothing could wake him.
I would, therefore, like to add a
certain certainty to these verses:
illustrate the limit of the language,
allow myself to make out the boundary
of what can be said, before the nothingness.
Out of this lasting apprenticeship,
I earn a symbol: the gift
of the sleeping son, not yet doomed,
a boy condemned, pure of heart, a hostage
in time. Death brandishes his rattle:
it watches over the child - in the crib, stretched out -,
it cares for him. A horrid image:
the wet-nurse drugs her vassal.
(death buys, on the cheap, all and sundry
from the meaty massacre.)
I have always written so as to cure the cut
that makes us know that we are nothing.

                               And in the midst of a grey day, we burn like candles
                               ÓSSIP MANDELSTAM

I’m always late, you said when, finally,
you arrived in the doorway,
and we were all already sat up, and we were waiting
- hungry, of course, and already angry, some -,
because we had arranged to meet at two
and you always arrived at half past,
so that, from the aperitif, nothing more
was left than olive stones on plates
and grains of salt and crisp crumbs,
and some red smudges
of cockle sauce, in some bowls,
and of vermouth, in some of the adults’ glasses.
The father uttered some grumble,
but, as indirect as he was
- and in a thin voice,
that came from his operated-on throat -,
it seemed as if he was speaking of a different girl,
as you were the apple of his eye.
I’m sorry: I always, always have to be late.
It’s because of the production that we’re doing.
And you were taking off your scarf,
first, and your hat, your coat and your jumper.
And, in the swirl of air as you took off
so many clothes, there hung, for
a few seconds, the stench of smoke
from red tobacco: thin wrists and arms,
the loose sleeves of your blouse,
we saw that - that you were very sensitive to the cold,
but at our parents’ house it is always so warm! -.
At table, you started to play the clown,
and we forgave you, every year, the tardiness,
due to the way you are, happy.
I’m always late, mon Dieu. I’ll never learn!
You said mon Dieu to remind us that you had,
hélas, lived alone for two years in Leon
studying theatre and dramatic art
(the last Christmas dinner that we saw you
you arrived late - you said - due to a production:
let’s see what you were preparing
- a neighbourhood Ubu Roi, something by Shakespeare?-).
And we didn’t dare bring up France:
there you had failed. You weren’t consistent
- and your chaotic way!-.
I’m always late, you said, and this phrase,
more than any other, defined you well.
Mother never stopped protecting you:
you came after three boys,
the only girl in a saga of boys.
You were late in even at birth:
Marc and you were born nine years apart - thirteen
for me, as I’m the eldest -. And you were
late, by mistake, all your life.
To arrive late was, therefore, your fate.
And now that our parents are in their eighties,
I see the same sense of tiredness
in the siblings, hanging sadly over the plate,
three men who have precociously aged.
What a sad Christmas day, Eulàlia!
A galet reminds me of a kneecap,
and Quim, Pep and Clara’s nephew,
perhaps considered that the carcass
that sits on the meat dish
- a horn stuffed with chickpeas, and with leaves
from a cabbage, and with shavings of carrots -
looked like rusted armour
filled with parts of a knight
veiled by a loitering soul.
Mother has not got the salt right
on the bird that, what’s more, is swimming in oil.
Thank goodness for the torrons that leave us with a sweet taste
On our lips! Thank goodness for the neules,
that tasty and whilst eating them, allow the children to play!
There are sons and daughters, nephews and nieces (and the
first great-nephew who you have not had time to get to know).

You don’t finish arriving: we don’t wait for you.
You don’t ever arrive: we have not kept a place for you.
Spirits like you are never late:
they are in perpetuity (at least
until the last person who remember them dies).
It’s the first Christmas that you are not here, Laia,
it’s the first dinner that you are on time for:
the absent diner sitting at the table,
and she eats and drinks, winks and laughs,
talks to us, calmly, from our memories,
is always tickling the children
and, having finished eating, she takes them
away to a corner and, whilst the adults have a glass
of something, some light up cigars and smoke,
and father sits and contemplates the fire
after having used the poker
- it’s his way of feeling good,
silent is his own melancholy -,
she tells us stories about snow,
beautiful tales from the raw Advent
and that rose-tinted era of childhood,
and she is like the old ghosts - immortal
and exemplary - of literature.

Why have I loved you for so many years
- tell me, why? -, since love is a fire
that we cannot save, and it’s as if the yellows
and reds that warm us, now unfamiliar,
reminiscing, bring back only the hurt
- rancor and sadness - or turn to ash the fistful
of arteries, of the old, absent-minded flesh
of the heart, that was carelessly trapped.

What are we left with, from the golden times? Nothing
that does not become hateful, nothing that isn’t
An ornament to melancholia.

As the soul is never left uninjured,
what has it been for, love? Is it necessary to write
that all we have built over the years is over in a day?

                                                   For Josep M. Esquirol

The body, life. There comes a day when you understand
that everything expires. Like the plant.
Old age is a gift. The woman gives birth
only for the being to die. It is born without teeth.

And you understand that everything ends - shoots
of a vine that they will prune or a heart so proud
of being able to conquer the world -, nothing lasts
and it’s like candlelight that you illuminate.

We know that one day we have to disappear.
Reason states that nothing lasts forever.
Death comes to us all, everyone.

What a miserable flock we are, our species!
Thrown into life without sheepdog,
knowing our mortality makes us wiser.

                                   When you go,
                                   you leave my hand so dead
                                   and so alone, that from me it falls.
                                                    Blai Bonet

I worried about these hands for many years.
They were soaked under the tap,
and one, empty, made an escudella
if I was thirsty - her hands

oh how I loved them! -. They were lovers
my left hand and her right.
As if made from eyelid skin,
her gloveless, girlish hands.

When I had fever, she would put
her hand on my forehead and, motheringly,
she would leave it there for a moment; it was a gift

to feel in the darkness in bed, caressing me
- sleepy fingers - to know I was by her side.
This hand was made to bid me farewell.

You are reading yourself in a small yard:
reading yourself, after the time is near.
That which you love the most, all that you fear;
that which allows you to live and suffer.

And now, she sleeps, trusting in the cushion
where she lays her head. You take a finger and press it,
close to some embroidery (watery blue that, at the edges
of the raised oars, runs out into navy).

As if you wanted to make sure of it, you touch
all that is left within your reach.
The little bottle of serum for example.
As long as the vessel never nears the rocks,
you’ll come at once to help her to turn.
Care for her sleep. Kiss her, lightly, on her temple.

Far from the city you raise your redoubt
from the night skies lit up by the embers.
From time to time in a field you camp out:
it’s fine that you store, with one eye aware

the place of all stars in the field now sown,
that you see how your heart grows joyous, bright
for that flower that to the buried sun grown
and that knows the glorious hour of night.

In June, you build close to a field of wheat
that makes you sure of the sound in the sheaves
of the wind’s guarded song. It beats

like this wind, is this life - man clears the leaves,
linked, the sliver of time that you have and,
you start to feel the sting of the nettles.

                                        Dead friends breathe again in you
                                        UMBERTO SABA

So many of these souls, you made them dead
—you send them to oblivion, they rust out of memory—.
But there was a time when they seemed strong, your hands,
and they were believed to be the owners of a strong heart,

and they were like reeds that, worn by water, seem to bend
until the wind dies and they return, straightened, to their old state.
In the vineyard of existence, the stems are pruned
And the root is all-powerful. The cutting tools: death.

They shrieked with delight and, sick with fever,
they experienced love and despair. Today I stand them on the apex
of my poem before it buries the light.