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Adrienne Rich
To have seen you exactly, once: red hair over cold cheeks fresh from the freeway your lingo, your daunting and dauntless eyes. But then to lift toward home, mile upon mile back where they'd barely heard your name --neither as terrorist nor as genius would they detain you-- to wing it back to my country bearing your war-flecked protocols-- that was a mission, surely: my art's pouch crammed with your bristling juices sweet dark drops of your spirit that streaked the pouch, the shirt I wore and the bench on which I leaned. 2 It's only a branch like any other green with the flare of life in it and if I hold this end, you the other that means it's broken broken between us, broken despite us broken and therefore dying broken by force, broken by lying green, with the flare of life in it 3 But say we're crouching on the ground like children over a mess of marbles, soda caps, foil, old foreign coins --the first truly precious objects. Rusty hooks, glass. Say I saw the earring first but you wanted it. Then you wanted the words I'd found. I'd give you the earring, crushed lapis if it were, I would look long at the beach glass and the sharded self of the lightbulb. Long I'd look into your hand at the obsolete copper profile, the cat's-eye, the lapis. Like a thief I would deny the words, deny they ever existed, were spoken, or could be spoken, like a thief I'd bury them and remember where. 4 The trade names follow trade the translators stopped at passport control: Occupation: no such designation-- Journalist, maybe spy? That the books are for personal use only--could I swear it? That not a word of them is contraband--how could I prove it? 1995 El arte de traducir 1 Haberte visto del todo, una vez: pelo rojo en mejillas frescas por el aire de la autovia tu jerga, tus ojos que intimidaban sin dejarse intimidar. Y despues poner rumbo a casa, milla tras milla hacia donde apenas sabian de tu nombre -ni por terrorista ni por genio te detendrian- volar a mi pais portando tus protocolos salpicados de conflicto; esa era, sin duda, toda una mision: mi cartera de artista llena de tus jugos rebosantes las dulces gotas oscuras de tu espiritu manchando de rayas la cartera, la camisa y en el banco sobre el que me apoyaba. 2 No es mas que una rama como cualquier otra verde con el fulgor de la vida y si la sostengo por un extremo y tu por otro quiere decir que esta rota rota entre nosotras, rota a pesar de nosotras rota y por tanto agonizante rota a la fuerza, rota al yacer verde, con el fulgor de la vida 3 Pero imagina que estamos en cuclillas como ninas sobre un revoltijo de canicas, chapas, papel plata, viejas monedas extranjeras -los primeros tesoros de verdad. Ganchos oxidados, cristales-. Imagina que yo viera primero el pendiente pero tu lo quisieras. Luego querrias las palabras que yo habia encontrado. Te daria el pendiente, el lapislazuli aplastado si hubiera, me quedaria mirando los cristales de la playa y el interior astillado de la bombilla. Observando en tu mano el perfil obsoleto del cobre, el ojo de gato, el lapislazuli. Cual ladron negaria las palabras, negaria su existencia, que fueran pronunciadas o pudieran pronunciarse, cual ladron las enterraria y recordaria donde. 4 Los nombres de oficios responden al oficio los traductores retenidos ante el control de pasaportes: Profesion: sin especificar. ?Periodista, espia quiza? ?Podria yo jurar que los libros son para uso personal -tan solo-? ?Que ni una sola palabra es contrabando -y como lo demostraria-? 1995 For an Anniversary The wing of the osprey lifted over the nest on Tomales Bay into fog and difficult gust raking treetops from Inverness Ridge on over The left wing shouldered into protective gesture the left wing we thought broken and the young beneath in the windy nest creaking there in their hunger and the tides beseeching, besieging the bay in its ruined languor
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