From "Narrar" (To Tell)

Here's the opening movement of Maria Baranda's Narrar, published in 2001 by Ediciones Sin Nombre of Mexico City.  This translation also appeared in eleven eleven 15, published by California College of the Arts.  The word tokonoma refers to a poem by Jose Lezama Lima, the Cuban poet who inspired the neobarroco movement in Latin American poetry.  A tokonoma is a room in a Japanese house that is designed entirely to give pleasure and a sense of calm through the beauty and balance of the objects in it.  In addition to Narrar, I have translated Baranda's 55-page poem Yegua nocturna corriendo en un prado de luz absoluta (Nightmare Running on a Meadow of Absolute Light).

To Tell

María Baranda                                                                  

Her horrendous voice, not her inner sorrow

-Góngora

 A cry

a single cry

just a cry

to the open air

a cry of porpoise or dolphin

of incandescent fish by the water

a cry of the sea that breaks and repeats

that empties

and in the time of salt

says everywhere what it says

that swells
that glows

a cry

a single cry

just a cry

of the blue inconceivable sky

that repeats

that advances

that grazes among the algae

the fetid rumor of the brackish

a providential cry in the voice of air

an unsustainable rhythm

in the throat

A cry that knots itself

in symphonic circles of joy

A terrible cry

that announces the first death

that stands on precarious feet

and dismantles shadows and grumbling

A cry that must choose

for between the walls the liquid deepens 

The wall as a cardinal point

an agonizing smile

in the punctual

sweetness

of the one who is drowning

 

A cry disbanded

in a garden with thickets

a dream of  blue light for the birds

A cry that in itself

is the size of the sea

and lives at the center of  rapture

and with each step it yields

to the delirium of a sponge

that inflates in sweat and gives glory

to the time of silent prayers

A cry is the caiman’s vigil

the unleashed whip of an ant

the fan of  yes the same immaculate

air of an inhospitable grudge

that bends

The cry that smells of salt

a wild beast dry

horny

in the dusky collapse

of your herd

The cry distilled from minutes

marks the world that is world forever

in an open moment where never

passes nothing and everything dissolves

hurling itself to the bottom

Nothingness is reason falling

finally it’s emptiness

its bend in the road most refreshing

when the tree

is erected in delirium

in order to sing from its purgatory

its novice illusions

almost vertigo

 

A cry is sleepless in its dream

faded almost hoarse it stuns itself

like a crippled animal

the cry breathes sleep inside

its eyes and evokes a sacrifice

a dark joy in a spiral of weeping 

The cry moans weeps wallows

glacial polygamous decrepit

sinking into flakes and scales

into mud

the cry sleeps alone

in the hollow of useless blindfolds

its intoxicated pallor

in its cadence and fatigue

it buzzes between the glasses and the cans

the remains are still ripe
and the sweet song

of the flies to vacancy

The cry is deeply in love

and sweet together with the soft souls

Rosa in order to tell it to Rose

is a corrupt luxury

a brief heart

that detracts

The cry is the insistence

on misery is the sharp bite of hunger

under the yoke of a sugar mill

a fire burning

among dogs and rats

is a shadow that crosses

the fetid waters of wonder

and it’s the clamor of three nights

of the sickness of women, hens, and female deer

when the gods

lose their harmony and quickly

offer their shame to the twilight 

The cry is air

air that only blossoms

in the half-light of funerals

The cry is the voice of the obsequies

a wafer in the pupils

which prays “Praise be to God

without God’s silent cry

infinitely bitter and dry

and the newlywed God the round impostor

who belches who vomits who repeats

fragrant at the pit and doesn’t say

not to purify the skin

devour candles and beautify

blind beneath the definitive sun

lethargic in the accounting

of a glass beaded God summit

red-hot incredulous God

who doesn’t ask for pardon

in the omen of dead birds.”

 a cry

a single cry

just a cry

it whips in lines

and looks dissolved

between the vertices of song

(sings among the captive petals

And don’t forget me in the diaspora

sing sing deadly like an archangel

about about to shout his song)

The cry is erased

between the breasts that slander

sinks convenes seizes

becomes and is consumed

penetrates licks fits

in cartilage of fire

where it resides

 The cry is just a number

a notch at the base of the wall

as meticulous

as a tokonoma

utmost swiftness of spirit

freezes the Cuban’s print

bevels the aperture in the absurd

that dominates corners of the language

that exposes itself as a maelstrom

of all the whales in the sea

is an emaciated shell

adhering to the pale shadow

that crosses our sleep

The cry

is a mixture of sperm

and civil life

in living circumstances

a sign of those black fruits

where peace putrefies

streaked by oblivion

where their error is overheard

in a Parthenon of voices

and the air unfolded fornicates

voluptuously and never knows

of the children awakening

in endless tunnels

lost