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
Labels: Ediciones Sin Nombre, Jose Lezama Lima, Maria Baranda, neobarroco
