BEAUTY

The letters friends write you; the egg-white
of the moon, camped so many times behind
the little curtain with angels in the library;
the balusters where pigeons come to mate
in inebriated encounters; the blazing prickly pears
from whence howl the secular and scarlet tones
of sundown light: beauty slips away with you
to the calm places of the being, to the casual
sun that hired mourners have to watch passing
like a red cameo, over your epitaph.

(From Bandera blanca [White Flag], 1994)
 

* * *
 

GRANDMOTHER MAGDALENA

Another winter has not vanquished your absence.
The sunset will come back and it is as if you were
still the weary silhouette
that submits to being possessed by a smile
on being kissed, that hand of yours
that lights the larder candle and labours
to bring out bottles or blood-red
cherries or the assault of the terrible
sweetness of your jam.
We live as long as someone remains in the unmarred
arcades that we constructed
one day with time before us; and our dawn
is the present that we are in loyal
eyes when night falls.

(From Bandera blanca [White Flag], 1994)
 

* * *
 

WRITING IS BORN

Many paths were waterways. Man scrutinised the equinoxes, scrutinised
labyrinths and, in holy places, rescued the memory of the dead.
Everything was strange and beautiful: the violence of the abysses, the
scarlet shadows, the wild marjoram scent of full moon, the panting of
two bodies that the forest concealed. Everything was rare and beautiful.
From his spiritual power over flint, over the secrets of chalky stone, man
made tools, caverns, the fleshiness and rhythms of Venuses; he made of
it a habit, like having two hands. Then he built hypostyle halls,
interpreted omens, established calendars. Man was thus, untamed, epic,
naïve. Then, one day, he surrendered himself to a harsh experience:
explaining being. He invoked the wind, sudden brightness, the geranium
pink of an angel, and produced his first scrawl.

(From El batec de les pedres [The Heartbeat of Stones], 1996)
 

* * *
 

GOR'KIJ THINKS OF RUSSIA FROM SORRENTO

The sun is dwindling and fills my eyes with sand.
They are false these skies in which prevail
reckless swallows, fuchsias,
and twinkling lights from the island of Capri.
My people, though, are many miles away.
I have followed a dream only to remain
at the mercy of derision and exile;
of the absurdities of a people where tyrants
priests and noblemen were muzhiks first.
Soon in wooden huts they will light up the old
red lanterns. Never have I so longed for
any woman as I do their silhouette
and the fertile lilts of the Russian tongue.

(From El batec de les pedres [The Heartbeat of Stones], 1996)
 

* * *
 

FROM THE SANCTUARY OF CONSOLATION

I enter the deserted cloister. Interplay of lighthouses, echoes that
announce the sunset. Now everything becomes much less cutaneous. I
seek the fire with my eyes, the way they speak on the plain. Dune
formations and powerful territories of a cloud are the earth and sky of
places where we have been happy. I think of your waist of healthy grass,
the distance where an archipelago reigns. We shall become old and dim
and clumsy, my love.

(From El batec de les pedres [The Heartbeat of Stones], 1996)
 

* * *
 

STARLINGS

The afternoon is in love with the place. I speak of a patio
with birdcages and drawings in chalk
that were of suns and great ships under sail.
Like a prayer, those Sundays, with lemon
juice my mother made my hair shine.
I bore in my mouth a thousand starfish.
In the streets they see April growing without geraniums.
When the dogs cried we longed for our dead.
The torments of hell form part of the landscape
and the most pure dialectic of those days.
Still, in evoking them, November convenes
a disquiet of iron wire and liturgical ornaments.
Rain pours down in the sheepfolds of our paradises.
The constellations of starlings remind me
of Bosch's allegorical skies and the literary theme
of the expiry date of life and dreams.
They remind me of the long plaits of first love,
the roses that rot on the tombs of the vanquished
and my childhood of harlequins and shrapnel.

(From Cap de cantó [The Corner], 2004)
 

* * *
 

SOLSTICE

Words are deer that take flight from death
They feel the cold and bear away afternoon in their eyes
They bear away lilac moments like the Menorca sea
I have never returned to those horizons that were music
Ardent priestesses danced there barefoot
Heady with aromas of the imperial rose
From a corsair boat I would think of their kisses
I would think of a ribbon of oboe notes
Besides labyrinths words are deer
They sip water in autumn’s last heartbeat
They become goddesses girded with flowers
They want to grow like patches of rust and unease
While the geranium-pink profile of the wind goes by
Smugglers go by on the sandlands of absence
We are lord of their sadness and of an aging dog
All that awaits me has no name on any map

(From Cap de cantó [The Corner], 2004)
 

* * *
 

WINTER AND BEAUTY

After I devoutly kneeled as was wont to do
Fra Angelico, before painting the serene sky
of ancient Florence, I have not found beauty.
Nor have I found it in the noble order of Greek temples
or in literature’s expanse of beaches.
Forever unattainable, it has become distance
on any sounding board: and the rosy petals
of the almond trees are cold when I write its name.

(From Cap de cantó [The Corner], 2004)

 

Translated from the Catalan by Julie Wark ©