Poems (written mostly in Galician) translated into English.
The italian version of my poem Of Flowers and Irons in Flavio Almerighi’s sunday column.
You can enjoy his selection by clicking on the link.
(It’s been a grass cutting day, I haven’t had time to post until now!)
Buon inizio settimana!
Have a nice week!
Na canteira do avó
Pedra e mar
Un baleiro no chan
Cicatrices minerais
Barrenos de dinamita
Conversando coa terra
Mar e pedra
Barcos de ferro
Enrugas de onda mariña
Viña e auga e pedra
Maceiras
Ovellas e bois
Pombas e coellos
Recunchos de infancia
In grandfather's quarry
Stone and sea
A void in the land
Mineral scars
Dynamite cartridges
Conversations with the earth
Sea and stone
Iron ships
Sea wave wrinkles
Vine and water and stone
Apple trees
Sheep and oxen
Pigeons and rabbits
Landscapes of childhood
I wish you could enjoy the scent of roadside flowers
In the beginning, I was carved out of flowers and iron
Na viaxe ao norte
O arrecendo das margaridas
Nos leva de volta ao instituto
Pasamos lista dos profesores
Seus acertos, seus abusos
Na parada de Rugby
A cunca de moca
Constrúe cercos a cada grolo
Como os aneis dunha árbore
Os restos da marea de Manchester
Nun almacén da compañía
Pacientes agardan
A seren repatriados
Entre eixos de tren e carros de baterías
Épica viaxe ao norte
Non houbera querído outra vida
Máis sinxela, máis calmada
On the journey north
The scent of daisies
Takes us back to high school
We gave the register of teachers
Their successes, their abuses
At Rugby halfway stop
The cup of mocha
Build chocolate marks with every sip
Like the rings of a tree
The remnants of the Manchester project
In a company warehouse
Patient waiting
To be repatriated
Between train axles and battery blocks
Epic journey north
I would not have wanted another life
Neither smpler, nor more calm
First published in January 2009, when I was living in Algeria
Podo dicir “por algunha razón que descoñezo”
trouxen cachos de ti
até nos petos máis pequenos
das miñas maletas
podo dicir mais non é certo,
cortei a posta retalliños
do teu corpo, paseinos tamén no dobre fondo
ocultos entre papel de aluminio
para que se abran nesta tumba
como fosforescentes sinais de tráfico
dirixíndome no fondo,
no abismo calado e escuro
onde só é a pel da polpa dos dedos
meu interlocutor co universo.
Retallos feitos de enderezos
en cachiños de papel enrugado,
de libros fetiche,
de marcapáxinas co teu olor,
complexos vitamínicos
estudados para combater
a soidade, a ausencia, o silencio
deste cuarto sarcófago
onde a pouca luz do sol que cae atrapada
na trampa do patio de luces
chega ao fondo lenta, cansa, apagada
perdidas xa as suas propiedades
curativas
I can say "for some reason I don't know"
I brought chunks of you
even in the smallest pockets
of my suitcases
I can say but it's not true,
I purposely cut pieces of your body
carried in the double bottom
hidden between aluminum foil
for them to be opened in this tomb
like phosphorescent traffic signs
for them to guide me in the deep
in the silent and dark abyss
where it is only the skin of the fingerstips
my interlocutor with the universe.
Clippings made of addresses
in crumpled pieces of paper
of fetish books,
bookmarked with your scent,
vitamin complexes
studied to combat
loneliness, absence, silence
of this sarcophagus room
where the little sunlight that falls is jailed
in the trap of the inner courtyard
it reaches the bottom slowly, tired, dull
their healing properties
already lost
Unha nube que soprada polo vento
cambia totalmente de forma
xa non sabe quen é
antes un osiño de peluxe
agora un cabalo saltando a sebe
o meandro dun río indeciso
o mapa das illas Vanuatu
e así até a precipitación
ou a chegada ao encoro
onde se fusiona con outros centos
milleiros de nubes que tamén levaron
a marca que o ollo soñador
lles foi colando
e agora fundidas nunha masa densa
viven do recordo
A cloud blown by the wind
completely changes its shape
it no longer knows what it is
once a teddy bear
now a horse jumping a hedge
the meander of an indecisive river
the map of the Vanuatu islands
and so on until the precipitation
or the arrival at the reservoir
where it merges with other hundreds
thousands of clouds that also took the mark
that the dreamy eye stuck on them
and now melted into a dense mass
they live on memories
À la rencontre du collègue marocain
j’ai ressenti la joie du poisson
qu’après avoir été pris dans le filet
se sent glisser par-dessus bord
enfin chez soi
dans l’eau salée à nouveau
pleine d'oxygène
ainsi ma langue se délie
se réjouit
Meeting my Moroccan colleague
I felt the joy of the fish
that after being caught in the net
feels itself slipping overboard
finally at home
in salt water again
full of oxygen
so my tongue loosens
rejoices
As noites nas que Deus, infundido do divino tedio pon a cazadora e sae de festa, quixera ser diminuto como unha grava do camiño ou estar perdido nun bosque escuro onde só a morte xogase comigo, de veras, até a chegada do día, ou de Deus, ou por sempre.
The nights when God, infused with divine boredom, puts on His jacket and goes out partying, I wish I was as small as a gravel on the road or lost in a dark forest where only death would play with me, no kidding, until the arrival of the day, or God, or forever.
I’ve got lost in Valencia
walking around a recovered landfill
far from the City of Arts and Sciences
I’ve got lost in Kabylia
in my way to Constantine
stopping at every village in the mountains
I’ve got lost in Algiers clubs
and woke up with a girl that had breakfast
with the two beers of my fridge
I’ve got lost in Karekare thicket
then I found the way out
and went for a running on the black sands
I’ve got lost in Saint-Etienne fields
and in Luxembourg’s Grünewalt woods
Bored of the regular track
have got lost in Corsican Monte d’Oro
and in Welsh Glyderau mountains
I thought I was an idiot
to get lost wherever I went
now I know it was the means
life used for me to learn
No baixo da casa na que viviamos papa tiña un taller de soldadura no que facía portais, reixas, verandas… eu axudaba co meu traballo de agarrador de ferros aprendendo a aguantar as muxicas que saltaban do electrodo.
Houbo un tempo no que non tiña un par de calcetíns que non estivese picado da soldadura; saía á discoteca cos meus furos da vergonza e quedaba nun recuncho da barra bebendo algo que me liberase de tanto medo, de tanto auto odio, que me axudase a aceptarme rompendo os muros da prision na que me escondía.
Naquel tempo eu era perfecto pero non o sabía, escondíame da luz e sufría no vento xeado, tiña tanto medo que non era quen de ver arredor, cheguei a pensar que a soidade era o estado natural do ser humano.
Non entendía como o resto da xente facía para abrirse, para encontrarse; eu era unha illa de medo afastada do continente, de calquera continente.
Só nos eventos culturais, só nos bares, só nas manifestacións, só na miña soidade
Agora que pasaron tantos anos e aprendín que só hai unha lei da gravidade, gostaríame preguntarche papá, como se fai na vida para manterse firme ao temón cando todo é caos, ou é só que estar ao temón é estar só, tentando ordenar unha décima parte do caos?
On the ground floor of the house where we lived, dad had a welding workshop where he built gates, grilles, banisters… I helped with my job as an iron gripper, learning to bear the sparks that sprout from the electrode.
There was a time when I didn’t have a pair of socks that wasn’t pierced from welding; I used to go out to the disco with my shame holes and stay in a corner of the counter drinking something that freed me from so much fear, so much self-hatred, to help me accept myself by breaking the walls of the prison in which I was hiding.
At that time I was perfect but I didn’t know it, I hid from the light and suffered in the icy wind, so afraid that I couldn’t see around, I came to think that loneliness was the natural state of the human being.
I didn’t understand how the rest of the people did to open up, to meet; I was an island of fear far from the continent, from any continent.
Alone in cultural events, alone in bars, alone in demonstrations, alone in my solitude
Now that so many years have gone and I’ve learned there’s only one law of gravity, I’d like to ask you dad, how do you stay steady at the helm when everything is chaos? Or is it just that being at the helm is being alone, trying to sort out a tenth of chaos?
Na espera a boca fáiseme poesía
o ceo nocturno inzado de estrelas
e de infindas chairas de espazo escuro
onde sementar faíscas dos meus versos
–oOo–
While waiting, my mouth becomes poetry
the night sky full of stars
and of endless plains of dark space
where to sow sparks of my verses
abel abilheira