poetry in action features work by poets from around the world, translated into English.
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poetry in action #43
from SONORA by Chus Pato
translated by Erín Moure
translator’s note
Chus Pato’s Sonora holds the resonance of human life facing an inevitable finality of voice. It is the voice of a feminine lineage: the death faced most centrally is that of the poet’s mother, in a book dedicated to her daughters. Crucially, it includes the soundwaves of her native language, the language of her mother, as well as the granitic fissures and domes of the place where this language, Galician, is spoken. This lineage cherishes others too, poets who give voice to this language and keep it alive, and keep Chus Pato alive, even (but I hope not) on the path to planetary extinction: thus poems dedicated to Xabier Cordal, Alba Cid, Manuel Igrexas, Gonzalo Hermo, Oriana Méndez. Sonorous and resounding indeed is this voice of a woman who in facing death, faces place, history, language, and the sky and stones. I receive it viscerally when reading Sonora, an extraordinary contribution to world poetry—and to poetry in English now—by one of Europe’s greatest poets, a poet who has existed among us in English translation for twenty years now, who participates in our poetic cultures in English. Who, because of a Galician national and familial history of poverty, colonization, and emigration, feels herself to be not simply European but of the Americas as well. As translator, I bring to English her song and the history of a minority tongue, Galician, from a land that refuses to be suppressed. A land of vanishings, of returns, and of a language that pulses with life.
///
Mother
the saints flew off with you
you stole them away
they were dressed in sheepskins
like the skirts of the Gudea,
the Baptist had strong legs
veins etched like a gladiator’s
and curls, like René’s
plus a bit of R’s voice so as to utter I
in the mouth
I write accordingly
the night opens and falls
a womb
in the deserts
Nai
voaron os santos contigo
leváchelos
vestían pelicas de la
como as saias dos Gudea,
as pernas do Bautista eran fortes
as veas inchadas como as dun gladiador
os rizos, os de René
algo da súa voz para dicir eu
na boca
así escribo
a noite abre e cae
un ventre
nos desertos
///
Just as the butterfly
pale
flits over the black earth
the field ploughed yesterday
and due to its length
to that flight it commits its life
and at the edge of the greenery
is lost to sight
accordingly
Así como a bolboreta
na súa brancura
sobrevoa a terra negra
a leira arada onte
e debido á extensión
nese voo compromete a vida
e na linde da verdura
se perde para os ollos
así
///
In the month of October I witnessed
the inimitable vibration of the wings of a hummingbird.
On the cusp between November and December
my eyes met the magnetic blue of the kingfisher
ancestral halcyon of the Greeks
and I even had the fortune to experience
how it parted the creek waters at the highest speed.
Yesterday I observed a barn owl rising in flight
from one of the trees nearby
possibly a birch
it flew like a majestic tulle and somewhat shyly
the sensation was of being in the presence of Aphrodite.
While smoothing a bedsheet to iron it
I realized that our entire life
from cradle to grave takes place swathed in linens,
when breath takes its last and is expanded into the ether
fabrics take flight along with it
they accompany it in its departure and absolution
because of this, we can think.
Vallejo wrote a poem that speaks of the pyramids 3 3 3
in it no birds appear
we read
es el tiempo este anuncio de gran zapatería
de la muerte hacia la muerte
in turning the page
el tiempo tiene hun miedo ciempiés a los relojes*
The sky that gives us cover
when we are in the presence of a goddess
and witness the rise of the barn owl is jam-packed with stars
we contemplate it a long while.
Three, the serpent teaches us to shed our skin
Three, the serpent teaches us
that to bite an apple is to comprehend the laws of discourse.
Three, Adam knew the signs,
in his mouth voids were spinning in a loop just like time.
Our life is an image
the flight clear and light, the darkness dense
we take stock of the night’s power
and because of this, we can.
* César Vallejo, tr. Clayton Eschleman, from “I’m laughing”: It is time this advertisement of a great shoe store,/ it is time that marches barefoot/ from death toward death. And one page later, in a poem ending with “(Readers can give whatever title they like to this poem.)”: Time has aa centipedal fear of clocks. In the first quote, Pato skips the middle line. In the Gianuzzi/Smith translation: It is time, this great shoe-shop announcement,/ it is time, unshod, on the move/ from death toward death. and Time has a centipede fear of clocks. Another translation? Time is a giant shoe store advertisement,/ time that moves shoeless,/ from death toward death. And, to respect the “hun” of Vallejo: Time has ah centipedal fear of clocks.
No mes de outubro comprobei
a vibración insuperable das ás dun colibrí.
Na raia entre novembro e decembro
cruzóuseme nos ollos o azul magnético do martiño peixeiro
o antergo alción dos gregos
e aínda tiven a fortuna de sentir
como partía as augas do regato á maior das velocidades.
Onte observei unha curuxa alzando o voo
desde unha das árbores próximas
se cadra unha abidueira
voaba coma un tule de maxestade e algo tímida
a sensación foi estar en presenza de Afrodita.
Ao alisar unha saba para pasarlle o ferro
souben que toda a nosa vida
desde o berce á cova transcorre envolta en lenzos,
cando o alento é o derradeiro e se expande no éter
as teas voan ao seu redor
acompáñano na súa marcha e absolución
por esta razón podemos pensar.
Vallejo escribiu un poema no que fala das pirámides 3 3 3
nel non hai comparecencia de aves
lemos
es el tiempo este anuncio de gran zapatería
de la muerte hacia la muerte
ao pasar a páxina
el tiempo tiene hun miedo ciempiés a los relojes.
O ceo que nos cubre
cando estamos na presenza dunha deusa
e asistimos ao alzarse da curuxa é callado de estrelas
contemplámolo con retardo.
Tres, a serpe apréndenos a mudar de pel
Tres, a serpe apréndenos
que morder unha mazá é comprender as leis do discurso.
Tres, Adán coñecía os signos
na súa boca xiraban baleiros como xira en bucle o tempo.
A nosa vida é unha imaxe
o voo branco e lixeiro, as tebras mestas
medimos a potencia da noite,
por esta causa podemos.
///
Chus Pato is a celebrated Galician poet. Her latest of a dozen books, Sonora (Xerais, 2023), received the 2024 Spanish National Book Award in poetry and the 2024 Spanish Critics’ Prize for poetry in Galician. Her books have appeared in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, English, Dutch, Bulgarian, with individual poems in many other languages.
Erín Moure is a poet and translator from Galician, French, Spanish, Portunhol into English, and from Galician and English into French. She’s translated Chus Pato since 2007. Her latest book is Theophylline: A Poetic Migration via the modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop and Grimké (Anansi, 2023). Her translation of Sonora will appear from Veliz Books in 2026.