Thursday, May 28, 2015

A translation from Luz Pichel's tra(n)shumancias

I gift you this leaf

you said
in a letter

here gramma     take this leaf I found
it’s dusty
it’s called luz  |  light

a thin green thread an oval sketch
and the moon rolling along a rock
a blossom smell 

it’s called orange she said it’s something to eat
I bought it at the market, for you

it’s no easy thing, either, a chick hatching
if there’s no wheathead
if there’s no waiting
if there’s nowhere

sometimes when they’re born their house cracks
they leave

luz     but the leaf’s nerves     are covered then
in dust
but there’s no getting mixed up          but blowing

the woman gathered up the wheathead from the ground
this'n hasn't much flour but
it will have purpose

an orange falls the moment you were passing by
it rolls            redolent

I wanted to make something simple to give you
to give them
to give y'all
some kind of old age
of death even
something like an orange peel spiral
when you get the whole thing
(the girl from pedro’s house she didn’t manage
either, got started wrong)
sometimes the skin tears and breaks

here     luz     an orange I found it in the air
and luz isn’t even luz
it isn’t even a falling leaf
—there there’s one there’s one there! (someone’s celebrating something)

a woman on the threshold peeks out
she looks from way far off
it was called an orange     it was easy to peel     it came off in one piece
it had learned how to fall simply

upon itself     all together.

~luz pichel // tra(n)shumancias // (2015)
trans. neil anderson