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