by Joseba Sarrionandia
Quand nous en serons au temps des cerises...
Jean Baptiste Clément
It's cherry season now, but there are no cherries
to be seen anywhere.
Yes, this is their time, because cherry season is
from May to July.
The trees flowered in March and April,
but still there aren't any cherries.
It would be nice, as it's cherry season,
to see
a sweet cherry or, if not, perhaps a bitter one.
Sweet cherries are red,
the bitter ones are yellowish; the bitter cherry flowered
late, later than the sweet.
But nowadays you hardly see cherries anymore,
nor cherry trees.
A cherry tree needs special soil
in order to grow right,
it won't give fruit just anywhere, especially not
sweet cherries.
It's true that bitter cherries come a bit more easily
than sweet ones,
even without the right soil you can still glean
bitter cherries.
These days you won't find cherries, sweet
or bitter.
It's best to plant a cherry tree so its sheltered
toward the northeast.
In dry lands it doesn't grow right, a cherry tree
grows stunted in the dry.
You won't see cherries big or small.
We will have to plant some cherry trees.
The cold winds on the plains, in open valleys,
are most detrimental.
Late winter and early spring frosts
are usually the worst.
The harvest depends on how the weather's been
throughout the year,
but it's hard to tell what sort of cherries
will be there for the picking.
Who knows if the cherry trees will grow, if they will have a chance to flower!
The season will come, certainly,
actually it's here already, but perhaps
there are no cherries.
[Orginal title: "Gerezien sasoia iritsi da". This English text based on Isaac Xubín's Galician translation "Xa é tempo de cereixas"]
