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Poetry From the July 2011 issue: The Arab Spring, Part I
the rook, the crow, the magpie,
like humans, one step and the next,
in order to walk lost in thought each could
become a talker; head
weighted down, learning almost reflective,
touch of iridescent light, each walks
measuring, meditates, shakes its head,
a foot, three traces and one more,
the other foot, on the roof, in the
snow, mind and eye, there,
feathers of air on earth.
Translation of “[el grajo, el cuervo, la urraca],” by Olvido García Valdés, from Y todos estábamos vivos (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 2006. Copyright Olvido García Valdés. By arrangement with the author. Translation copyright by Catherine Hammond. All rights reserved.
el grajo, el cuervo, la urraca
humanamente un paso y otro,
andar ensimismado que podría
llegar a ser conversador; el peso
del cerebro, aprendizaje casi reflexivo,
tornasolada luz tangente, camina
sopesando, medita, cabecea,
un pie, tres huellas y otra más,
otro pie, en el tejado, en la
nieve, cerebro y ojo, ahí,
plumas del aire en tierra.
Olvido García ValdésOlvido García Valdés
Olvido García Valdés was born in Asturias, in northern Spain, during the era of Francisco Franco. She uses the white space on the page to intensify the sense of a world where language is dangerous, meaning signaled. In 2007 García Valdés won Spain’s highest award in poetry, the Premio Nacional, or National Poetry Prize, for her book Y todos estábamos vivos/And We Are All Alive. García Valdés published seven books of poetry prior to this volume. Several of these also won important prizes in Spain.
Translated from SpanishSpanish by Catherine HammondCatherine Hammond
Catherine Hammond holds BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MFA from Arizona State University in Creative Writing. My own poems have been anthologized in Fever Dreams: Contemporary Arizona Poetry from University of Arizona Press and in Yellow Silk from Warner Books. Poetry publications include the Chicago Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Laurel Review, Mississippi Review, North American Review, and many others. She has received three Pushcart nominations and was a runner-up for “Discovery”/The Nation four times.This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only. You can order presentation-ready copies for distribution by contacting us at info@wordswithoutborders.org.
