Poblaciones lejanas
Sus relieves candentes, sus pasajes, son un salmo
luctuoso y monocorde;
los niños corren y gritan,
como pequeños lapsos, en un eterno, enmudecido
sepia demente. Hay ciudades, también,
que dulcifican la luz del sol:
En sus espejos de oro crepuscular las aguas abren y
encienden
cercos de aromas y caricias rituales; en sus baños:
las risas, las paredes reverdecientes
-Sus templos beben del mar.
Vagos lindes desiertos (Las caravanas, los vendavales, las
noches combas y despobladas, las tardes lentas, son
arenas franqueables
que las separan) mirajes, ecos que las enturbian,
que las empalman;
un gusto líquido a sal en las furtivas comisuras;
Y esta evocada resonancia.
Distant Cities
Their incandescent reliefs, their passages, they are
a mournful, single-chorded psalm;
the children run squalling
like tiny slips in an endless, hushed
and distracted sepia. There are also cities
that sweeten sunlight;
In their mirrors of golden gloaming, waters unfold and
ignite
pockets of aroma and ritual caresses; in their baths:
laughter, the greening walls;
-Their temples sip from the ocean.
Hazy deserted boundaries (The caravans, foehns, the bulging
unmanned nights, heavy afternoons,
it is loose sand that holds them apart) mirages, echoes
that cloud
them,
that bind them together;
a liquid taste for salt in the furtive corners;
And this triggered echo.
Desde esta luz
Desde esta luz que incide, con delicada
flama,
la eternidad. Desde este jardín atento,
desde esta sombra.
Abre su umbral el tiempo,
y en él se imantan
los objetos.
Se ahondan en él,
y él los sostiene así:
claros, rotundos,
generosos. Frescos llenos de su alegre volumen,
de su esplendor festivo
de su hondura estelar.
Sólidos y distintos
alían su espacio
y su momento, su huerto exacto
para ser sentidos. Como piedras precisas
en un jardín. Como lapsos trazados
sobre un templo.
Una puerta, una silla,
el mar.
La blancura profunda
desfasada
del muro. Las líneas breves
que lo centran.
Deja el tamarindo un fulgor
entre la noche espesa.
Suelta el cántaro el ruido
solar del agua.
Y la firme tibieza de sus manos; deja la noche densa,
la noche vasta y desbordada sobre el hondo caudal,
su entrañable
tibieza.
From this light
From this light into which, with delicate
flicker,
eternity falls. From this wakened garden,
from this shadow.
The threshold opens to time
in which the things of the world
are magnetized.
They take on time’s depth
and it sustains them and offers them up:
clear, round,
generous. Freshened and filled with _time’s exultant volume, with
its festive splendor,
with its deep starriness.
Solid and particular,
their space
and their moment fuse, their very orchard
of sensation. Like discrete stones
in a garden. Like pauses parsed
inside a temple.
A door, a chair,
the sea.
The limitless, inconstant
whiteness
of the wall. The few lines
that hold it together.
The tamarind casts its sheen
into the thick night.
Mexican poet and translator Coral Bracho was born in Mexico City, where she still lives and teaches. She is the author of several collections of poetry, including Firefly under the Tongue: Selected Poems (2008), translated by poet Forrest Gander; Cuarto de hotel (2007); Ese espacio, ese jardín (2003), which won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize; Tierra de entraña ardiente (1992), a collaboration with painter Irma Palacios; and El ser que va a morir (1982). Bracho’s impact on Mexican poetry has been compared to poet John Ashbery’s influence on American verse. Bracho’s layered, long-lined poems attend equally to sound patterns and lush, unspooling imagery. As Gander observes, “Her diction spills out along ceaselessly shifting beds of sound. … Bracho’s early poems make sense first as music, and music propels them.” She is the author of eleven books of poems, plus two children poetry books, including Tierra de entraña ardiente, in which she collaborated with the painter Irma Palacios. Bracho’s honors include the Aguacalientes National Poetry Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship.