There are poems whose gist I imperfectly apprehend. Putting such a poem into an acquired language can be a form of beaconing for bounce-back from latent referents. It’s therapy for bafflement. The drill induces closer confrontation with the text, on one hand, and gives an airing to my cloistered Spanish on the other. There’s potential for lossy gain: Certain of the poem’s images may stick faster in the mind; a hint of narrative or of grounding context may gel; a turn of phrase may grow in appeal. What amounts to a deflecting process can provide a path to Pyrrhic defeat, as it were; no victory, to be sure, but a modicum of salvage and a hint of closure.
“Alarm” by Bradley Trumpfheller is in Poetry, July/August 2023.
Alarm
Self are you toward the pool
No then closer
Yo estás hacia la piscina
No entonces más cerca
Night’s not on the list
of the glass-green water
La noche no está en la lista
del agua color de vidrio verde
It loves your legs the water
It is mica and night honey
mushrooms and legs
Adora tus piernas el agua
Es mica y miel nocturna
champiñones y piernas
I tell you about my childhood
You hum over
your future tattoos
Te hablo de mi niñez
Tú canturreas sobre
tus tatuajes futuros
Long hands Particular
islands Plums
Manos largas Ciertas
islas Ciruelas
It will be such
a sad century
you say
Será
un siglo tan triste
dices
Do you really
want to survive it
De veras
deseas sobrevivirlo
Green-glass water
The shapes of leaves
Agua color de vidrio verde
Las formas de hojas
clotting in a fuller
patience of water
coagulando en una paciencia
más llena de agua
Urn
Water
Urna
Agua
Flood
come through the door
Inundación
llegada por la puerta
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