Translated from Galician
I didn’t shoot
obviously not
but the pelt of the she-bear was exactly my height
and I know how to suckle babies
We leave winter behind
the skulls of ancestor women
and the negative of hands on the walls of the cave
You, poet
you desire us
desire the crystalline waters of the river
and the raw fish we devour
the honey of our mouths
above all the swarm at the roof of yours
the psyche
is extended
doesn’t realize it
Non disparei
claro que non
pero a pel da osa era xusto do meu talle
e sei aleitar as crías
Abandonamos o inverno
os cranios das ancestrais
e o negativo das maos nas paredes da caverna
Ti, poeta
deséxasnos
desexas as augas cristalinas do río
e o peixe cru que devoramos
o mel das nosa bocas
sobre todo o enxameo no ceo da túa
a psique
é extensa
non o sabe
✦✦✦
It’s Aphrodite who extracts the limit
from a problem
from a skein of wool,
we mention these forms as the illimited is alive in all of them,
as in the womb of every viviparous animal
Aphrodite is the embryo and core of the embryo
is born on the waters
upon a conch
upon the thousand paths
upon those waters poured over you
at a fount sculpted with the very concept,
the waters
were possibly diverted
in their ancient channels spring flourishes
as in a scar
From my steps no one notices levitation
I walk at a slight distance from the earth
shrouded in darkness
“you’re an angel?”
“it could be interpreted that way”
she answered in crossing her wings of ash of smoke
“but,” she continued, “it may also be that my sandals have wings
to let me walk on roses”
“will your feet crush the petals of April?”
We are those girls who in tossing the dice
unleash the stars
and the eyes of needles
we live in celestial republics
At the moment of conception it’s imprinted in you
venerate it
É Afrodita quen extrae o límite
desde un problema
desde un nobelo de lá,
sinalamos estas formas para indicar que o ilimitado vive en todas,
sucede na matriz de calquera vivípara
é Afrodita o embrión e a cerna do embrión
nace sobre as augas
sobre unha concha
sobre os mil camiños
sobre as que derramaron sobre ti
nunha pía na que se esculpe o concepto,
as augas
posiblemente foron desviadas
nas canles antigas florece a primavera
como nunha cicatriz
Dos meus pasos non se deduce levitación
camiño a escasa distancia da terra
envolta na tebra
“¿es un anxo?”
“podería interpretarse así”
contestou mentres cruzaba as asas de cinza de fume
“pero, continuou, tamén podería ser que levase asas nas sandalias
entón camiñaría sobre as rosas”
“¿pesarás as pétalas de abril?”
Somos as meniñas as que ao tirar a sorte
despregamos os astros
e os ollos das agullas
vivimos nas repúblicas celestes
No intre da concepción imprímete
venérea
✦✦✦
For millennia
ever since cities the gods and the dead
and before the eras began
an angel
as tall as one-fourth
of the hand-span of he whom I love
approaches the trill
the stilled rumour of waters
the magnificence of yellow in the reeds
indissolves into the visible
descends and drinks with the greatest abandon
above the waters
the birds as before
the grass
Desde os milenios
desde as cidades os deuses e os mortos
e desde antes das eras
un anxo
que ten por altura
a cuarta sinalada pola mao daquel que amo
vai cara o trilo
o rumor quedo das augas
o magnífico do amarelo nas xestas
desenvólvese no visible
desce e bebe no maior desamparo
sobre as augas
os mesmos paxaros
a herba
✦✦✦
Arch outward, words
the sky thirsts for the delta and the rain
that the rice fields reflect to you
the boar thirsts
the hare and the stone
you all construct value
and one night
between one year and another year
I implored the olive trees
to sustain the one who returns
clings to the tree trunk
and does not belong
Arqueádevos palabras
sede o ceo para o delta e a chuvia
que vos reflictan os campos de arroz
sede o xabaril
a lebre e a pedra
construíde o valor
e unha noite
entre un ano e outro ano
supliqueille ás oliveiras
sostede a quen regresa
apértase ao tronco
e non pertence
✦✦✦
Out of fear
of unbalancing perfection,
the bird composed of 8,760 hours
kept on opening the waters
and the wandering damsels tramped in those runnels
it was the Atlantic Ocean, etc.
Tivo medo
a desequilibrar a perfección,
a ave compúñase de 8.760 horas
ía abrindo as augas
e as damas errantes pisaban aquelas corgas
era o Atlántico etc
Chus Pato is among Europe’s greatest contemporary poets. Her pentalogy Decrúa (Delve) appeared in English in five books, all translated by Erín Moure: m-Talá, Charenton, Hordes of Writing, Secession, and Flesh of Leviathan. Her most recent book, Un libre favor, has also been translated by Erín Moure as The Face of the Quartzes, and is awaiting a publisher. Recipient of the Spanish Critics’ Prize and Losada Diéguez Prize, Pato was named 2013 Author of the Year by the Galician Booksellers’ Association and, in 2015, was recorded for the sound archives of the Woodberry Poetry Room (Harvard). Her Collected Poems are appearing in Spanish translation in 2019-2021, and she has books translated into Catalan, Dutch, Portuguese and Bulgarian as well as poems translated into many other languages. She lives in Galicia, Spain, where she is completing her next book of poems, Sonora. In 2017, she was elected to the Royal Galician Academy. She reads and speaks frequently throughout Europe and South America and has read as well in Canada and the USA, in Cuba, and in North Africa.
Erín Moure has published over forty books of poetry, essays, memoir, and translations and co-translations from French, Spanish, Galician, Portuguese, Portuñol and Ukrainian into English. Recent works are Planetary Noise: Selected Poetry of Erín Moure (Wesleyan, 2017), Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by Toots (New Star, 2017), Wilson Bueno’s Paraguayan Sea (Nightboat, 2017), Lupe Gómez’s Camouflage (Circumference, 2019); a co-traduction with Roman Ivashkiv of Yuri Izdryk’s Smokes (Lost Horse); In Leaf, an annotated edition of her translation of Rosalía de Castro’s New Leaves; and her own The Elements (Anansi). 2020 saw Moure translations of Uxío Novoneyra’s The Uplands: Book of the Courel and other poems (Veliz), Juan Gelman’s Sleepless Nights Under Capitalism (Eulalia), and Chantal Neveu’s This Radiant Life (Book*hug). Moure holds two honorary doctorates from universities in Canada and Spain, was 2017 WPR Creative Fellow at the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard, 2019 international translator in residence at The Queen’s College, Oxford University, and a 2020 Kelly Writers House Fellow at UPenn.