Ricardo Cázares

Translated from Spanish by Joe Imwalle

 

(the rest

begins with brambles

bushes

                        mulberry trees sprouting

      at the base of the cypress

 

                   and I suppose it was late

                   for tall grass it is late                     yes

                        tomorrow        while you pass the fir trees

                        on the way to the station

                                    tomorrow it rains

                                    on a fruit stall in the market

 

(so I went to the end of the avenue

following the signs that in the end

did not say what you were looking for

 

            yes        says life

            in theory in

            attitude

                                    intentions

                                    will be

                                    rewarded

                                    be more daring in pursuit…

a cookie

      a sign from the fortune

                           in the won-ton

 

it will make you feel young again and

loved, more

loved in the future

         where chores and joys

      were postponed

 

(not said in the past perfect tense

of someone living in Henan Province

丁戊奇荒

and that tomorrow

we walked to Sarlat

 

                        and it was good

it does us good

                  that path

 

 

 

piles of paper

cigarette butts

cups

boxes with memories

from another life

books

picture frames

blotches from chores

on the wooden deck

relics

reliquaries

the knob that winds a mechanism

to make time sing

 

            “we die alone, lie alone

                                    (nor be in bodies lost)”

 

toys

objects that may

one of these days

on their own

become useful to someone

 

though “There are no impervious skins or membranes in

nature, no ‘outlines’. Nothing is ever quite isolate.”

 

in the plaza

the municipal authority recently

ordered the planting

of a new path

of poplars

 

all afternoon

gusts of wet wind

 

you called at three

to see if I ate

if we finished

 

while watching the poplar saplings

bend

I told you a story

about my mother

 

they tell me

that verses on a wall

that were facing the Jordan

have been erased

 

 

 

on her father’s map

his house is a nameless

green smudge

 

there are specks of very fine dust

on the map from nineteen thirty-six

 

there’s a pair of tiny fragile legs

a trace of chitin

 

on the map

his house is a pistachio-colored blotch

where you can’t see the houses

 

his house is a field traversed

by a jagged line that ends

without touching the cobalt blue ink of the Atlantic

 

his house is a green smudge

dotted with yellow specks

 

on this spot a butterfly died

 

on this spot someone ate a cookie

 

on the map there are plains

 

on the map there’s no implication of grasslands

 

in his house every flower

every moth

is made of a saffron dust

 

in his house he remembers the summer

in which the wind splattered the green stain

of his father’s house

 

a nameless house

except one line that says Presas

then fades out without disrupting the sea

 

the map doesn’t mention

the name of his father

 

the map is a green stain

on the table lined with grooves

 

upon waking

the butterfly flutters over a river

 

and is confused by light from the window

 

 

 

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE. I first read Es un decir, Ricardo Cázares’s seventy-five-page serial poem, in the fall of 2019. Soon thereafter, time became a confusing thing to measure — and it was good to have a project with which to shelter in place.

 

The art of translation requires an eye for detail while maintaining a bird’s-eye view: I’d get caught up on a single word choice, then pull back and reread from the start for context. At the same time, translation requires acceptance that there’s always more out of reach. The speaker of these poems seems to be in a similar state of near and far — often in a liminal space on the verge of a greater understanding.

 

The book weaves together quotes of poets ranging from Arnaut Daniel, an Occitan troubadour of the twelfth century, to Basil Bunting, who in turn looks to thirteenth century Japan for the poet turned hermit, Komo no Chomei. Wallace Stevens is there, as well as Ezra Pound. Cázares is a translator too. He’s the first with a complete Spanish translation of Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems, as well as Robert Creeley’s Pieces and several others. Olson and Creeley’s attention to ear and breath is present throughout as the lines shift across the page.

 

While the book first appeared in Mexico in 2013, I believe it’s just as timely now. The poems mirror a world that feels both intimate and international, too big and too small. These are open poems that reject tying the endings with a bow. The text slips easily from sound to sound and present to future to past and back again. The effect can be trance-inducing. I tried to carry this over into English.

 

I hope readers find enough in this excerpt to seek out more or return for multiple readings. The text welcomes meaning-making from those who engage. And those who do so may find that the poetic moment is at hand in their own lives, ringing across time in all directions.

 

[N.B. A posting of fragments from Cázares’s earlier book titled < > appeared previously on Poems and Poetics.]