MUSEUM POETICA: Translucine

Four poems by Chus Pato translated from the Galician by Erín Moure

Translator’s Intro

Chus Pato, poet, moves through civilization with calibrated syllables and the deep beat of aortic blood; her new work is riverine, has the eyes and flight of quick unnoticed birds, the accuracy and mystery of a viaduct. She writes in the language of the planets and stars, Galician. It is a language afincada, settled, in the green Atlantic NW of the Iberian peninsula, in today’s Spain. Galician long ago injected ancient Celtic accents into the vernacular Latin of imperial soldiers, philosophers and geographers at what once was the far edge of Earth to the tribes of Europe. The Galician language suffered under the adminstrative Spanish of early imperialism, under the Catholic Church, and under the 40 year dictatorship of Franco, and even today falters under the weight of commerce and centralizing right-wing programs. It is a language of the free. When Pato looks to the beginning of writing, she sees east past Greece: Mesopotamia. These poems come from her native land in the far West, from The Face of the Quartzes, my translation yet unpublished of her Un libre favor (Galaxia, 2019). Her title echoes Immanuel Kant on aesthetic freedom (impossible in English as “free favor” means commerce and we’ve forgotten Kant). My title refers to the Celtic tombs and the quartzes in their East face that catch sunrise; here and for a moment, humans can move between the world of the living and that of the dead.

—Erín Moure

Montreal-based poet and translator Erín Moure has translated Chus Pato’s 21st century pentalogy Decrúa [Delve]: m-Talá (Shearsman, 2009), Charenton (Shearsman, 2007), Hordes of Writing (Shearsman, 2011), Secession (Book*hug, 2014), Flesh of Leviathan (Omnidawn, 2016). She’s also translated a poetics essay, At the Limit (Zat-So Productions, 2018) and is currently seeking a publisher for The Face of the Quartzes. Her own most recent books are Planetary Noise: Selected Poetry of Erín Moure (Wesleyan U Press, 2017) and The Elements (Anansi, 2019).

Things’d been tidied up any old way
when they find room in the mind, when you decipher the map in dreams
they settle in comfortably
Imagine
that you’d never spent a month in traction in a hospital room in Μεσολόγγι
that when you stood up you’d not walked to where the Greeks keep radiance
that you’d not gone the distance between the building
and the patios of September
in front of an ice cream
while you ponder
“if 500 years ago the Bible’d been translated into the language in which I write and if we, tillers of Galician soil, had had
access to printing presses, would History have been different?”
The city will eternally be stone
on one side the arch extended
kilometres above the concrete viaduct 
there is nothing quite as “natural” as machines
Suddenly there are cherries and nor’westers [1]
the inlet is a trampoline
Who knew
the future’d be so late in coming

no one ever thinks of drinking water from mirrors

As cousas arrombaralas de calquera xeito
cando atopen sitio na mente, cando en soños descifres o mapa
acomodaranse no seu lugar
Imaxina
que nunca estiveras un mes inmobilizada nun cuarto do hospital en Μεσολόγγ
que ao terte en pé non camiñases ata onde os gregos gardan o fulgor
que non percorreras a distancia entre o edificio 
e as terrazas de setembro 
diante dunha copa de xeado
mentres preguntas 
“¿se hai cincocentos anos a Biblia fora traducida ao idioma no que escribo e os labregos que somos tivesen aceso á
imprenta, iso cambiaría a Historia?” 
A cidade será sempre a pedra
dun lado o arco tendido
quilómetros arriba o viaduto de formigón 
nada hai tan “natural” como as máquinas
As cereixas e as galernas chegaron de vez
o trampolín na ría
Imaxina
canto se retrasa o futuro

a ninguén se ocorre xa beber a auga dos espellos

What to call this life
composed of a woods and the memory of an arch?
“yes, it’s distinctive”
it brushes past you on the balcony 
like a beauty whose dress you admire
or how she ties her hair,
every life comes
from afar
this one is strange to me
marks the greatest of distances,
intimate
and improper [2]
like the character of what I write
My mount 
halts and drinks and language goes mute
on the far side of the river the ideal rises
its thinking wanders in the woods
its voice clear-pitched
clear distillate
limpid apocalypse
“if the poet is the one lost
and who in loss went back to the indigence of the natal
whoever reads must return to their nativity
mute as a trout
illiterate as stones and Thracian warriors
and learn all over again in the poem
in the syllabary of the poem”
Civilization is a memory that is extended
its legions succeed one another
for some women they are possibility
lucky you if they desire you as simian 
or mare
or she-rat
where there are men, there’s grain
This life prospers here
awakens and in front of it is a dorsal meridian 
it can, in fact, be recognized by the dog that licked its
hands
and can shoot an arrow under twelve sickles
but its destination is not Ithaca
it is open to transport
falls to the ground
reflexive
responds only to ardour and the ash of stars 
It answered that yes
it would like to die with me
but not in that bed
“so, the ancient massif was a heavens?”
“no, it was a hill that was rounded and celestial”
at the first wink of the stars, Venus rises dances and falls
into the chestnut blossom
Eros generates her

Como chamarlle a esta vida
que se compón dunha fraga e a lembranza dun arco?
“si, é distinta”
debrúzaste no balcón e pasa
como unha beldade á que lle admiras o vestido
ou como prendeu o cabelo,
todas viñeron de lonxe
as vidas
esta éme allea
marca a maior das distancias,
impropia
e íntima
como o carácter do que escribo
A miña montura 
detense e bebe e a linguaxe enmudece
da outra banda do río constrúe o ideal
o seu discorrer erra nas fragas
é branca a voz
como as bebidas brancas
branco apocalipse 
“se poeta é quen se perdeu
e na súa perda tornou á indixencia do natal
quen le debería regresar a súa natividade 
muda como unha troita
analfabeta como as pedras e os guerreiros tracios
e aprender de novo no poema
no silabario do poema”
A civilización é unha lembranza que se estende
sucédense as lexións
son posibilidade para algunhas mulleres
sorte se te desexan simia
ou poldra
ou rata
onde hai homes hai cereal
Esta vida prospera aquí
acorda e enfronte ten a dorsal meridiana
pode, efectivamente, ser recoñecida polo can que lle
lambeu as maos
e facer pasar unha frecha baixo doce fouces
pero o seu obxectivo non é Itaca
ábrese ao transporte
cae na terra
reflexiva
só responde ante o ardor e a cinza dos astros
Contestou que si
que querería morrer comigo 
pero non nese leito
“¿entón, o antigo macizo era un ceo?
non, era unha lomba de condición abovedada e celeste”
ao estrelecer Venus álzase danza e derrámase na flor do
castiñeiro
Eros élle xeratriz

I spent the day close to earth and nightfall
but close right from dawn and the swallows
and the grass and the spikes of the grass,
the perfect hill didn’t appear all day long
Death
in Pompeiian frescoes
is meditative
there are forests in whose core
grow birches 
defensive
like the shield of quartzes
in the east wall of megolithic tombs
Nobody
not even the angel
saw the progenitors come together
this incarnation lasted millennia
time will endure,
the vault that holds the ash of goddesses
or of the one
sacrificed on the wall of the cave 
in the mask of a bird
ithyphallic
It treads on the tongue that divvies up eras
It’s transformed whenever
there’s a whiff of honeysuckle

the spirit

Pasei o día preto da terra e o anoitecer
pero preto desde o amencer e as andoriñas
e a herba e a espiga da herba,
a lomba perfecta non compareceu en toda a xornada
A morte 
nos frescos pompeianos 
é meditativa 
hai bosques aos que na soá
médranlles vidos 
defendidos 
como a coiraza de seixos
cara o leste das mámoas
Ninguén
nin sequera o anxo
viu o encontro entre os proxenitores
durou milenios esta encarnación
durará o tempo,
a bóveda que garda a cinza das deusas 
ou daquel 
sacrificado nas paredes da caverna
coa máscara dun paxaro
itifálico
Trepa na lingua que reparte os tempos
transfórmase de cada vez
ole a madreselva 

o espírito 

In other portraits 
death
holds the reed pen to her chin [3]
she’s lost in her own thoughts
or in the flight of thinking
like someone who suspends the sounds of the world
to hear only one
that one with two identical syllables
and she returns
the girl in a skirt the colour of saffron returns
white walls return and myrtle hedges 
the aroma of dead children
death 
is two
girls
one can weave garments that burst into flame
the other’s the abducted or Nocturna or April lass
the seamstress is the owner of the golden fleece
and answers to the sun
she who comes from afar
listens to syllables
turns her head back like the bison of Tuc d’Audoubert
—she is not Lot’s daughter—
contemplates her kingdom [4]
doesn’t bother to recall the abduction
the topography of the volcano is among the films of her
life

Noutros retratos
a morte 
sostén o cálamo a altura das tempas
perdida nunha atención propia
ou no voo do pensamento
coma quen suspende os sons do mundo
para ouvir só un
aquel que ten dúas sílabas xemelgas 
e volve
volve a rapaza coa saia da cor do azafrán 
volven as paredes brancas e as sebes de mirto
o aroma dos meniños defuntos
Son dúas
rapazas 
a morte
unha sabe tecer vestidos que abrasan
outra é a raptada ou nocturna ou mociña de abril
a costureira é a dona do carneiro dourado
e responde ante o sol
a que vén de lonxe
escoita as sílabas
xira o rostro como os bisontes de Tuc d’Auboubert
contempla o seu reino
—ela non é filla de Lot—
nin se molesta en lembrar o rapto
a topografía do volcán é un dos filmes da súa
vida

[1] Fiercely violent winds that batter Galicia from the north-west Atlantic are galernas… the bitter winds off the North Atlantic coasts of America are nor’westers.

[2] The order of these lines in the book is “improper/ and intimate” but I heard Pato read it the other way on November 14, 2019 in Oxford, so I read it that way too and I like it so kept it.

[3] It’s Medea, says Pato, but in some portraits, the figure with the reed stylus is Sappho.

[4] Here too, Pato on 14 November 2019 read these lines reversed from the way they are in the book: I stayed true here to the reading: : —she is not Lot’s daughter—/ contemplates her kingdom.