Enriqueta Ochoa // Anthony Seidman
MUSEUM POETICA: TRANSLUCINE
Ten poems by Enriqueta Ochoa translated from the Spanish by Anthony Seidman
Translator’s Introduction
Enriqueta Ochoa was born in Torreon, Mexico, in 1928. A northern city, far from the culture of Mexico City, Torreon had little to offer for an aspiring poet, yet Ochoa found a fellow poet and mentor named Rafael del Rio. Belonging to the same generation as Rosario Castellanos and Jaime Sabines, Ochoa produced a poetry that shares some similarities with her more famous peers — especially for the personal tone — yet her verse is decidedly more oneiric and numinous, and less conversational. She counted San Juan de la Cruz and Saint Teresa of Avila as the wellsprings for her own poetry. For decades, she published little, preferring to hone her craft, all while loathing self-promotion and publicity. She gave herself fully to her job as an elementary school teacher, and to her poetry when not in the classroom. Ochoa considered her poetry to be:
the discovery of the unusual in the everyday. After having descended to the deepest areas of being, beyond the crossing of the subconscious, where the sublime and the terror go hand in hand, the word names the essence and existence of man. It is the world of experiences that best configures symbols, magic, images, the liberation of concrete words.
Indeed, contemporary poets like Elsa Cross have pointed out Ochoa as one of the few true ecstatic voices in 20th-century Mexican poetry. Although Ochoa’s first collection, Las urgencias de un Dios was published in 1950, followed by other collections like Las vírgenes terrestres (1968), it was not only until she gathered together a selected poems entitled Retorno de Electra (1978) that her work became widely known. Since her death in 2008, her readership continues to grow. Her work is included more in studies of Mexican poetry, and her collected work is a popular book among younger poets. Enriqueta Ochoa had one daughter, the talented poet Marianne Toussaint Ochoa who lives and writes in Mexico City. The poems in this selection were culled from Retorno de Electra. As someone who has read Ochoa’s work for many years, I picked the poems that left me breathless when I first encountered them. It is also fitting that I bought my used copy from the same sidewalk book vendor in Juarez — around 1996 or 1997 — who sold me a copy of Salvador Novo (whose poetry I later translated with David Shook). Although vastly different in tone, both poets were considered as marginal for diverse reasons, and yet both continue to nourish the poetry of Mexico.
— Anthony Seidman
Enriqueta Ochoa.
Anthony Seidman is a poet and translator from Los Angeles, and who has lived for significant stretches of time in Mexico’s northern border region, in Ciudad Juarez and Mexicali. His most recent collections of poetry include A Sleepless Man Sits Up In Bed (Eyewear Publishing, 2016) and Cosmic Weather (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020). His full length translations include A Stab in theDark (LARB Classics, 2019) by Facundo Bernal, Smooth-Talking Dog: Selected Poems ofRoberto Castillo (Phoneme Media, 2016), Caribbean Ants (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020) by Homero Pumarol and, forthcoming, Contra Natura by Rodolfo Hinostroza, to be published in early 2021 by Cardboard House Press. His poems, translations, reviews, and articles have been published in such journals as Dispatches from the Poetry Wars (for which he served as a contributing editor), New American Writing, Black Herald, Poetry International, Poets & Writers, The BitterOleander, Huizache, Ambit, Modern Poetry In Translation, Latin American Literature Today, and in publications from Chile, Mexico, and Argentina.
DESARRAIGAME
Para Francico Herrera Arce
Desarráigame ahora que un viento de sepulcros
me golpea en las arterias.
Desarráigame ahora…
Yo luché a tempestad de gritos en el vientre,
y te dije que no, que no, que no;
que en mí no dispersaras el polvo de otro polvo,
que no abrieras conmigo más rutas a la sangre,
mas mi voz fue enterrada por campanas de duelo
y espigada mi forma entre la piel y el suelo.
Tempestades de fuego conformaron mis venas,
leches trémulas de luna nutrieron mi epidermis
y un volante de furias fue timón de mi pecho.
Y yo siempre te dije,
que no, que no, que no;
que en mí no dispersaras el polvo de otro polvo,
y no hincaras más soles en el río de mis venas.
1950
Uproot Me
For Francisco Herrera Arce
Uproot me, now that a wind of graves
strikes me, within my arteries.
Uproot me now…
I struggled a thunderstorm of cries in your womb,
and I said to you No, No, Never;
that within me you would not scatter dust from another dust,
that you would not open within me more routes of blood,
yet my voice was buried by dueling bells
and my shape between skin and ground was covered with spikes.
Spitfire thunderstorms shaped my veins,
trembling moon milk nourished my epidermis
and a helm of furies guided my chest.
And I always said to you,
No, No, Never;
that within me you would not scatter dust from another dust,
and you will not plunge more suns into the river of my veins.
1950
Para Evadir El Cierzo de la Muerte Que Llega
Para Martín Reyes Vayassade
De ti lo habría amado todo:
tu cabeza como luz de topacio en el hastío,
el llanto, la caricia, la palabra brutal,
la soga que amansara mis ímpetus cerriles
y, sobre todo, el hijo.
Ese mar
que juntara la turbulencia de nuestras dos avideces.
Ese mar donde irían haciéndose profundos
de ternura los ojos.
Pero ni tú ni yo vivimos el momento propicio para amarnos.
De paso en paso, un abismo,
en cada oreja, una espina,
en cada latido, un monte de zozobra
quebrantando el resuello.
Y de qué sirve odiar, forzar,
hacerse añicos dentro
si todo es ir buscándonos,
arropándonos para evadir el cierzo
de la muerte que llega.
Lucha por subsistir,
por mirar nuestro polvo crecerse en otro polvo
para encontrar de nuevo la oquedad amorosa
que libre a los sentidos
de la asfixia más pura de la muerte:
la soledad.
Pero hay quienes nacimos para morir en nuestro propio cuerpo.
No hay puertas. No hay ventanas.
Las ventanas incitan sin saciarnos.
Las puertas nos liberan.
Mas no hay puertas ni ventanas.
Hay la fiebre en los ojos
que va tras de la luz estremeciéndose.
Hay la sangre a galope.
El desvaído paso recorriendo las calles aturdidas
de sinfonolas, magnavoces, estridencias de claxon.
Y el viento barriendo hojuelas doradas de elote
en el mes de junio.
Y la fresca respiración de un cine
donde ruedan botellas de cocacola
y envolturas de Milky Way,
y la arena caliente del aire sofocado.
Y el amor, ¿dónde?
Y los amantes, ¿dónde?
Y tú, amor, viento, canto... ¿dónde?
1952
To Evade the Impending Icy Gust of Death
For Martin Reyes Vayssade
I would have loved everything you exuded:
your head, topaz-light brightening weariness,
the weeping, the caresses, the brutal word,
the thick rope taming my stubborn impulses,
and especially, the child…
that sea
which would join the tough turbulence of our greed;
that sea in which our eyes would continue deepening with tenderness;
but neither you nor I lived in the right moment to love one another.
Step by step, an abyss,
in each ear, a thorn,
in each heartbeat, a mountain of anxiety
leaving one’s breath rasping.
And what’s the point or hating, forcing,
becoming crazed inside,
if everything means seeking one another,
even in love, seeking another,
wrapping ourselves to evade the icy gust
of death impending?
Fighting to subsist,
to gaze at our dust growing into another dust,
to find once again the loving hollow
unleashing the senses from Death’s perfect asphyxia:
loneliness.
But some of us were born to die in our own body.
No doors. No windows.
The windows incite without satisfying us;
doors liberate us,
yet there are no doors, no windows.
Eyes burn with fever,
trailing after the light, shuddering.
Blood gallops.
Stumbling through streets in a daze,
jukeboxes, loudspeakers, cars honking ...
and the wind sweeping golden tresses of corn
in the month of June.
And the refreshing air within a movie-palace,
where bottles of Coca-Cola spin
over Milky-Way wrappers,
and the hot sand of stifled air,
and love….where?
and the lovers…where?
and you, love, song…where?
1952
EL HOMBRE
Para Wenceslao Rodríguez
¿Qué ha visto el hombre?
Nada.
Ciego y desnudo llegó,
desnudo y ciego se irá
del polvo al polvo.
Un gesto de ternura podría salvar al mundo,
pero el hombre jamás bajó los ojos
a ese pozo de luz.
—Llorarás, le dijeron,
mas no es fácil llorar.
Llorar es desprenderse,
irse en ríos de uno,
y el hombre sólo sabe
devorar y perderse.
No conoce más muros
que los que cercan su ciudad en sombras
y hasta allí ha bajado a envejecer,
a morir en sí mismo,
a sepultarse testarudo,
mientras la soledad circula por su cuerpo
como el viento por una casa en ruinas.
Yo insisto,
un gesto de ternura podría..., de pronto,
me irrito, tiemblo, río, me quebranto.
Yo soy el hombre.
1955
The Man
For Wenceslao Rodriguez
What has the man seen?
Nothing.
Blind and naked he arrived,
naked and blind he will depart
from dust into dust.
A single gesture of tenderness could save the world,
but the man never lowered his gaze
into that well of light.
“You will weep, they told him,
yet it is not easy to weep.
To weep means to relent,
to go off in rivers of one,
and the man knows only
to devour and lose himself.”
He knows of no other walls
except for those that surround
his city with shadows
and he has gone there to grow old,
to die within himself,
to stubbornly bury himself while
solitude circulates through his body
like wind through a ruined house.
I insist,
a gesture of tenderness could…, suddenly
I grow agitated, I tremble, I laugh, I break apart.
I am the man.
1955
PADRE
Para Macedonio y Teresa
Al montón de polvo que te cobija
bajé esta tarde;
la sal de la llanura ardía
bajo el árido resplandor del silencio
y un tifón de soledad golpeaba
contra la flor caliza de los cerros.
Yo te hablé con esa ternura indómita
que rompe dignidades,
y me quebré de bruces en la tierra;
allí donde ningún extraño enjugaría
las pupilas ajadas de desvelo.
Lejos,
en muchedumbre hambrienta palpitaba la vida
ajena de tu muerte y de la mía...
¿Es que pronto no habrá una lágrima
para mojar tu ausencia,
una antorcha vehemente que te salve de tanta
nieve oscura?
1955
Father
For Macedonio and Teresa
I descended this afternoon
to the pile of dust covering you;
salt from the plain burned
beneath the arid dazzle of silence
and a raging solitude galloped
against the limestone flowers of the hills.
I spoke to you with that stubborn tenderness
that breaks composure,
and I fell face down on the ground;
there, where no stranger would wipe
the pupils drained by sleeplessness.
Far off,
life throbbed in a hungry crowd
not pertaining to your death and mine…
Is it that soon there will no longer be a tear
to moisten your absence,
a crackling torch that might save you from so much
dark snow?
1955
AVISPERO
Para Fernando Medina
Cualquier cosa es mejor
a este avispero en llamas que me aguija,
porque aquí, donde estoy, me duele todo:
la tierra, el aire, el tiempo,
y este volcanizado sueño a ciegas, sucumbiendo.
Anoche sollozaba por un vaso de luz,
hora tras hora ardí de sed
y amanecí vacía.
Otra noche fue el sobresalto dulce, el de la sangre;
enardecida fue de la jaula al látigo,
del látigo al silbido
agresivo y caliente de las venas,
amanecí amargada.
Otra vez,
me adentré un amor como montaña;
gacela estremecida vagué temblando húmeda de lágrimas
Mansamente en silencio,
ahíta de ternura,
bebí luz de cristal entre los sueños,
se me quebró en la entraña, me cortaba,
y me quedé en tinieblas...
Cuántas cosas he dicho,
palabras que se arrancan por no llorar de rabia.
Ya no puedo dormir sobre la misma almohada
aunque los ojos sueñen;
me repudio al decirlo,
pero cualquier cosa es mejor
a este avispero en llamas en que vivo.
1955
Hornet’s Nest
For Fernando Medina
Anything is preferable
to this hornet’s nest in flames swarming me,
because here, where I find myself, everything hurts me:
the land, the air, the weather,
and this vulcanized dream succumbing blindly.
Last night I sobbed for a glass brimming with light,
all night I burned from thirst
and I awoke drained.
Another night commenced in sweetness, that of blood;
enraged, I paced from the cage to the whip,
from the whip to the whistle,
wild and with scalding veins,
I awoke bitter.
Another occasion,
I entered love like a mountain:
trembling gazelle, I wandered shaking and tear-drenched.
Meekly, in silence,
tired of tenderness,
I drank crystal light between dreams,
It broke me in the gut, cutting me,
and I was left in darkness…
I have said so much,
words that one rips out to not weep from wage.
I can no longer sleep upon the same pillow
even if my eyes dream;
I repudiate it when I state it,
but anything is preferable
to this hornet’s nest in flames in which I live.
1955
El Tiempo Caducado
Para Luis G. Basurto
¡Qué horrible es llegar tarde!,
a todo sitio, tarde.
No sé si estoy despierta,
o si he perdido el alma entre el granizo mudo
bajo el que duermen, apretados, mis muertos.
No sé, pero tal vez estoy aquí, abocada,
mirando cómo el dolor se tuerce
en el fondo del pozo que es este cuerpo roto, mío,
del que vengo tirando.
El toro de mi sangre muge
y un golpe de martillo me salta la cabeza.
Estoy ciega, ciega, ciega…
Sí,
ya sé que hay una calle para el amor,
un rincón para la ternura en donde está la luz creciendo;
desde niña he oído este pregón
y he ido tacteando, husmeando,
lamiendo cada loza hasta sangrar la lengua,
hiriéndome en los muros.
Pero, ¡mentira!,
no hay calle, no hay rincón, no hay salida.
Desde el pretil del pecho,
desde la punta de la palabra que persiste en salir,
o estallarme dentro,
agito los brazos encrespados.
Mi boca es un amargo bramido,
y aquí estoy.
No sé si estoy despierta,
pero me duelen estos dos ojos de cristal vacío,
estos dos ojos de luna fría,
que nunca encontraron el camino donde la luz crece,
donde el amor camina.
1967
Expired Time
For Luis G. Basurto
How horrible it is to arrive late!
Everywhere, late.
I don’t know if I’m awake,
or if I lost my soul within the mute hail,
beneath which, pressed together, my dead ones sleep.
I don’t know, but perhaps I am here, doomed,
witnessing how pain twists
at the bottom of the well that is this broken body of mine
into which I was thrown.
The bull of my blood bellows
and a hammer’s blow knocks my head off.
I am blind, blind, blind…
Yes,
I know there is a street for love,
a corner for tenderness with light waxing;
since I was a girl I have heard this proclamation,
and I have been groping along, sniffing,
licking each tile until my tongue bled,
scraping myself against the walls.
But, falsehood!
There is no street, there is no corner, there is no exit.
From the edge of my chest,
from the tip of the word that insists in emerging,
or exploding inside,
I wave my battered arms.
My mouth is a bitter roar,
and here I am.
I don’t know if I’m awake,
but these two eyes of empty glass ache,
these two eyes of freezing moon,
which never found the path where light waxes,
where love walks.
1967
HAMBRE DE SER
Para Jeronimo y Beti Gomez Robleda
Busco un hombre y no sé si sea para amarlo
o para castrarlo con mi angustia.
Tengo hambre de ser
y me siento frente a la ventana
a masticar estrellas
para que este dolor de estómago sea cierto.
La verdad es que duele en los nervios
todo el cuerpo, esta noche, hasta los tuétanos.
En la casa contigua
grita una mujer las glorias de la Biblia
y no conoce a Dios.
Su voz huele a vinagre, a aceite de ricino,
y Dios no huele a eso.
Entre mil olores reconocería el suyo.
Algo que no digiero me ha hecho daño esta tarde.
He visto a otros más humildes que yo.
No quiero reconocerme en ellos.
De tanto huir se me han caído las palabras
hasta el fondo del miedo:
no salen, rebotan dentro como canicas, suenan sordas.
Sin querer, me doy cuenta que me he quedado en la ruina.
Me falta lo mejor antes de irme: el Amor.
Y es tarde para alcanzarlo,
y me resulta falso decir:
—Señor, apóyame en tu corazón
que tengo ganas de morir madura.
Nadie madura sin el fruto.
El fruto es lo vivido y no lo tengo:
lo busco ya tarde,
entre la soledad ruidosa de las gentes
o en el amor que intento, y doy, y espero,
y que no llega.
1967
Hungry To Be
For Jeronimo and Beti Gomez Robleda
I seek a man and I do not know if it’s to love him
or to castrate him with my anguish.
I’m hungry to be
and I sit before the window
to chew stars
to let this stomachache become true.
The truth is that it aches in my nerves,
my entire body, tonight, even in my marrow.
Inside the neighboring house
a woman shrieks the glories of the Bible
and she doesn’t know God.
Her voice smells of vinegar, castor oil,
and God doesn’t smell like that,
among a thousand odors I would recognize his.
Something that I don’t digest has done damage this evening.
I have seen others more humble than me,
I don’t want to recognize myself in them.
Because of so much fleeing, words have fallen from me
to the bottom of fear;
they don’t leave, but bounce like marbles, sounding deaf.
Without wanting to, I realize I have been ruined,
I lack the best before I depart: Love.
And it’s late to reach it,
and it’s false to say
Lord, lean me against your heart….Let me die at a mature age.
No one matures without the fruit;
the fruit is what one has lived and I don't have it,
I seek it too late,
in the loud loneliness of people,
or in the love that I attempt, and give, and await
and which doesn’t arrive.
1967
Somos Pasto Donde la Luz Madura
Para Manolo y Evangelina
En esta momentánea eternidad
alzaste el corazón y lo sajó el tiempo.
Todo se va de paso, en su justo segundo.
Se llena un mismo sitio de improviso;
luego sigue su curso el agua
que colma de infinito
y nos arrastra hacia esa suerte ignota
que hoy te desmiembra el nervio
y arranca el grito de cierva vulnerada.
¡Qué fugaces, qué solos,
qué iguales, Señor mío!
Descansa,
reclina la tensión de arco en lágrimas,
sobre el callo de mi corazón ciego y remendado.
Manará, si allí escarbas con tino,
algún hilo de miel;
y desde este mirador verás tan viejo al mundo,
pero viejo adorable,
trastabillando, ebrio de soledad,
por la zanja de una abismal herida;
perdido en el galgo oscuro
de sus zapatos rotos.
O bien,
tan niños como una hoja en blanco
astronauta vestido de rocío
paciendo entre la hierba de los astros;
girando en la ruleta del espacio.
La cosmonave Soyus, hoy en órbita,
mañana en posesión, tal vez.
Así, viejo y joven el mundo
sin moverse pasa.
Con el pie en el estribo, rumbo a la muerte
llegamos:
cuestas, túneles, empinadas planicies...
Silba el tren,
se agita el pañuelo desgarrado que somos.
Vamos muertos en pie,
la sangre hundida;
muertos a golpe de silencio,
pero frenéticos, pegados hasta el final sombrío.
Es todo, hermana,
oscuro fuego de Dios que nos comprueba,
hambre que se endereza desfallecida
y bebe lágrimas;
fluir sin desprenderse.
Un ir quedándonos doblados
bajo el dulce peso de la mano suprema.
Espera quieta,
somos pasto donde la luz madura.
1967
We Are Pasture Where Light Matures
For Manolo and Evangelina
In this brief eternity
you raised your heart, and time gashed it open.
Everything flows away, in a mere flash.
The same place is suddenly filled;
then the water continues its course
that fills with infinity,
dragging us towards that unknown fate
that today dismembers your nerve
and unleashes the cry of a violated doe.
How fleeting, how alone,
how alike, Oh Lord!
Rest,
recline the arch drawn in tears
on the callus of my blind and patched heart.
There will flow, if you dig there wisely,
some strain of honey;
and from that lookout you will see the world as aged,
but an adorable old age,
stumbling, drunk from loneliness,
within the gutter of an abysmal wound,
lost in the dark greyhound
of his busted shoes.
Or like a blank page,
astronaut dressed in dew
grazing among the grass of comets,
spinning in the roulette of space.
The Soyuz spacecraft, in orbit today,
perhaps in our possession tomorrow.
Thus, both old and youthful, the world
without moving, passes.
With foot in stirrup, deathwards
we arrive:
hills, tunnels, steep plains…
Train blows its horn,
the tattered handkerchief we are flutters.
We amble along dead on foot,
blood sunken;
dead by dint of silence,
but frantic, stuck to the lugubrious end.
That’s all, sister,
God’s dark fire tests us,
hunger stands straight then faints,
and drinks tears;
a flow that doesn’t detach.
A surging which keeps us bent
beneath the sweet weight of the supreme hand.
Wait without stirring,
we are pasture where light matures.
1967
Despedida
Si me voy este otoño
entiérrame bajo el oro pequeño de los trigos,
en el campo,
para seguir cantando a la intemperie.
No amortajes mi cuerpo.
No me escondas en tumbas de granito.
Mi alma ha sido un golpe de tempestad,
un grito abierto en canal,
un magnífico semental
que embarazó a la palabra con los ecos de Dios,
y no quiero rondar, tiritando,
mi futuro hogar,
mientras la nieve acumula
con ademán piadoso
sus copos a mis pies.
Yo quiero que la boca del agua
me exorcise el espíritu
que me bautice el viento,
que me envuelva en su sábana cálida la tierra
si me voy este otoño.
1972
Farewell
If I depart this autumn,
bury me beneath the small gold of wheat,
in the field,
to continue singing to the elements.
Do not cover me with a shroud,
do not hide me in granite tombs.
My soul has been a surging storm,
a scream gashed wide open,
a magnificent stallion
that impregnated the verb with the echoes of God,
and I do not wish to wander shivering,
my future hearth,
while the snow, with a pious gesture,
accumulates its flakes at my feet.
Let water’s mouth
exorcise my spirit,
let the wind baptize me,
let me be wrapped in the earth’s hot sheets,
if I depart this autumn.
1972
El Suicidio
Para Rubén Tamez Garza
Pienso en la fecha de mi suicidio
y creo que fue en el vientre de mi madre;
aún así, hubo días en que Dios me caía
igual que gota clara entre las manos.
Porque yo estuve loca por Dios,
anduve trastornada por él,
arrojando el anzuelo de mi lengua
para alcanzar su oído.
Su fragancia penetraba en mi piel
palabras que no alcanzo a entender,
que no voy a entenderlas, quizá...
Aprendí muy tarde a conocer varón,
lo sentí dilatarse con toda su soledad
dentro de mí.
Fue una jugada turbia,
un error sin caminos.
Fue descender al núcleo fugaz de la mentira
y encontrarme, al despertar, rodando en el vacío
bajo una sábana de espanto.
Fue lavarle la boca a un niño
con un puño de brasas
por llamar natural lo prohibido;
por arrastrar con cara de mujer madura,
ese carro de sol inútil: la inocencia.
Fue arrancarte las uñas de raíz,
arrastrarte,
meterte en la oquedad de la miseria, a bofetadas,
por el ojo hecho llama sombría, del demonio.
1975
The Suicide
For Ruben Tamez Garza
I ponder the date of my suicide
and I believe it occurred in my mother’s womb;
even so, there were days in which God fell on me
exactly like a clear drop in my cupped hands.
Because I was mad for God,
I anguished over him,
tossing my tongue’s hook
to reach to his ear.
His fragrance pierced my skin
with words I can’t hope to comprehend,
words I will not understand, perhaps…
I learned late to know man,
I felt him swell with all of his solitude
within me.
It was a turbid game,
an error with no exit signs.
It was a descent to the fleeting nucleus of the lie,
and to find myself, upon awakening, spinning in the void
beneath a sheet of terror.
It was cleansing a child’s mouth
with a fistful of embers
to call what was prohibited as natural;
to drag that useless sun cart
with the face of a grown woman: innocence.
It was pulling out your fingernails,
to crawl,
place yourself in misery’s hollowness,
slapped by the eye turned into a dark flame,
that eye belonging to the devil.
1975
