Poems by Ximena Gómez
Translated from the Spanish by George Franklin in collaboration with Ximena Gómez
Guacharaca
It is night.
Winds arrive from a hurricane in Africa,
carrying echoes of strange birds in a garden.
It was the garden of Adriana’s house.—It was December.
Almost dawn, but still dark,
and the shouting of a guacharaca woke me.
It sounded like fighting, or shouts of disapproval,
but it was just the beginning of a chat between birds.
From a nearby tree, another guacharaca answered.
Under the wool blanket, I was hot.
I tried to sleep, and in my dreams saw them approaching,
through dry leaves and mangoes fallen from the trees,
coming closer to the entrance of the room where I slept.
In the distance dogs were answering the birds,
And I heard wolves howling in the woods.
In the daytime, I’d take the highway to see my mother,
and at dawn, the birds would return to warn me,
shouting something I couldn’t understand.
I’d have preferred the cawing of crows,
their black feathers and swooping flight,
because that shout of guacharacas
was a sad omen.
One day I didn’t return to Adriana’s garden,
neither to visit my mother, who had died,
nor to hear the noise of guacharacas again,
nor the howling of nearby dogs.
Now, a strange bird whistles
Near your window.
Guacharaca
Es de noche.
llegan vientos de un huracán de África
y traen ecos de pájaros extraños en un jardín.
Era el jardín de la casa de Adriana, era diciembre.
Amanecía, aún estaba oscuro
y el griterío de una guacharaca me despertaba.
Parecía una pelea, o un reclamo a gritos,
pero era el comienzo de una charla entre pájaros,
pues de un árbol vecino respondía otra guacharaca.
Debajo de una colcha de lana yo tenía calor.
Trataba de dormirme y en sueños las veía venir,
entre las hojas secas y mangos caídos de los árboles,
hacia la entrada del cuarto donde yo dormía.
De lejos unos perros respondían a los pájaros
y yo oía aullidos de lobos en el bosque.
De día por la carretera iba a ver a mi madre
y al alba las aves volvían a avisarme a gritos
algo que yo no podía entender.
Yo prefería el graznido de los cuervos,
su plumaje negro y su sobrevolar,
porque ese grito de las guacharacas
era un augurio triste.
Un día no volví al jardín de Adriana,
ni a visitar a mi madre, que había muerto,
ni volví a oír la bulla de las guacharacas,
ni el aullido de perros en el vecindario.
Ahora un pájaro extraño silba
cerca de tu ventana.
The Blanket
A red plaid made of soft cotton
covered Victoria for more than 8,000 nights.
It traveled in trucks when she moved.
Picked up stains from pens, from red lipstick.
The maid scrubbed them off with blue soap.
Victoria took it to her last house, near the river.
There, she spilled coffee on it, another day perfume.
It came out clean and scented from the washer.
The blanket frayed at the edges,
became ragged in sections, it faded.
Someone threw it into a vacant room,
among old clothes, after Victoria died.
It stayed there, exposed to the blazing sun,
to the clear or rainy nights that slipped
through the window with no curtains.
They threw towels, socks, and shirts on it.
The pile of clothes grew bigger,
covering the entrance to an empty closet.
With no one to wash it or lay it over the bed,
the blanket got lost among so many rags.
A truck finally took away the load
to give to the homeless, or to the dump.
No one ever heard of the blanket again.
Perhaps it disintegrated in the garbage.
Perhaps, among the decomposed waste,
it became dark, amorphous matter
and settled into the ground.
La cobija
Roja a cuadros, de dulce abrigo,
cubrió a Victoria por más de 8000 noches.
Viajó en camiones cuando ella se mudó.
Se le manchó de bolígrafo, de colorete rojo.
La criada se la fregaba con jabón azul.
Victoria se la llevó a su última casa, cerca al río.
Allá le derramó el café, otro día un perfume.
De la lavadora la sacaban limpia y olorosa.
La cobija se deshilachó en los bordes,
se volvió rala a trechos, se destiñó.
Alguien la tiró a un cuarto desocupado
entre ropa vieja, cuando Victoria murió.
Allí quedó expuesta al sol ardiente,
a la noche despejada o lluviosa,
que entraba por la ventana sin cortinas.
Le tiraron encima toallas, medias, camisas …
El montículo de ropa creció,
tapó la entrada de un clóset vacío.
Sin nadie que la lavara ni la tendiera
la cobija se extravió entre tanto trapo.
Un furgón se llevó al fin la carga
para los indigentes, o para el basurero.
No se supo más de la cobija.
Tal vez se desintegró entre la basura.
Tal vez, entre desechos degradados fue
materia oscura, amorfa,
que se adhirió al suelo.
Colombian poet Ximena Gómez is the author of Habitación con moscas (Madrid: Ediciones Torremozas, 2016), Cuando llegue la sequía (Ediciones Torremozas, 2021), the dual-language poetry collection Último día / Last Day (Katakana Editores, 2019) and a dual-language collection in collaboration with George Franklin, Conversaciones sobre agua/Conversations About Water (Katakana Editores, 2023), and she was a finalist for Best of the Net in 2018, a finalist for the Gabo Prize awarded by Lunch Ticket Magazine in 2024, and is currently a finalist for the 2024 Paz Prize. She lives in Miami and is a translation editor for Cagibi.
George Franklin was previously published in The Ilanot Review in 2020 and is the author of seven poetry collections, including his recent: What the Angel Saw, What the Saint Refused from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. He practices law in Miami, is a translations editor for Cagibi and a guest editor for Sheila-Na-Gig Online, teaches poetry workshops in Florida prisons, and co-translated, along with the author, Ximena Gómez’s Último día/Last Day. In 2023, he was the first prize winner of the W.B. Yeats Poetry Prize. His website: https://gsfranklin.com/
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