POEMS

 

 

 

Translations by Marco Morelli

 

 

 

 

 

Blanca Castellón

1958

 

There is an enigmatic quality to Blanca Castellón's verse that reflects an unfathomable intimacy of the poet with herse1f. Her language develops in a space of suspension, in a caesura where the objective world is not so much a generative context as a realm of signs and hidden meanings, a place where something else is being indicated or revealed. This something else is not another world, or nothirígness ‑ it's the enigma itsef.

Blanca's poetry is her way of going into the enigma, surrendering to ¡t, being ¡t. Her words are like a trail of breadcrumbs in the forest, so many markings of a deepening, yet incandescent, absence; and it's not certain whether they've been left there for someone else to follow her in or for her to find her way out. The tension thus created is the real power of this poetry ‑ its paradoxical and irreducible presence.

 

Blanca has published three books: Ama del Espíritu (Decenio, 1995); Flotaciones (BANIC, 1998); and Orilla Opuesta (Instituto de Estudios Modernistas, 2000). The last book was published as first prize in an international poetry competition, which goes to show the growing recognition that this poetry is receiving on other shores.

 

The poet would like the reader to know that she is a worrían of devotion, a mother, and a wife; and that she very much loves and is grateful for her family. The thought js revealing, because Blanca is not at all a traditional, subjugated woman, not does she exploit her femininity to make a literary splash. Blanca is walking a new path in Nicaraguan letters, where liberation does not imply a new kind of bondage to the compulsory expression of one's sex. Instead, here is a poetry which is in full possession of its sensuality, yet where thought is wholly free to alight in its own labyrinths.

Marco Morelli.

 

 

 

 

 

GENUFLECTIONS

 

VII

 

The sun enters with a smile of mellow wine.

 

XII

 

The fingertips wear away

caressing insomnías

 

The naús are lost

unearthing dilated pupils

 

Only the smoothness of the hands remains

fariníng the birth of the bees.

 

XXIX

 

I write with the stains of the walls.

 

 

 

IN HONOR OF THE LIE

 

lt's true the sea was alive that morning

 

with all its celebrated anguish

roaring in my throat

 

Aborting unwanted fish and coral

tuming me into an accomplice of its acts

 

lt supplicated me to comb its disheveled spume

 

Pretending to need my good work

it scared the seagulls from its body to move me

 

While eating the sand

I spit out the shells to avoid its influence.

 

 

 

EFFECTS

 

From your death new eyes have sprouted

they spin open and attached to the needles of the clock

 

Do you remember that you clipped the wings of my peace

to keep ¡t from fly1ng away?

 

I don't know how they grew back

it escaped

 

And I´ve recovered not even one petal

of the tender rose 1 tore apart that aftemoon

over your carbonized body

 

Descend now that you know the secrets of the flame

and incinerate the insistence of the wings forever.

 

 

 

LAST HOUR

 

I write and read fluently now

I´m able to descend the steps that lead

to hieroglyphics

 

I´m beginning to share the leftovers of silence

I dress alone in miracies

 

I  belleve in apparitions

and in the abominable volce of the cavern

 

with a start I tum on a light

 

I read Joyce and suffocate

 ‑so much in just one day-

 

I refuse exíle however I can

I aspire to thawing

 

as I told you

I´m able now to hide from paín

and from j udges

 

for now I don't give audience

to the lie

 

I´ve yet to find someone

who approves or ratifies

this invented flame.

 

 

 

WINTER

 

To my mother

To Concepción Lo.vola de Báez

 

 

lt rains with extreme discretion

 

reminding me

of how you woulcí enter rny bedroom

 

silently with the fear of waking me up

 

I would féel the intensity of your presence

and your hand on my brow traversing my dreams

 

replacing nightmares

with smiling stars

 

‑skíllfui knitter of refuge-

 

¡t rains

 

the dogs are lazily spread

at my féet like rugs

 

‑their loyalty does not compensate in full-

 

the drops with shyness bring

a desire to féel you in my bed again

like when you used to invent tales from my sobs

 

now I write them afl confused

and I want you to help me fully decipher

the code transposed in this rain

 

my brothers and I know

this rain is our fault

 

we finally got your message

and acknowledge receipt

 

we are clear that this rain

is the sweat of our fatigued God

 

jarred by the punches

we blindly hurl against time

 

we pine for your hand

 

take us away from here

 

we are trapped in the viscera

of a dead century.

 

 

 

VIRTUAL CRESCENT

 

I washed the cup where you decanted your angelical breath.

 

As you requested ‑ surely with the intention that the lucky sponge would absorb the last residues of your mouth, that I would haye preferred to keep on my palette.

 

Then you officially handed me the new cireles, for they were disturbing your serenlty and you were incapable penetrating their depths.

 

I took them, as I would take your hands when you were absent. Forthwith you glanced at the elock and exited through the door of the ancient lock.  I was left with the feeling that you would never return to virtual reality.

 

Since the blue skirt I was wearing was long and loose. I made room for the circles and enveloped them in its folds. Thus with my legs to the open air, I went up to my bedroom, put on iny pajamas and lay in contemplation of the circles until dawn.

 

I was scared to reach the center of such a rare favor, for the ínfernal void I had detected in its contours.

 

I don't know how late I slept.

 

When I awoke, I was no longer in my bed and my thoughts had become detached from me. They were levitating, enclosed in the circles, in a space I couldn´t manage to identify.

 

I never found myself again and no one could imagine how I miss me.

 

 

NON GRATA

 

She had thrown herself, with a stone around her neck, into the depths of being, where the words that don't signify, the words that nobody wants to hear, rest.

 

The weary logic of the years eroded the stone and she rose, almost without noticing, to the surface; the ascent seemed pleasant, cordial, wíth the mishaps and predicaments of any journey.

 

There were the other words, with faces dazzling, clear, predictable, walking the city streets, photographed in magazines and newspapers, showing off on television screens.

 

Everyone greeted them amicably.

 

Of course, she came entangled with all the insignificant ones and nobody offered her shelter or regard.

 

Disenchanted, with sufficient oxygen and the conviction to never return, she plunged back into the reign of Babel.

 

 

H