Farewells

^{translated from the Galician by Erín Moure}

I devise farewells that topple

that abruptly plunge
there’s a dark womb
and exhausted hands
I ideate a farewell that brings us
to know the body like this
a dune too that unravels
in the wave of breath
with that sigh of women who’ve come
with screens of mourning
in their larynx

The flower-tip, that node of life
from which emerges
a yolk of colour and petals

Nerve of life, it spreads open
wants to spread open and thrive
It’s what speaks to us
stutters babbles attempts to get up:

a raw wince of light

Despedidas

Concibo despedidas que caen

que se precipitan
hai unha matriz moura
unhas mans esgotadas
ideo unha despedida que se nos
desprende do corpo así
tamén a duna que se desfai
na onda do alento
con este sopro das que viñeron
con pantallas de loito
na larinxe

A punta da flor, ese nó de vida
sobre o que se produce
unha xema de cor e pétalos

Nervio de vida ábrese
quere abrirse e sosterse
ela é quen nos fala
tatexa farfalla tenta erguerse:

unha chaga de luz

Copyright © 2024 by Oriana Méndez and Erín Moure. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 4, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast 

  

“The poem, from Oriana Méndez’s 2020 collection Interna, evokes the process of taking leave of someone, of a way of life, or a place, and growing as a person in the process. The trickiest bit to translate was its last line. A chaga—a weeping sore, an ulcerated abrasion—startles in Galician when set against luz, [or] light. But it’s wordy to translate chaga, and wound is too general. I didn’t want to lose the line’s concision, so I went for the feeling of having a chaga. How, though there is light, its rawness hurts us: we wince.”
—Erín Moure