14

Translated by Janet McAdams

14

Your kingdoms are fields of ice:
strange and crystalline chasms.
In your kingdoms
a language
marches forward
testing the hours’ edge
and dried leaves
cover your naked bones.

In your kingdoms, Poetry,
the voice dazzles.
We are
like indices
to a lost fauna,
delineating
barely
a carnivore’s delusions.

In your kingdoms
we’re feline
casing spring
and the summer
that strikes our backs:
and the autumn that falls:
while leaves
lie down
in winter
to make the words go on.

But
not like looking back
from the uncertainty
it was
to be a child
and
not
know
one’s own body.

14

Tus reinos son campos de hielo:
cristalinos y extraños abismos.
En tus reinos
avanza
una lengua
que prueba el filo de las horas
y la hojarasca
cubre tus huesos desnudos.

En tus reinos, poesía,
la voz deslumbra.
Somos
como fichas
de una fauna perdida,
apenas
deletreamos
delirios de animal carnívoro.

En tus reinos
somos felinos
que atisban la primavera
y el verano
se nos pega en el lomo:
y el otoño desciende:
mientras
las hojas
se recuestan
en invierno
a perpetuar las palabras.

Mas
no se revisten
de lo incierto
que era
ser niño
y
no
conocer
el cuerpo.

—

Paura Rodríguez Leytón (La Paz, 1973) is a poet and journalist. Her books include Del Árbol y la arcilla azul azul  [From the Tree to the Blue Blue Clay] (Argentina, 1989); Ritos de viaje [Travel Rites] (La Paz, 2004; Caracas, 2007, ed. digital);  Pez de Piedra [Stonefish] (La Paz, 2007) and Pequeñas mudanzas [Small Changes] (Colombia, 2017), which was the runner up for the 2017 Pilar Fernández Labrador International Poetry Prize (Premio Internacional de Poesía “Pilar Fernández Labrador” 2017).

Janet McAdams is the author of the poetry collections, The Island of Lost Luggage, which won the American Book Award, and Feral. A chapbook of speculative prose poems, Seven Boxes for the Country After, was published by Kent State Press in 2016. Her translations (with Katherine Hedeen) of the Cuban poet Fina García Marruz have been published or are forthcoming in the Tupelo Quarterly, Waxwing, and The Offing.