Laura Cesarco Eglin translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Catherine Jagoe

Versatilidad

                                                                                                                Tu muerte se aparece de muchas formas. La suavidad de los pétalos guarda lo duro de un cuerpo. El mar te tiene en cada onda enseñándome todavía a navegar. Ese de repente que se define con lágrimas que buscan siempre un lugar distinto donde manifestarse. El 8 pesa más que los otros días del mes. Tu muerte es no tener a alguien conmigo que elija sambayón en una heladería. La voz del mate matinal lavándose en la memoria. Los sueños que recobran vida a la muerte le abren posibilidades, le exigen a la vigilia los personajes que desechó. Las postales y cartas que te mandé no tendrían que estar nuevamente en mis manos. Los sellos perdidos en un recorrido que los desconcierta.

Versatility

                                                                                                                   Your death appears in many forms. The softness of petals hiding the hardness of a body. The sea with you on every wave still teaching me to navigate. Sudden tears always looking for a different place to show themselves. The 8th weighs more than the other days of the month. Your death is not having someone with me who chooses egg nog flavor in an ice cream parlor. Your voice like morning maté diluted by memory as the day wears on. Dreams that recover the living from the dead, open up possibilities, demand the waking hours yield up their dead. The postcards and letters that I sent you should not be back in my hands. Their stamps lost on a journey that bewilders them.

Recorridos

Voy abriendo tu nombre
despacio, intentando
volver a él de alguna manera
el entresueño me lo brindó
como la brisa, un aroma
que aletea yéndose aun
sin terminar de llegar y cuando despierto
abro los ojos
despacio para no perder el recuerdo
tuyo donde cada letra 
tenía sentido y se apalabraban
a la red de venas —directo a la raíz
entendía la trayectoria
que hoy se resiste, 
a veces, la palabra en desuso
muere, a veces cambia

Rounds

I keep opening your name
slowly, attempting 
to get back to it somehow
the drowsiness that brought it to me
like a breeze, a scent
that flutters away leaving without
ever really arriving and when I awake
I open my eyes
slowly so as not to lose the memory
of you where each letter
made sense and agreed
with the network of veins—down to the root
understanding the trajectory
that today resists,
at times, the word in disuse 
sometimes dies, sometimes changes

Reencarnación

                                                                                                                   Tumba es aguantar la respiración mientras dejamos que vibre e inmediatamente empujar la boca con desespero a abrirse porque no alcanza el aliento para tanta soledad. Un eco que engaña al vacío —la voz del silencio: retumba. La tierra también. De ahí y hacia ahí es un reflejo, como el encantamiento que lo causa. Desde la muerte se entiende el canto. Desde el canto se desecha la palabra fin. Alguien se equivocó con el significado porque si quisiera que fuera un fin terminaría con la boca cerrada.

Reincarnation

                                                                                              Tomb is pronounced by holding the breath and letting it vibrate, and immediately, desperately, forcing the mouth open because there is not enough breath for that much loneliness. An echo that tricks the emptiness—the voice of silence: it reverberates. The earth too. From here to there is a reflex, like the spell that causes it. From the tomb, the poem is understood. In the poem, the word’s end is undone. Someone got the meaning wrong. If this was meant to be the end, it would end with your mouth closed.

Laura Cesarco Eglin

Laura Cesarco Eglin is the author of Llamar al agua por su nombre (Mouthfeel Press, 2010), Sastrería (Yaugurú, 2011), Los brazos del saguaro (Yaugurú, 2015), Tailor Shop: Threads (Finishing Line Press, 2013) co-translated with Teresa Williams, and Occasions to Call Miracles Appropriate (Lunamopolis, 2015). Cesarco Eglin has translated works of Colombian, Mexican, Uruguayan, and Brazilian authors into English. She is a co-founding editor of Veliz Books.

Jesse Lee Kercheval

Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of fourteen books of poetry, fiction and memoir as well as a translator, specializing in Uruguayan poetry. Her translations include The Invisible Bridge / El puente invisible: Selected Poems of Circe Maia. She is the editor of América invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets and a recipient of a  2016 National Endowment Fellow in  Translation.

Catherine Jagoe

Catherine Jagoe is a writer and translator specializing in Spanish and Catalan. Her poetry and essays have been published in numerous journals, including Gettysburg Review, Atlanta Review, North American Review and American Athenaeum. She is the winner of a 2015 Pushcart Prize for creative nonfiction and the 2015 Settlement House American Poetry Prize. Her new poetry book Bloodroot is forthcoming in fall 2016 with Settlement House Press.

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