Poems

Celia

1
 
And let's have no tears; this woman who is closed today
in her transparency [fig. openness], this [woman] who is kept
in the closed niche of the wall
of cement, like a madwoman chained
to the cruel bedstead in the airless bedroom, without
boatman or boat, among faceless unknown people, this [woman]
is
solely
the Sole one
who held us all in the sky/heaven
of her pregnancy.
Blessed
be her womb.
 
2
 
And nothing nothing more; that she gave birth to me and made me
a man at the seventh birth of [i.e. given by]
her figure of ivory
and of fire
in the rigours
of poverty and sadness
and she knew
how to hear in the silence of my childhood the sign
the secret
Sign
without ever
saying
anything to me.
Blessed
be her childbirth.
 
3
 
Let others go instead of me now
I cannot to place for you
here the coloured
carnations of the Rojases mine yours
today
the painful thirteenth of your martyrdom
those
of my family/race who are born at dawn
and are reborn; let them go to that wall for us for Rodrigo
Tomás for young Gonzalo for Alonso; let them go
or not as they wish
or let them leave you in the dark
alone
alone with the ashes
of your beauty
which is your resurrection Celia
Pizarro
daughter granddaughter of Pizarros
and Pizarros [now] dead Mother;
and may you come
into exile with us to dwell as before in grace
and mutual fascination.
Blessed
be your name forever.