Two Translations of the Poet Esther Ramon
Swallows gather,
meeting in the bones
of the sick beech tree.
The rock hears us,
holding together what we almost
inhabit.
They rest on branches
of delicate fingers,
their weight sings
stronger and stronger
over the sap that no longer flows.
To start again,
in silence,
the sun mounts the back
of the tree,
opens multiple flights,
touches the sleeping forehead
of the rock,
and it wakes me.
Acuden golondrinas,
reunión en los huesos
del haya enferma.
La roca nos escucha,
sostiene lo que casi
habitamos,
ellas se posan
sobre las ramas
de dedos frágiles,
su peso canta
cada vez más fuerte
sobre la savia sin flujo.
Para recomenzar,
silencio,
el sol se monta
en la espalda del árbol,
abre el vuelo múltiple,
palpa la frente dormida
de la roca,
me despierta.
Only this rock
breathes
underwater,
what’s motionless
is the shell
of flow.
Next to the trough
there are small figs
for other teeth,
grapes too high up,
roosters that sing
in the dark, again
and again,
weathered rabbits
crouching,
a hair comb stuck
in the walnut tree,
untangling
the threads of confinement,
a flicker of bread
or of wood,
against the evaporated wall,
a letter that burns
or is forgotten
in the emerging.
Sólo esta piedra
respira
bajo el agua,
lo inmóvil es la
cáscara
de lo que fluye,
junto al abrevadero
hay higos diminutos
para otros dientes,
uvas demasiado arriba,
gallos que cantan
sin luz, una vez
y otra,
conejos del tiempo,
agazapados,
un peine prendido
en el nogal,
que desenreda los
hilos del encierro,
una llama de pan
o de madera,
el muro evaporado,
una letra que arde
o se olvida
en la apertura.
Esther Ramón is a poet, critic, and professor from Madrid, Spain. She has published nine volumes of poetry and earned the Premio Ojo Crítico in 2008. Several poems of hers have been translated into various languages and she appears in the US anthology Panic Cure: Poetry from Spain for the 21st Century (Otis Books, 2014). She has been coordinating editor for the journal Minerva, director of a radio poetry program for Radio Círculo, and is currently a professor of creative writing and literary criticism at Universidad Carlos III in Madrid.
Emma Ferguson is a poet, translator, and educator in Seattle. She believes in education and language as forces of self-actualization and liberation. She teaches Spanish as well as a translation seminar to high schoolers, and her translations have appeared in journals such as the Offing, Columbia Journal, The Common, and others. Her poems have appeared in Passengers, Rock & Sling, River Heron Review, and others.