or matches can be forbidden
and then
between the fingers of a child
who roasts ants
mutilates
snails
studies the way they stiffen
instantly
retracting their antennae
eyes and mucus membranes
the matches are small lessons
on matter
and its cruelest
characteristics
That opacity of a name that enlarges
the person you imagine.
Think
of all the strange creatures, the vermin,
the long-legged godawful monsters
that populate the plagues
your grandfather fought so fiercely
under that hybrid name:
Marcelo di Abiamo du Nancy,
neither French nor Brazilian nor Italian
disguised as a foreigner, disguised
as a foreigner, disguised
as an agronomist
in Bolivia,
in the thirties.
The immense dragnets
against epizootics from the east
journeys stretching from month to month
through forest and lagoon,
into a land of salt and silver
to save the livestock,
amidst all those insects
so many insects:
dung-eating
beetles, like comical
stinking Sysiphi
wind-scorpions more fluid
than the idea of ugliness
cicadas spreading their metallic din
over lands that had once been green.
The journey measured by horrifying arthropods
clouds of black flies,
cycles defined by butterflies
at night,
pure white butterflies, wars
among the ants,
hordes of insects migrating,
carrying their withered larvae to safety,
and storms
of queen ants,
carnivorous wasps, amputated
spiders filled with worms, gravedigger
flies and emerald ones:
translucent hopes,
eclipsed by broad sweet veins,
fireflies
delineating
the drizzly nights
and the smells.
While at home, Anna Stefania,
cloaked in skeins of yarn and patience
knits and studies while waiting for her man.
How
did that viscous time roll on,
that decade of the thirties?
Surrounded by mirabilia in a country
with so many mines
and so little food, and still,
it was possible,
without putting on airs,
to pee like an Argentinean
in a round
hammered
silver basin,
listening to the tinkle of your urine
that came out tinted with ater
(atra, atrum)
yes, opacity of soot,
descending,
and, at the same time,
the tinkling
of leaks from swollen ceilings
interrupting,
in the spare kitchen
the tiny parlor lacking in furniture,
furnished with fissures,
the daily conversations
weighted with echoes.
And, like a record of the afternoon,
there’s a floral tablecloth, the flowers
like thumbtacks
on a map.
records of a passage
out on the farthest edge.
Paula Abramo’s collection Fiat Lux won the 2013 Premio de Poesías Joaquín Xirau Icaza for the best book of poetry by a writer under forty. She co-authored Yo soy la otra: las mujeres y la cultura en México (2017) and the art installation Ropa Sucia (2017), both exploring the invisibility of Mexican female writers and artists. She has also translated 50 books from Portuguese to Spanish.
Richard Cluster’s most recent translations include Gabriela Alemán’s Poso Wells (City Lights, 2018), Mylene Fernández’s A Corner of the World (City Lights, 2014), Pedro de Jesús’s Vital Signs (Lavender Ink/Diálogos 2014), and his anthology Kill the Ámpaya!: Best Latin American Baseball Fiction (Mandel-Vilar 2017). He also writes history and fiction, including The History of Havana (co-authored with Rafael Hernández) and a crime novel series.