THE WALL Archive #3

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Un Gato en Bicicleta Bookstore and Cafe, Sevilla, EspaƱa

Photo: Bronwyn Mills
Miriam Palma Ceballos
In the above, improbably-named bookstore, in Sevilla, Spain, its owner boasts of "Poetry Spoken Here." As opposed to "cat," or other exotic idiomas. I had sought refuge and become a semi-habitué there in the sweltering heat of an Andalucian autumn—95 degrees farenheit by siesta time. Indeed, siesta it was, every day: stores, even this one, shuttered and closed, then reopened in the evening as we all staggered out of our bedrooms, more or less refreshed. This place, tucked into the side streets of the old quarter, and presided over by owner Jésus Barrera, became, morning and often post-siesta times, a friendly workspace which offered light refreshment—coffee, tea, wine, tostados, shockingly rich cakes, even vegan delights—as well as conversations with interesting strangers, readings, food for the mind and soul.

And here, one mid-morning, thanks to Jésus, I met Miriam Palma Ceballos, a delightful woman, deceptively disguised as a proper academic in the German Department of the local university, a poet with a marvellous, skewed vision of the world around, before, and behind her. We are grateful for her generosity in allowing us to publish a sample of her poems from her collection, Exilios; Hacia el Azul, published in Spanish by Ediciones En Huida. About her work, Iván Onia Valero quotes the so-called angry man of Spanish letters, Francisco Umbral, from his book Carta a mi mujer : "envejecer no es abandonar las cosas, sino ir viendo cómo las cosas nos abandonan”. (Aging is not abandoning things, but seeing how things abandon us.) Now, Miriam Palma is no old lady, nor a suicidal adolescent who aspires to authorship; we are not so much speaking of loosening ties with life but with establishing proper relations with the very things that have stolen away from us. Onia goes on to explain that Palma "nos coge de la mano para bajar a los sótanos donde las cosas que nos abandonaron permanecen sonámbulas, y se hace necesario decirlas para consagrarlas al rito de la existencia o a la literatura del recuerdo." (loosely, Palma "...takes us by the hand, down into the basement where things that have abandoned us rest, like sleepwalkers, where they must be returned to routine existence or properly returned to the literature of memory.") Gratefully freed from the bondage of Anglophone literature's addiction to bourgeois "reality" and uniquely Spanish, Palma's fascination with memory, with the rearrangement (dare I say, in some cases, the "reanimation"?) of our material experience, leads the poet to daring metaphor and inspired vision. By way of our imperfect efforts, we offer you a mere taste of her work—alas for those who do not read Spanish, not yet translated into English— to entice you to clamor for more.
Exilios
I
Me fui desposeída
del manto de los azules,
de los ocres,
del verde entreverado con deseos rojizos,
del milagro de los crepúsculos,
en los que, a veces,
el dios de la desesperanza.
invocaba a las grieta
donde se ahogaria
(para siempre, quizá).
la esperanza de las lluvias de Abril.

​II
Sobre la cima de esas montañas
que sueñan con el mar,
unas pupilas de niña
callan.
días tardes noches
promesas tibias
amando la planicie
encendida de Septiembres

​III
No me llevé en la garganta
la emoción amarillo de los girasole
hacia la penumbra
de otros inviernos deshabitados
ni hacia los campos de olivas
en los que se refugiaba el miedo.

​IV
Por aquel entonces existían aún constelaciones
la tapia de piedra del viejo cemeterio
se prestaba paciente
a guardar el secreto de los besos
bailando con el humo
de los primeros cigarros a escondidas.
Los vencejos eran audaces
en sus presentimientos,
la alergría resbalaba sobre la paja de las laderas
y un canto de chicharras vibraba
con el voraz aullido de la vida.

​V
No sirve de alivio para un alma
resquebrajada de respuestas
la memoria de la niebla
sobre un puerto de montaña
dividiendo el mundo en dos:
un tiovivo teñido de olores a rastrojos,
del asombro prendido
en la mano grande de la abuela
embutiendo de amor un corazón
de niña sola,
y una caverna oscura
invadida por resentimientos
y renuncias ajenos,
lacrimales en estado de penuria
y calles sin salida
donde los ruegos chillan
​                                 como ratas
hacia dentro.
I
I have been stripped
of the mantle of blues,
of ochres,
of green mingled with red desire,
of the miraculous dusk,
through those cracks
sometimes

the god of hopelessness
calls
drowned out
(perhaps forever)
by hope for the rains of April.

II
On top of those mountains
that dream with the sea,
schoolgirls
hush.
days afternoons nights
lukewarm promises
loving the plains
set aflame by September.

​III
Don’t choke me up with
emotion, the yellow of sunflowers
bent toward the half-light
of other empty winters
nor toward fields of olives
in which fear takes refuge.

IV
Even more constellations existed then,
the old cemetery's stone wall
borrowed patience
to keep the secret of kisses
dancing with the smoke
of the first surreptitious cigarettes.
The swifts were audacious
in their premonitions,
on the slopes, happiness slid on the straw
and a cicadas' song vibrated
with the voracious howl of life.


​​V
Answers that fall apart
are no relief for a soul
the memory of fog
at the door to the mountain
dividing the world in two:
a merry-go-round tinged with the smell of hay
attention captured
in grandmother's huge hand
a heart filling with love
for a child alone,
and a dark cavern
invaded by resentment
someone else's resignations
tears in a state of poverty
and streets without exit
where pleas scream
                              like the rats
within.
​
Click to listen to "Azul" read by the poet (this will take you to the Soundcloud site).
Azul*
Azul late hoy
el centro de un silencio,
balbucea justo ahora
cuando busco esa mirada
prendada de algún amanecer
tachado del tránsito
de las estrellas fugaces
por algún diosecillo airado
que se acurruca entre los bancos
de una estación de trenes.
​Today, blue throbs
at the heart of silence,
stutters now 
as I seek that mirage
spellbound by a sunrise,
the traffic
of shooting stars
crossed by an angry little god
crouched between wooden
seats in a train station
*Whereas in English, we might think of blue (azul) as a color indicative of  sorrow, Palma tells me, in Spanish it implies calm,  tranquility.
​
Click to listen to "Quizá Decíamos" read by the poet (on the Soundcloud site).
Quizá Decíamos
​quizá decíamos hambre
cuando dijimos hielo
en los veranos que apretaban costuras
de cuerpos zaheridos por certezas ajenas

a ratos
universos destemplados
se contradecían mudos

las constelaciones se destartalaban lentas
sobre el costado de barrios casuales


quizá decíamos hambre
y queríamos
                        ser boca
​perhaps we used to say hunger
when we said ice
in the summers pulling tight the seams
of bodies wounded beyond all reason

From time to time
ill-tempered universes,
made speechless, slowly
smashed constellations
on the flanks of any old neighborhood

perhaps we used to say hunger
and we used to want
to be a mouth
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