3 Vocatives
with music by Jorge Ritter
I Semí (sad allegro)
Deeper, ever dropping deeper,
brilliant, ever more resplendent,
decked-out
wingèd thing,
dressed-up
sea snail
that speaks, assents, and wishes
to be
Yes,
Yesyes,
Yesyesyes,
Yesssssssss
and fall.
A creaking action,
a rifle opening will-o-
the-wispy fire whispers
under heedless carefree
strolling feet,
encrusted and elegant
among smooth stones and paths,
among orchids and bonsai,
strange spell,
otherworldly ugliness,
passageways over lives,
no mere wonder,
nor a horror,
a mortal inverse leap,
a skeleton-imprinted
prancing
that speaks
in iridescent
chatter:
So in love with the wing,
taught it not to beat.
So in love with the chirp,
taught it to be still.
To go on saying less and less
while dying more and more.
To leave at once,
while being born.
II Cicada (sudden rise and fall)
Immersed
reprisal,
caress
devoid
of terror,
terrified,
a pest
refining
its panoply
to my chagrin.
Male and female
his abdomen,
her bellows,
deep in its heart
the heart of hell.
Vibrating like mad.
III Cricket (seamless fugue)
To lose your footing
and live,
overtopped
overcome
entwined
in layers and layers of other things,
hundreds
of thousands
of millions
lying in wait,
a great fuss of farewell,
most immaculate
strident
edges,
pick and shovel,
ostentatious oscillation
between lament and praise,
between sustenance and element.
Praying Mantis
with music by Marco Antonio Castro
I
Zoology?
Subject
of the zoorealm
that neither merits
nor needs a name
nor fits in my mouth
like insult or praise
but in the hand,
a whip, a revolver,
a magic wand,
a strut,
a Bengal light.
Its supplication
that of one who rings a bell,
a monk at prayer,
a preacher:
its identity
my own.
II
It appeared on the handrail
of my sorrow,
on the dull black forge
of my final moments.
Beware,
warned
the cloak of air
at my back:
this is no
California condor majesty
nor vulture taste
of crime and tragedy;
don’t mistake
transparence
for a feathered enormity
made to soar;
don’t confuse propitious
and ubiquitous,
that bloodless task
of literal-minded prophets:
impossible to hold
its straight-on glance
(something you can manage
in articulo mortis,
even with an assassin).
III
It extends and joins
its extremities in prayer
for sheer pleasure,
to apply the most skill
to trapping the prey,
its moveable feast
and bread of life;
it prays
to the creator most high
and ipso facto
by art of
miracle
turns
harmless.
IV
Eye-sockets and antennae
collude
with mother nature
in deceit:
even to suffer
one has to eat:
don’t kill me,
mantis,
don’t ingest me,
don’t fill me
with yourself.
V
How many times
have I opened
my mouth,
stuck out my tongue
to receive
the monumental
harpoon blow,
the oval wafer
of eternal life?
VI
My conscience
gnaws at me,
my heart
beats against me
like small birds;
someone taps at the door,
pounds with the knocker:
who is it?
asks
in answer
an animal soul.
from Hearing and Forgetting
Pura López-Colomé
translated from the Spanish by Dan Bellm
Listen to the poems read in the original Spanish by the poet:
“3 Vocatives” and “Praying Mantis” are taken from Hearing and Forgetting (Lieder: Cantos al oído, cantos al olvido), the most recent book of poems by Pura López-Colomé, one of Mexico’s most influential and groundbreaking poets. Published in 2012, the book is divided into two sections, “Songs to Hearing” and “Songs to Forgetting,” and these two insect poems, of course, are among the songs to hearing. Eleven different composers have set many of the poems to music, and the original edition includes the scores for a number of the songs.
I think of this book as conducting philosophical interrogations of the natural world—one’s story, history, and place in it—in the context of hearing and memory, and in the form of song. As poet Forrest Gander has written of her recent work, "Pura López-Colomé's . . . imagination, like Paul Celan's, is marked by a kind of moral severity located in language itself; the poems are less concerned with representing the observable surface of life than with tracing melodies, the surges and diminuendos of a spiritual vision. Their difficulty and accomplishment are equally located in the collision of tones, with puns and language play juxtaposed against stark emotional revelations. 'I have no interest in sincerity,' she has said. 'Sincerity and veracity are distinct.' Her concerns have necessitated the unconventional approach to language that marks her work, its meditative intensity, and its often dialogic form."
“3 Vocatives” (its three section titles giving three different names for the cricket) and “Praying Mantis” indicate some of the range and challenge—and, I hope, pleasure—of rendering this work in English: the collision of tones, the stark emotional revelations, the searches for “veracity,” the puns and language play that called on me to engage in a corresponding kind of play myself.
I think of this book as conducting philosophical interrogations of the natural world—one’s story, history, and place in it—in the context of hearing and memory, and in the form of song. As poet Forrest Gander has written of her recent work, "Pura López-Colomé's . . . imagination, like Paul Celan's, is marked by a kind of moral severity located in language itself; the poems are less concerned with representing the observable surface of life than with tracing melodies, the surges and diminuendos of a spiritual vision. Their difficulty and accomplishment are equally located in the collision of tones, with puns and language play juxtaposed against stark emotional revelations. 'I have no interest in sincerity,' she has said. 'Sincerity and veracity are distinct.' Her concerns have necessitated the unconventional approach to language that marks her work, its meditative intensity, and its often dialogic form."
“3 Vocatives” (its three section titles giving three different names for the cricket) and “Praying Mantis” indicate some of the range and challenge—and, I hope, pleasure—of rendering this work in English: the collision of tones, the stark emotional revelations, the searches for “veracity,” the puns and language play that called on me to engage in a corresponding kind of play myself.
Pura López-Colomé is one of Mexico’s most acclaimed contemporary poets. She has published eleven volumes of poetry, most recently Lieder: Cantos al oído, cantos al olvido (2012) and Poemas reunidos: 1985-2012 (2013). In 2007 she was awarded Mexico’s most prestigious poetry prize, the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia. She has also published Spanish translations of work by Samuel Beckett, H. D., Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and others. She lives with her family in Cuernavaca.
Dan Bellm teaches literary translation in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles and has received a translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His translation of Mexican poet Jorge Esquinca, Description of a Flash of Cobalt Blue, appeared from Unicorn Press in 2015. He has also published three books of poetry, most recently Practice (Sixteen Rivers Press), winner of a 2009 California Book Award. He lives in Berkeley, California.
