Tres Poemas - Asymptote

Delivery

Um imigrante / bate fotos trepado/ no toldo de / um quiosque / a multidão grita / em frente ao Banco / aparece um malabar / aparece um pastor / imagens da pura / desconexão

Carlito Azevedo

Un inmigrante corre en el techo de un vagón
el tren cruza el puente de Metlac   a milcientrotreintaiún msnm
un inmigrante hace malabares
como si la cima del mundo avanzara
a la par de las montañas
todo sereno en el paso norteamericano
Quizá más tarde vengan
                             los retenes      el chirrido de las vías
pero ahora filma con su celular el bosque nuboso
y las orquídeas negras    que pasan en la sucesión de imágenes

De algún vagón llega un sonido
los garífunas atados a los fierros
bailan con sus hijos en el pecho
luego habitarán los desiertos de Arizona
o las praderas húmedas del Bronx en el verano

Aunque ahora    un inmigrante desafía la gravedad
en su euforia por llegar al Norte
después su cuerpo se hará recio para soportar las tormentas
                 repartir comida y regalos navideños
cuando los demás se refugian en la calefacción
lo llamarán delivery
y su nombre lucirá en letras rojas

en cada entrada de los restaurantes
lo llamarán delivery mientras se equilibra en su bicicleta
y el tren avanza

un inmigrante desafía la gravedad
brinca el desierto y luego el mar
desde lo alto del puente balbucea un territorio lejano
que ni él mismo recuerda.

su corazón palpita bajo tierra

Abrimos camino entre las plantas enormes de la selva:
movimientos de hormigas que llevan y traen hojas troncos
hasta arrancar la maleza que los oculta;
leemos cada indicio de la naturaleza para saber
si el gesto que aún amamos permanece aquí

cuerpo con cuerpo,

con el corazón limpio
tinehnemih pan cuatitlamitl
avanzamos por los campos

los ojos abiertos distinguen la tierra apenas removida

cuerpo con cuerpo,
recorremos los plantíos en busca de sus huesos:
movimientos de hormigas oleajes
que traen aromas su sonrisa el sabor del último beso;
queremos saber si duermen arropados por el musgo
si tienen frío o hambre como en el principio de la vida

cuerpo con cuerpo,
cavamos en silencio
para escuchar el ritmo de su corazón que palpita bajo tierra
ininyoloh tlatzozona tlalihtic.

bugambilias dulces que jamás renacerán

En las carreteras duermen los huesos rotos

los decapitados
los tristes
tlen mocuezoah

los que ya no pueden llorar
tlen ayoccanah huelih chocah
esparcen su polvo entre la tierra húmeda
quiihzceloah inincuechchopan pan tlalli xolontoc

horadados los frontispicios de las casas
                              sus paredes sangran
un olor a plomo cubre los parques
y en los jardines uno a uno
sembrados los racimos de su piel
bugambilias dulces que jamás renacerán

el caudal es agua roja espectral roja heráldica
atlahco quipiya atl chichiltic
tan bermejo el óxido de su sangre
granate el horror de una cereza envejecida

También sus huesos cimbran
                               en el estertor del subsuelo
acarician los vapores minerales
así el dolor salobre en la espina dorsal
en la espina de los sueños:
huitztli tlen temiquiztli
la ciudad escarlata se incendia
notlalhui tlatla.

Read the English translation

Read translator's note

The first challenge of Judith Santopietro’s poem is the title. Rendering “Delivery” in Spanish as “El Delivery” in English was a way to reflect how the Spanish language vibrates in the bones and tongue of New York, and how it transforms English. Not a “delivery boy,” but a personage defined in neon: “El Delivery.”

The second challenge is the velocity, the rhythm, the impetus. The poem begins with a train—it begins with a person on the roof of the train—but first let’s discuss how Judith transmits the intermittency through the distribution of words and spaces on the page, some words strung together seamlessly, others stranded among white spaces. The movement begins on a train in Mexico and ends with a bicycle and a different train, and a different bridge, in an unbroken journey.

The beauty of Judith’s poem lies in its characters: migrants, immigrants, asylum-seekers, so often portrayed as downtrodden, as victims. But against all stereotypes her “delivery,” moved by the landscape from the roof of the train, even as later he is hardened by experience, defies gravity.

—Mary Ann Newman

I had the opportunity of translating these two poems by Judith during her participation in a marvelous symposium, The Shared Language of Poetry, which took place in Washington, D.C. and Maryland the November of 2021. They share a tragic theme which has torn through the fabric of Mexican society in recent years: that of forced disappearances and the ongoing search organized by the mothers of the missing for their remains. To me, both poems are examples of how poetry can call out for justice on behalf of the victims of violence and represent the collective labor of women without adopting an ideological stance or pamphleteering tone. My goal in these versions was to reproduce the deeply moving rhythm and imagery of the originals.

—Tanya Huntington

Read bios

Judith Santopietro is the author of the books Palabras de Agua (Words of Water; Instituto Veracruzano de Cultura-Praxis, 2010) and Tiawanaku: Poemas de la Madre Coqa/ Poems from the Mother Coqa, translated into English by Illana Luca (Orca Libros, 2019). She was a finalist for the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation in 2021. Her literary contributions have extended to numerous festivals, including PEN America’s World Voices Festival in New York in 2018, and the project Narratives and Memories on Disappearance in Mexico where she facilitated literary workshops aimed at families in search of their disappeared family members. From 2005 to 2016, she directed Iguanazul: literature on indigenous languages, a project focusing on oral tradition, literature, and arts. In 2022, she was awarded the International Writing Program Residency at The University of Iowa. Currently, she is writing a poetry book on enforced disappearances in Mexico and her debut novel on indigenous migration in New York City.

Mary Ann Newman translates from Catalan and Spanish. She has published fiction by Quim Monzó, essays by Xavier Rubert de Ventós, and poetry by Josep Carner. Her most recent translations are Private Life (Archipelago Books, 2015), a 1932 Catalan classic by Josep Maria de Sagarra, for which she won the 2017 Premi J.B. Cendrós from Òmnium Cultural and the 2017 North American Catalan Society Prize, and Final Judgements, by Joan Fuster (Fum d’Estampa, 2023). She was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi in 1998. She is currently Executive Director of the Farragut Fund for Catalan Culture in the U.S., a member of the board of the Catalan Institute of America, and President of the Jury of the Premi Internacional Catalunya. In 2025 she was admitted as a corresponding member to the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. 

Tanya Huntington is a binational writer, artist, and Managing Editor of the digital magazine Literal: Latin American Voices, and was born in the U.S. in 1969. Tanya holds a Ph.D. in Latin American literature from the University of Maryland at College Park and has translated works by dozens of Mexican writers into English over the past thirty years. She has also coproduced and contributed to various public radio and television programs dedicated to culture and the arts in Mexico, for which she has received first prize at the Bienal Internacional de Radio on two separate occasions. Her artwork has been exhibited both in the United States and Mexico and selected by prestigious venues such as the Bienal de Pintura Rufino Tamayo and the Bienal FEMSA. She is currently a member of the National System of Creative Artists of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA).