from Trances

Rocío Cerón

The contemplation of specific
objects is also a rest.
—Francis Ponge

Stoned, the first foot in the Ivory Coast, advances.

Slow motion.

Angle of ancient technology: language.

                         We will smolder together until we disappear.

Illusionist in a tailored suit.

If you could hear you would notice the floor crack.

Collapse.

White noises—drink—, drink of light beams and darkness.



*

Straight up. The hand fits the handle perfectly.

Hammering its way to Rome.

We construct the word pubicbonecavity.

See the shadow of the vulture in waiting, it steals time.

Saddle up to say:

“observe the fold, the callus in the urgency to keep watch over your
name.”

The briar burns; your own hour, house, goes silent with a
gravity that denies.



*

It is not. No. The gravity that kills. The intention that silences. The ascension and the gold inside the Cathedral. It is not the proverb. The intonation of the song. The cock. The freak drop that persists on the cardinal’s hat. No. The mouth shines, Garanza red, Carmen of carmines. The ray that breaks between requires flint.

He gets up too. Balm of Fierabrás between his hands.



*

Cápsula mundo.

Base and summit where lament is exhausted.

Relational voices adjust the thermometer.

Under the effects of hydrocodeine with acetaminophen a man mumbles his entire life.
On the same metal floor the zodiac sign is unveiled.

The body was flying over Antarctica:

snowy corridors /acute pangs /sternum X-ray /margins /plague of peninsulas and ribs /veins /secrets of the riverbanks and mangroves /pulse held in the iris

            does it make sense to recognize one’s own death?

To fit somewhere.

                             To fit in.

translated from the Spanish by Sonja Greckol

Read the original in Spanish

Listen to an excerpt of the original Spanish read by the poet:

While translating “Trances,” Rocío Cerón’s powerful performance in Guanajuato of another piece, “Materia Oscura,” played in my mind. That performance compelled my interest in her work and in translating it, though Iunderstood little of the actual text. At that point, I did what I called an “e-transtranslation” using Google Translate through multiple languages and selected variously translated phrases pleased my ears’ memory of Cerón’s performance.

Translating “Trances” sends the mind tunneling in the multiple directions that Cerón invites us to explore. The excerpt here is the initial part of a larger poem comprising eight sections. In the voice of a contemplative, embodied explorer, “specific objects,” including language, the body, flora and fauna, landscape and light, and at least one knight’s potion, accrue to a powerful force reflecting Cerón’s courageous poetic. She constructs images rhythmically and sonically for the ear as a musician might, and lines for the eye, as a painter might. While the translation cannot mimic her rhythms, reproducing her use of the page does paint her picture. The rich imagery, sometimes fantastic, which shifts and lists across diction and tone, demands a linguistic rigor to match her erudition while the line-by-line translation is quite literal. 

This translation was prepared in Erín Moure’s translation workshop (2022-2023) alongside Lee Gould, Roman Ivashkiv, Lynn McClory, and Jaclyn Piudik, who translated Spanish, Ukrainian, and French poetry into English.

Rocío Cerón is based in Mexico City. As a poet and artist, she investigates forms of construction of memory, its hesitations, the many suspensions of meanings (to create other meanings) and their displacement as territories clash to create transmedia pieces. She has released the sound poetry albums MIIUNI (2022) and Sonic Bubbles (2020), and published the poetry books Simultáneo sucesivo (Eolas Ediciones, 2022), Divisible corpóreo (Tresnubes-UANL, 2022), Spectio (Tresnubes-UANL, 2019), Materia oscura (Parentalia Ediciones, 2018), Borealis (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2016), Nudo vortex (Edición Proyecto Literal México, 2015), four distinct editions of Diorama in Spanish or bilingual Spanish/English: (UANL-Tabasco 189 México, 2012), (Diaz Grey Editores, NY, bilingual Spanish/English edition, trans. Anna Rosen Guercio, 2013), (Amargord Ediciones, 2013), (Phoneme Media, bilingual Spanish/English edition, trans. Anna Rosenwong, 2014), and Basalto (Urania, 2001, and Editorial Casa Vacía, 2022),‌ among others. Anna Rosenwong's English translation of Diorama won the 2015 Best Translated Book Award from the University of Rochester (United States). Cerón has also been awarded the 2000 Gilberto Owen National Literature Prize (Mexico) and the 2005 See America Travel Award (United States). Her poems have been translated into English and various European languages, and some of her work has been exhibited at international venues in Paris, London, Mexico, Berlin, and Stockholm.

Sonja Greckol is based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada. She has published four books of poetry: Monitoring Station (University of Alberta Press – Robert Kroetsch Series, 2023), No Line In Time (Tightrope, 2018), Skein of Days (Pedlar Press, 2014), and Gravity Matters (Inanna Publications and Education, Inc., 2009). Her long poem “No Line In Time” won the 2017 briarpatch Poetry Contest and “No Line In Time” was longlisted for the League of Canadian Poets’ Raymond Souster Award in 2019. Her “e-transtranslation” “Dark Matter Diverted” of Rocío Cerón’s “Materia Oscura” appeared in La Presa in 2020. Greckol edits poetry for Women & Environments International Magazine.