Three Poems

Manuel Rivas

Secrets

I

Yellow as the sun,
winter’s moments of madness,
gorse flowers. Amen.


II

That suitcase of yours
was never really empty,
full of secret talk.


III

Solitary days
when roaming cattle graze.
Stitching the shadows.


IV

Not so far away
nor even so long ago.
The past, now, today.


V

Angels are falling
out of the heavenly blue.
Always mend the roof.



Firefly

In the tongue of Galicia
the creature with most names is the firefly.
Small god, Lucerna.
Worm-god, Lucecú.
It’s reckoned at the very least
the firefly has a hundred names.
It even won a contest
for beautiful words
alongside the butterfly
and the septempunctata,
ladybird, ladybird,
costureira, reirrei.
How many of my fingers will you cross before you fly?
And how many years will it be before I die?
The firefly has a hundred names
but now she is no more.
Just a whisper of light in an invisible land.
Our crime,
the manufacture of nonbeing,
is nothing new.
The firefly has a hundred names,
a hundred caskets in the crypt
of a dictionary.



Chalk on the Blackboard

Because there is a border
and you are on the other side,
dwelling in the etymology of the expelled,
that parish of the god Terminus
on the exact edge of exile,
you miss the mark as a dead man,
Don Antonio Machado,
imperfect corpse,
arms crossed in death’s womb,
the schoolmaster giving birth to an exiled child
on the way to school,
taking refuge in chalked calligraphy,
the swallow’s chirrup
in every stroke on the blackboard,
the accent of terrified
truth,
the unbending defeat
of marks made by an honest animal
with quilled hand
who sniffs at the remains
of the history of Spain
in a still life
where the moon
hangs from a meathook
and pales.

translated from the Galician by Lorna Shaughnessy

Read the original in Galician

Listen to the original read by the poet:

For Manuel Rivas, words are the most sensitive of creatures. In the same way that frogs or glow-worms are the first to manifest signs of pollution in the natural environment, words suffer as a result of corruption in the socio-political sphere. In his work as journalist, writer of fiction, poetry or essays, he is consistent in his role as custodian of all sensitive creatures; his writings document historical damage and alert us to potential future harm to our natural, linguistic and political eco-systems. The poems translated here challenge the reader to observe the world more closely, because it is precisely the things that are not immediately visible or audible that matter most in these disturbing times of endangered species, languages and histories.

Manuel Rivas (b. 1957, A Coruña) is a poet, fiction writer, screenwriter, and journalist. His poetry has been collected in the volumes O pobo da noite (1997) and Do descoñecido ao descoñecido (From Unknown to Unknown, Small Stations Press, 2009). For his fiction, he has received the Spanish Critics' Prize for Un millón de vacas (One Million Cows, Small Stations Press, 2015), the Galician Critics' Prize for En salvaxe compaña (In the Wilderness, Harvill Press, 2003; Overlook Press, 2006), the National Literature Prize for Narrative for Que me queres, amor? (Vermeer’s Milkmaid and Other Stories, Harvill Press, 2002; Overlook Press, 2008), the Spanish Critics' Prize for O lapis de carpinteiro (The Carpenter’s Pencil, Harvill Press, 2001; Overlook Press, 2001), and the National Critics’ Prize in Galician for Os libros arden mal (Books Burn Badly, Harvill Secker, 2010), which was also named Book of the Year by booksellers in Madrid. His most recent books are the story collection O máis estraño (2011), the novel El último día de Terranova (2015), the poetry collection A boca da terra (2015), and the essay Contra todo isto (2018). He is the codirector of Luzes, a monthly magazine dedicated to new journalism, freedoms, and culture. Find his author's page at Penguin Random House here.

Lorna Shaughnessy has published three poetry collections, Torching the Brown River (Salmon Poetry, 2008), Witness Trees (Salmon Poetry, 2011), and Anchored (Salmon Poetry, 2015), and a chapbook, Song of the Forgotten Shulamite (Lapwing Publications, 2005). Lark Water, her fourth collection, will be launched in 2020. She lectures in Hispanic studies in National University of Ireland, Galway and translates Galician, Spanish, and Latin American poetry, including two collections by Manuel Rivas, The Disappearance of Snow (Shearsman Books, 2012) and The Mouth of the Earth (Shearsman Books, 2019). In 2018, she was awarded the Artist’s Bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland. She is the coordinator of Crosswinds: Irish and Galician Poetry and Translation, a collaboration between poets, translators, and academics in Galicia and Ireland. For more information, go here.