This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you a thirteen-part poem by Anna Dodas i Noguer which was first published as a chapbook in Barcelona and was awarded the prestigious Amadeu Oller Prize in 1986. Blending the fragmented images of a snowy landscape with moments of gentle, philosophical questioning—the hypnotic rhythm of Dodas’ language recedes and surges with the force of the river that courses through her long poem. As translator Clyde Moneyhun suggests, this poem is reminiscent of Sylvia Plath’s description of her own collection, Winter Trees. That is, “Landscape with Winter” is a poem which contains what Plath calls “small descriptions where the words have an aura of mystic power.” Marking the first time that Dodas’ work is available in English, we are proud to present to our readers this exquisite work of Catalan poetry.
Landscape with Winter
The tormented earth groans like a heart.
—Verdague
1
Hair is undone
and the stars shoot
across a milky firmament.
The acceleration, the jolt.
My heart fits
in the paw of an ogre.
Gallop, gallop
jump
gallop, gallop
the mountains ferocious
as the sea.
They cry, the bells,
they cry.
A faucet drips
like a streaming
tear.
All is sleeping.
2
A flock of clouds
white boulevards
snow, snow, snow.
Arrow of silence
flattens the air.
Life itself
is mute.
Make me a place, make me a place
surface like skating rink
ice.
I see nothing, I am blind
the light
dazzles
echoes.
It’s snowing.
Sacrifice spaces
take away the image, if you can:
nothing remains
nothing more
than a vast
desolate sorrow.
3
have you seen the forest
past the river
frozen skeletons of oak trees?
nothing breathes
the twisted branches
like a fossil doubt
nothing there moves
how heavy it is
the afternoon
the snow
have you seen it, the forest?
transfigured
there is no memory
no fallen leaves
like the other forest
beyond life
4
They burn within within
the homes on fire
in their depths.
This soft carpet
red orange
is the fire,
the white flames.
The indecisive fields of snow
stagger.
Terrifying shadows
stretched
along the edges.
5
The panes are dripping
immense yearning
river of tears
window
streams down
so quietly
round as a cat
on a carpet
now the great winds
advance
without a sound
down the street of pens
The heart grows drowsy
and the glass drenched
the drops slow
as if the whole world
is falling asleep.
6
the river
the long mirror
dead trees
cold roots
The ancient sap
of the dying willow
rises and falls
white mannequins
who comes, who comes
to trouble
their sleep?
7
A brilliant meteor
frees itself
and lights the frozen crust
of the earth.
Pulsating sparks
faint stars
in the darkness.
Like a chickpea
a ruby
it tumbles over and over
now black
now white.
They must be very cold
much, much colder
to dissolve the mineral hardness
of fossilized
blood.
8
ebony traces
wounds the color
violet
an enormous rainbow
a prism
rounds the sky.
Thunderous tides
and a fierce longing
Where is the calm
the longed for promise?
9
Horses came
with eyes of emerald.
A ring vivid green
surprised the night.
Death
strong in the saddle
and holding love
by the mane
you musn’t drop
the tail as soft
as filaments of silk.
The evening forest
obscures the steps
anguished
the clip clop
the hoofprints
and the neighing
untamed
10
who thinks now about the sea
that roars in the distance
with crashing waves and seagulls?
here only the snowy
crests tucked in
the fields covered
with motionless swells
and at night constellations
observe themselves in isolation.
11
it sharpens all the more the torment
of the lonely nights
of snow
this desolate jingling
of the sled wandering
a distant hill
the frozen fingers of winter
glide across my back
the bed, this broad field
of white sheets
and meanwhile the plain
remembers flowering hawthorns
the frosty petals
the soft scent of the breeze
and makes us long for sleep
while shaking with shivers
12
sorrowful dogs wander
the spacious blanketed night
and the watchful white ghosts
the slow death the deep sound
All without resonance without hoofprint
the dying echos the smooth blanket
mild lingering taste of buried absences
that most delicate taste of eternity
anchored in a silver sea
And the slow plain beneath
the velvety marble tile
13
The dawn rolls over
rumble of thunder
Sound, resound
in the numb streets.
The light spills into them
with all the torment.
When did
the birds
go blind?
Translated from the Catalan by Clyde Moneyhun
Anna Dodas i Noguer won Catalonia’s Amadeu Oller Prize in 1986 with her first collection, Paisatge amb hivern (Landscape with Winter). Six months later, at age twenty-three, Anna Dodas was murdered while traveling with a friend by car in rural southern France (a crime never solved). The remainder of her work was published posthumously in 1991 in the volume El volcà (The Volcano). Her poetry has been compared to that of Anne Sexton and especially Sylvia Plath, whose collection Winter Trees Dodas had read in Catalan translation.
Clyde Moneyhun translates contemporary Catalan-language poetry and has published translations of Ponç Pons (El salobre/Salt, 2017) and Dolors Miquel (Haikús del camioner/Truck Driver Haikus, 2019). His translations of Bruixa de dol/Witch in Mourning by Maria-Mercè Marçal and El volcà/The Volcano by Anna Dodas i Noguer will both appear in 2022 from Francis Boutle Publishers. His current project is an anthology of the twentieth-century Catalan-language poets Maria Antònia Salvà, Caterina Albert, Rosa Leveroni, Clementina Arderiu, and Maria-Mercè Marçal. A descendant of Menorcan immigrants to the United States, he maintains a residence in Maó. He teaches writing and literary translation at Boise State University in Idaho.
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