un erebo bajo otro erebo
bajo un
tercer erebo
que desemboca en un cuarto
la ciudad amanece punteada de gorriones
de gorrión a gorrión
repta la miopía
el último erebo
de las serie se ahonda en otro
imposible
prender un cerillo pero viene la sombra
de mi abuelo
envuelta en papel cebolla
y golpes oxidados
de escritura clandestina
direcciones falsas
nombres encubiertos en un género fingido
personajes de una gesta reducida a abreviaturas
viene Fulvio
a recordarme
“no mires hacia adentro”
no mirando hacia adentro
el abismo
se desintegra en trenes matutinos
color naranja vagones y vagones y vagones
llenos de tibieza
resabios de baño apresurado y secadora
organizado apretuje
solidario
que se desintegra a su vez
por las calles deshilachado en estaciones
se distribuye en oficinas talleres mecánicos
supermercados
con la ropa vieja
opacidad raída
sale
se distribuye
y enciende cerillos que encienden cigarros
que encienden
hornillas que encienden
el rápido desayuno a horas obscenas
que enciende el día
a su vez hecho de días
puesta en abismo de matices imprevistos
Observa la huella de la gota:
la forma ovoide de aspereza denunciando
en el papel ya viejo,
ya de más de ochenta años,
¿qué
separaciones,
lluvias,
goteras,
qué circunstancias aquí colegidas
determinan
la transgresión de ese cierre autoritario:
“quema esta carta,
no la guardes,
no escondas papeles,
borra, anula:
fiat lux”?
En cuyo caso el fiat habría sido
un no quedar rastro. Un destello sin opciones,
un no, más que un inicio.
Y mientras, graznan
los cerrojos
la única palabra que conocen: quién.
Y la pregunta encierra
la posibilidad de rancho,
la permisión del sol, el lapso
antes del golpe.
Quién, preguntan todos, y los complementos
circunstanciales y directos del pronombre
en su mucha variedad construyen
los barrotes,
los muros,
los días de la semana
interrogados:
quién te dijo, quién vino, a quién frecuentas,
quién te dio estos libros, de quién
son estas cartas
manuscritas.
Y hace años, de niño,
en sepia, lento, hundías el plumín filoso
y las planas
llenándose despacio y pulcras
para esto.
Y ahora aquí, un diente podrido en la mazmorra,
casi como una semilla que brotara,
que echara una raíz cálida y gorda de pus
hasta el pulmón.
De quién son estas cartas de quién
las recibiste.
Distíngase entonces el fiat
del fiat
uno es nacer de luz para anularlo todo, un cerillo
encendido al borde de una carta,
y que abre un hueco en el tiempo, un hueco invisible
en la retina,
como los libros de Alejandría en llamas, fuera
del campo visual, lejos
de la hipótesis de luz, y el otro
fiat que engendra
y expele
a sus contrarios,
lo negro, la guerra,
el suelo: un fiat
fértil, encarnado
en cosas,
no en ausencias.
Mamma,
los días
son tranquilos.
Traduje aquí un manual
de elaborar zapatos,
te lo mando con la venia
del amabilísimo rector de este presidio
para tu sustento
y el de mis hermanos.
Gracias por los trajes
y el pastel de nueces.
Felicita a la prima
que se casa.
Calcúlese entonces qué complementos,
la importancia de qué completivas,
qué acusativos, dativos, determinan
la distancia entre un fiat y otro fiat.
Por ejemplo, esta carta,
prisa previa a la fuga,
gotas
que se acusan restos
de películas lagrimales
microscópicamente reventadas,
como globos torpes,
grávidos, precipitados
sobre la instrucción precisa:
quema
tu manía de atesorar papeles.
Pero en la celda, meses antes,
la luz entrando como una ironía del trópico,
algunos loros dibujados en el cielo,
en el horizonte
sonoro de la cuadra del presidio;
la antorcha
iluminando
el calabozo negro de Castell Sant’Angelo,
y los interminables soliloquios
de Cellini
con dios mismo,
ahora aquí vertiéndose a otra lengua,
en otro calabozo
¿eco de aquél?
como en un juego de espejos
venecianos.
Presidio Político Maria Zélia, 1935
Paula Abramo
Listen to the original read by the poet:
FIAT LUX is a collection of poems evoking the poet’s ancestors who were political refugees from Italy and Eastern Europe to Brazil in the early twentieth century, from Brazil to Bolivia in the 1930s, and then again from Brazil to Mexico in the 1960s. At the same time, it is a meditation on the act of writing poetry and bringing historical characters to life. These two axes cross in the image of striking a match (her grandmother worked in a match factory making the brand called FIAT LUX, Latin for “let there be light”), which provides the book’s title and runs through the openings of all the poems. “In the Maria Zélia Political Prison” contains one of the longest of these opening sections, and perhaps the most descriptive of the poet’s own surroundings.
Translation challenges include switching among the poetry’s various modes: narrative, introspective, biographical, at times philosophical, at times making use of cryptic but evocative bits of ancestors’ journals and handed-down lore—such as, in this poem, Paula Abramo's grandfather Fulvio’s distrust of introspection and his strategies for keeping prison interrogators and censors at bay. Also, the poet delights in surprising the reader with enjambments in which the next line playfully undermines the meaning the reader is constructing out of the line before, and these need to be made to work in English word order with equal measures of rhythm, comprehensibility, and surprise.
Translating the whole book has been somewhat like translating a novel, because many poems fill out suggestions about the characters that appeared in earlier ones (the instruction “don’t navel-gaze” will recur, and the grandfather’s prison experience will be seen from a different angle in the next poem). Situations repeat themselves in parallel, like the set of Venetian mirrors with which this poem concludes. Abramo was a classics major in college and is a translator by profession, so it’s natural that the border-crossing and time travel involved in telling the family history are evoked by the use of multiple languages, including bits of Portuguese, Latin, and Greek. Since English is farther from Romance-language roots than Spanish is, I have helped English readers by translating some of these phrases while leaving others—like the fiat of this poem—as they were.
Translation challenges include switching among the poetry’s various modes: narrative, introspective, biographical, at times philosophical, at times making use of cryptic but evocative bits of ancestors’ journals and handed-down lore—such as, in this poem, Paula Abramo's grandfather Fulvio’s distrust of introspection and his strategies for keeping prison interrogators and censors at bay. Also, the poet delights in surprising the reader with enjambments in which the next line playfully undermines the meaning the reader is constructing out of the line before, and these need to be made to work in English word order with equal measures of rhythm, comprehensibility, and surprise.
Translating the whole book has been somewhat like translating a novel, because many poems fill out suggestions about the characters that appeared in earlier ones (the instruction “don’t navel-gaze” will recur, and the grandfather’s prison experience will be seen from a different angle in the next poem). Situations repeat themselves in parallel, like the set of Venetian mirrors with which this poem concludes. Abramo was a classics major in college and is a translator by profession, so it’s natural that the border-crossing and time travel involved in telling the family history are evoked by the use of multiple languages, including bits of Portuguese, Latin, and Greek. Since English is farther from Romance-language roots than Spanish is, I have helped English readers by translating some of these phrases while leaving others—like the fiat of this poem—as they were.
Paula Abramo was born in Mexico City in 1980. Her poetry collection Fiat Lux, from which this poem comes, won the 2013 Premio de Poesías Joaquín Xirau Icaza for the best book by a writer under forty. Her work appears in anthologies of contemporary Mexican and worldwide poetry, both in the original Spanish and in translations to Portuguese, German, and French. Abramo's prolific career as a translator of more than 40 books from Portuguese to Spanish includes works by Angélica Freitas (Brazil) and Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (Portugal). She co-authored Yo soy la otra: las mujeres y la cultura en México (2017) and the art installation Ropa Sucia (2017), both exposing the causes of the invisibility of Mexican female writers and artists.
Dick Cluster has been translating Spanish-language fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for over twenty years, most recently Gabriela Alemán’s Poso Wells, Carme Chaparro’s I Am Not a Monster, and his edited anthology Kill the Ámpaya!: Best Latin American Baseball Fiction. He also writes history and fiction, including The History of Havana (co-authored with Rafael Hernández) and a crime novel series. He won the Northern California Book Award for fiction translation and was a finalist for the PEN Center USA literary translation prize. Cluster has served as a mentor and teacher at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, the Yiddish Book Center, and the Mills College graduate translation program
