Poems by Marigloria Palma

The Night: 5

Night in San Juan is full of police.
Spears of blue asparagus.
Night is a cocked gun, an amazon
of gunpowder. The night’s tenderness
flickers in the law’s last trace of justice.
All to protect the innocence of lilies
left by the sun in the cracks
of the seawall. For this they made guns.
That pum-pum, that trac-trac, that howling.

They stick together, a rough jostle
beneath the sultry wings of palms,
coming between the lips of lovers,
making their mark
on the streetlamp’s vigilant retina.

Shadow breeds them
(like a puddle breeds frogs)
but with leather boots on, the stiff
attitude of the sleepwalker.

They rule the sidewalks
like high-minded parables
ornamenting the night
with cordial grunts,
with stamped files,
with judges in heat.

 

La noche: V

La noche de San Juan
está llena de agentes policíacos.
Espárragos azules.
Es noche empistolada, amazona de pólvora.
Su ternura crepita en la miaja jurídica
del código.
Todo para que no le rompan
la inocencia a los lirios
que el sol deja sembrados en las nalgas
del muro. Para eso se hicieron los revólveres,
su pum-pum, su trac-trac y su aullido.

Recios y encabritados se clavan
bajo el ala sensual de las palmeras,
se insertan en el beso fecundo de los
novios, se imprimen en la atenta
retina del farol.

Los produce la sombra
(como el charco a las ranas)
con pisadas de cuero,
la blindada postura y el cansancio despierto.

Rigen en las aceras como altivas parábolas
decorando la noche con cordiales gruñidos,
con legajos timbrados y con jueces calientes.

In Spanish; from La noche y otras flores eléctricas (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1976), 18.

 

San Juan of the Tourists

I used to run around with my seven Sundays folded
under my arm and seven pigeons crowning my brow.
I would wander the streets free and caught
in the sun’s crosshairs. The city is a herd
of feelings jammed in the traffic
of its own fragrance, its four-petaled rigor.
The port is a pool of migrant swans:
fumes of tourists, cracked shells of overpriced eggs.
The day’s a foreign hive of cameras and white lilies.
It’s goodbye and hello, it’s bonjour, it’s oui oui,
It’s guten Tag . . .

I stumble down the sidewalk with the eyes of the world on me:
a snowy flock of plovers, pink lobsters with ceramic eyelids.
A disaffected sun sinks its gold tooth in us.
Stubs us with its snout, its copper kiss.
Anyone with cornsilk hair lights up with a fine shine, flash of gold in transit.
The lips of the tourist are burnt cherries: expensive ornaments
for hardly a rumor of a face; they’re the rubies of the wind.
Scar on the lip: paradise in the gesture.

The clear light of march stirs us into its hissing simmer
of cream of wheat. By dusk it will be
a violet emulsion, and later, brown grapes.

We walk . . . They walk . . .
They’re newborn from my sun and the games it plays.
Me? I’m the ruthless essence of shadow and wind,
silver burnished to a high shine.
They’re filling my sleep with lacy minnows and blue antlers.
While I, woman of spent straw, dream a troubled dream
not at all defined . . .

I watch them float past.
Their parade grinds the last crumbs of my cookie into the street.

 

San Juan de los turistas

Corría con mis siete domingos doblados
bajo el brazo y mis siete palomas erguidas en la frente.
Andaba por las calles libre y entrelazada
por las barbas del sol.
La ciudad es rebaño de emociones
reunidas en el transito de su propia fragancia,
su rigor cuatripétalo.
El puerto es una alberca de cisnes trashumantes:
vapores de turistas, cascarones de huevo de alto precio.
Es un día de panal extranjero, cámara y lirio blanco.
Es Good-bye y Hello!; es Bonjour, es oui oui,
es guten Tag . . .

Me tropiezo en la acera con los ojos del mundo:
avefrías de nevado ensamblaje, sonrosadas langostas
de párpados cerámicos.
Un sol enajenado hunde su diente de oro.
Con so hocico tozudo deja el beso cobrizo.
Se ilumina el cabello de maíz navegante
con finura de joya; oro de brillo en tránsito.
Las cerezas quemadas de los labios turísticos
en las blancas cadencies sin rumor de las caras
Son adorno costoso; son rubíes de los vientos.
Cicatriz en los labios: paraíso en el gesto.

Nos envuelve en su trino de farina candente,
la luz clara de marzo. Ya sera en el crepúsculo
emulsión de violetas y más tarde, uvas pardas.

Caminamos . . . Caminan . . .
Ellos, recién nacidos de mi sol y su juego.
Yo, esencia despiadada de mi sombra y mi viento;
plata bruñida irguiéndose.
Ellos, llenando el sueño de pececillos diáfanos
y azules cornamentas. Yo, fatigada paja,
sueño con problemática sin total definido . . .
Los miro desfilar, pisan mi sobra de galleta cuadrada.

In Spanish; from La noche, 37–38.

 

Composition of a Tear

With a pair of scissors I cut
the fluent clarity of your tear,
miniature ocean of bitter tides,
bubble of salt.

I can see myself inside it.
Its photographic lens strips me bare.
It drops away from you and rolls on waves of air.
I see my finest strand of hair dive down to you like the swallows
that chain the darkness to your mouth of coupled fish.
Contraction of light, light’s mandate, deluge.

Your tear is my mirror.
I look at the torn paper throat,
the silent breasts like still bells,
the nakedness of the body, disoriented
vein that cannot mend its twenty crossings.
I am and am not in the fogged glass of its circumference,
peopled planet of your orbit, your purified tear.
You cry: an alphabet in the sticky strategems of sex.

This tear of yours, this weeping wept dry,
this human diamond, pure chemical formula
that the wind must come to drink with its horn of pearl.
I’m doubled between the fleeting reflections
of your tear’s two tracks, my cry burning with lemons,
my endless yawn, and my umbrella.
Oh, but that other one! That other one made with the groan
of wild violets, that other one, ignored: my protest.

I curse your tear.

 

Composición de una lágrima

Corto con la tijera
la claridad fluente de tu lágrima
su minuscule mar de amargo ritmo,
su burbuja de sal.

Me estoy mirando en ella.
Me desnuda su lente fotográfico.
Se destaca de ti redonda y rueda por las ondas del aire.
Veo la finísima paja de mi pelo ahondarse
en golondrinas
que encadenan la sombra hasta tu boca
de peces acoplados.
Contracción de luz, fiat luz, diluvio.

Tu lágrima es mi espejo.
Me miro la garganta de papel trastornado,
Los senos silenciosos: despejadas campanas,
La desnudez del cuerpo, hebra desorientada
Que no puede zurcir sus veinte cruces.
Soy y no soy en el vidrio mojado de la circunferencia;
Habitado planeta de tu órbita: tu lágrima apurada.
Lloras: abecedario en las formulaciones cohesivas del sexo.

Esa lágrima tuya, ese llorar llorado,
ese humano diamante, pura fórmula química
que ha de beber el viento con su trompa de nacar,
me copia entre los vidrios fugaces de su ruta
con mi grito incendiado de limones,
mi bostezo sin fin y mi paragruas.
Ah, y eso otro! Eso otro hecho con el gruñido
de violetas salvaes, eso otro ignorado: mi protesta.

Yo maldigo tu lágrima.

In Spanish; from La noche, 50–51.

 

Paradox

To make herself a necklace, she ferments her tears.

Listen, little soul of mine, refrain from your butterfly delusions,
from dissolving yourself in the choked flow of the stream,
your channel of mysterious origin, refrain from “putting your face on,”
from “having you, I have,” from “loving you, I love,”
all to the sound of “how,” of “I will” and “I’m still this way,”
all to the studied squawk of suppositions.

Everything will come later . . .
Later comes the little oil flame
and its aftershadow, the indestructible
fence where the beginning starts to begin:
the great egg of the world. And beyond that, what is there?

Beyond that is the howl,
piercer of shadows and seeds,
the midnight groans of the machine,
magician, and oracle (everything is true
and is valid) and the “don’t move now,
hold your breath . . . now breathe: click!”

You can make yourself a world with your own nitrogen
and a touch of oxygen. The trick is the flash, lightning.

 

Paradoja

Para hacerse un collar su lágrima fermenta.
Oye, alma mía, refrena tu ilusión de mariposa,
la ardua fugacidad de diluirte
en arroyo y en cauce del misterioso origen,
del “haciendo tu cara”, del “teniéndote tengo”,
del “amando te amo”, al sonido del cómo, del seré
y “sigo siendo”
al graznido estudiado de las suposiciones.

Todo vendrá después . . .
Después vendrá la llamita de aceite
y la tras-sombra, la indestructible valla
donde inicia el comienzo su comienzo:
el huevazo del orbe. ¿Y más allá, qué hay?

Más allá está el aullido,
perforador de sombras y bellotas, el roncar
de la máquina, el mago y el oráculo (todo es verdad
y es válido) y el “no se mueva ahora,
aguante la respiración . . . Respire: ¡clic!

Puedes crearte un mundo con tu propio nitrógeno
y un adarme de oxígeno.
El truco es el relámpago.

In Spanish; from La noche, 52.

Read Carina Del Valle Schorske's essay on translating Palma's poetry: "'I Curse Your Tear': A Translator’s Note"

 

Marigloria Palma was born as Gloria María Pagán y Ferrer in 1915. Records differ regarding her birthplace--either Loiza or Canóvanas, Puerto Rico--but she was raised by her working-class single mother before leaving school to work first as a maid and later as an assistant to a photographer in San Juan, the island's capital. In 1942, she was the second woman (after Julia de Burgos) to receive the island's premier poetry prize from the Institute of Culture. She cultivated a wide-ranging creative practice--folklore, children's literature, theater, poetry, fiction, drawing, and painting--over her fifty year career. 

Carina del Valle Schorske is a poet, translator, and essayist at large in New York City. She won first prize in Gulf Coast’s 2016 translation contest for her work on Marigloria Palma. Recent writing has appeared at Lit Hub, The Point, Berfrois, Boston Review, and Prodigal, among other venues. She is the happy recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, the Macdowell Colony, and Bread Loaf, as well as Columbia University, where she is a PhD student studying psychoanalysis and other forms of psychic inquiry in the Americas. Find her at carinadelvalleschorske.tumblr.com or follow @fluentmundo on Twitter.