La Balanza

Vanesa Pérez-Sauquillo 

Se inclinó la balanza.

Fueron los zorros con sus guantes morados

y una composición para maullido y terciopelo.

La luz se desplaza por el campo

como una gran mentira en busca de escondite.

No es el viento jugando con las nubes.

Es la balanza.

Esa abeja que espera una moneda

para cruzar el lago, la laguna.

Las bailarines cuelgan de los árboles

y todo el interior

corre,

diablo enloquecido

sobre el brezo salvaje de la noche.

La balanza, se inclina la balanza.

El interior es ya mundo exterior.

La realidad está en el aire.

La realidad no pesa nada.

La realidad, ese plato vacío.

La realidad no vale.

The Balance

Vanesa PÉREZ-SAUQUILLO 

translated from the spanish by Carina del Valle Schorske

The balance tilted.

It was the foxes

with their purple gloves

and song of mewling velvet.

The light moves out over the field

like a great lie in search of a hiding place.

That’s not the wind playing with the clouds.

It’s the balance.

The bee that waits

for a coin to cross

the lake, the lacuna.

Dancers hang from the trees

and the whole interior

runs

crazed devil

over the wild heather of the night.

The balance, the balance tilting—

the interior is already

the exterior world. 

Reality is in the air.

Reality is weightless,

an empty plate,

worth nothing.

VANESA PÉREZ-SAUQUILLO is a Spanish poet based in Madrid. Climax Road, written in Farmington, Connecticut, has received Spain’s Ojo Crítico Award (the National Spanish Radio and TV award) and the Accésit for the Adonáis Award, the oldest prize in Spanish poetry. It is her sixth book.

CARINA DEL VALLE SCHORSKE is a poet and translator based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Boston Review, The Acentos Review, No Tokens, The Point, Transition, and The Awl. She is a CantoMundo fellow, the MacDowell Colony’s 2013– 2014 Isabella Gardner fellow in poetry, and a PhD student at Columbia University, where she studies psychoanalysis and race.