Gonzalo Segura
Three poems translated from Spanish by Susannah Greenblatt
The Distant Sound of Nocturnal Animals
Dinner
Words
should not be so huge
I think on days like today
after
having said too much
a sound leaving my mouth
or a button pressed
that makes
you get up from the table
the propulsion of your knees
so immediate
like a hare on the side of the highway
the scrape
of the chair against the floor
and you disappear
leaving me with my fork in the air
the food
falling between its teeth
and the certainty
that words
should not be so sharp
that I don’t know
how to use them
that you are crying
in the kitchen,
I see you
in that same profile
I have seen so many times
biting your lip
stifling the sound
I see you there
with the same old sponge
washing the plate with one side
and with the other
soaping
the silverware we didn’t use
and the water
at that temperature
that my hands can’t bear
to see you there
to be surprised
by those gloves you have on
I didn’t know you wore those, I say to you
but you don’t hear me
the water heater heating
fills the kitchen
I tell you that I didn’t know that you wear gloves
excuse me
if I can’t control my words
you turn around look at me
with your face all red
and you remove the orange latex
from your fingers
one by one, carefully
to show me a wrinkled hand,
two rings, your unpainted nails
I ask, What do you mean?
and you go back to your work
with one glove fewer
water spilling everywhere
and the echo of words
that didn’t work
Calle Maldonado
I leave the house after
turning the key in the top lock
four times and the bottom one
twice. On Maldonado
cars are passing: black, modern
funereal. Several passed, three or four,
in single file, speeding by.
I had never seen
hearses go
so fast.
Amaicha del Valle
Today I walked around the whole village
and thought I saw my father several times:
in the swell of the river, under
the carob tree that rises from the bank
hidden behind a cactus and
leaning down
over the scooped-out stone
we found one summer behind the church:
stone on stone
we ground up
a carob pod
till only dust remained
an ancient mortar, my father said
of the bowl where now
a stem with red flowers seeks light.
Rosita sells empanadas in the plaza
you are the son, she says
and we talk about the 360 days of sun
while I drip all over myself
and think I see something that isn’t there.
Like the sound of horses
galloping on the river stones, she tells me
and I don’t understand but I remember
that February night
with my cousins
the soccer field that had no lights
and in the darkness, as if floating,
a horse’s snout
coming towards us.
We escaped the spirit
I tell my father, frightened
and he laughs before explaining
that some horses camouflage
that we can’t see their black coats
that I should pay attention for hoofbeats.
Now that I’m tired of searching
I take the long road
with eyes blindfolded:
the clinic, the Pol bar, the town hall
a hostel, which is new, the house
that once had trees
an apple tree, vines
now looks like a vacant lot
a horizon of dry earth
where the sun is setting
and the dogs scrounge for
some buried leftover, they bark
because in the valley
dogs bark in the night
when nothing can be seen
and nothing can be found
but the distant sound
of nocturnal animals.