De Poemas de Chile

II

Engarzadas imágenes de chilenos
Haciendo sufrir a sus propios hermanos,
Persecución, ejecuciones, tormentos,
Redadas, tumbas sin nombre,
Mientras yo en la sombra del miedo,
Ni siquiera me atrevía a decir:
"Esta boca es mía."

Vivía en el silencio,
Un duro y cóncavo silencio,
Mientras el cielo era nada más que cenizas
De algo quemado en otros países,
Por la misma causa, en otros siglos.

Vivía en un silencio que hoy he conquistado,
Porque esas engarzadas imágenes
Todavía asaltan mi cerebro y
Porque la inmunidad no cura el dolor.


III

Cuando los recuerdo entro en un invierno
Que me congela la sangre en las venas
Que cicatriza las palabras y las cartas arrugadas,
Que me pone una mordaza de hielo en la boca,
Que dibuja sus rostros en mis sueños
Que primero los congela,
Luego los torna en vidrio,
Después en mármol,
Hasta que me inmoviliza en un tiempo indestructible.



From Poems of Chile

II

Tangled images of Chileans
Making their own brothers suffer,
Persecution, executions, torments,
Raids, nameless graves,
While I in the shadows of fear
Never even dared to say:
"This mouth is mine."

I used to live in silence,
A hard and concave silence,
While the sky was nothing more than ashes
Of something burned in other countries,
For the same cause, in other centuries.

I used to live in a silence that today I have conquered,
Because those tangled images
Still assault my brain and
Because immunity does not cure pain.


III

When I remember you I enter into a winter
That freezes the blood in my veins
That scars your words and your crumpled letters,
That puts a muzzle of ice in my mouth
And sketches your faces in my dreams
That first freezes them,
Then turns them to glass,
Then marble,
Till I am immobilized in an indestructible time.



Chile

País lejano.
Iluminado país lejano.
Nación secretamente deformada que nació
Y fue al exilio el mismo año.
En cualquier momento, alguien dirá
Cuando lea un mapa:
Que una enorme cicatriz corre de norte a sur
Y divide el país en treinta
Piezas azules, blancas y rojas.



Chile (English)

Distant country.
Illuminated distant country.
Secretly deformed nation born
And exiled the same year.
At any moment, somebody will say
When they read a map:
That an enormous scar runs from north to south
And divides that country into thirty
Red, white, and blue pieces.



Santiago

¿Cómo has podido cambiar tanto durante mi ausencia?
¿Me contestarías si te preguntara que te ha pasado?
¿Me dirías que nada ha cambiado?
¿Adónde enviaste mi pasado?
¿Mi juventud? ¿mis libros? ¿mis amigos?
¿Qué hoyos de bala todavía acribillan las paredes de tus edificios?



Santiago (English)

How could you have changed so much during my absence?
Would you answer if I asked you what has happened?
Would you say that nothing has changed?
Where did you send my past?
My youth? My books? My friends?
Which bullet holes still riddle the walls of your buildings?



Azul de Ultramar

A veces las calles se convierten en memoria
Las ciudades imaginan otras y
En ese espacio entre vocablos
Entre sueño y realidad
Santiago, para el que se fue o se ha quedado,
El viaje de la mente es el más corto.

                                 (Una cosa es verdadera, en esta tierra: cobre significa azul)

Las distancias son medidas por palpitaciones
El pulso de las manos bienvenidas, sin embargo
En las noches, soledad en cada ciudad,
Santiago, para el que se ha quedado o se fue
El viaje al corazón es el más largo

                                 (Una cosa es verdadera, en esta tierra: azul significas tú)



Ultramarine Blue

Sometimes the streets turn to memory
The cities imagining others
In that space between words
Between dream and reality
Santiago, for the one who left or the one who stays
The shortest journey is of the mind

                                 (One thing is true, in this land: copper means blue)

Distances are measured by the heartbeats
The pulse of the hands of welcome, and yet,
At night, solitude in each city,
Santiago, for the one who has stayed or the one who left
The longest journey is to the heart

                                 (One thing is true, in this land: blue means you)



Trazas de mapa

La fórmula para viajar es mirar por una ventana oval un telón en blanco. El mundo te hará señas, mientras la luz y los ojos se penetran mutuamente. Es una paradoja. No tengo ojos y no veo el purificado cielo. Ni tampoco la tierra azul. Sólo siento el frío o el calor, la añoranza y, tal vez, la alegría. Sin ojos, no cielo, no nubes, ni siquiera lágrimas. Mi imprevisible camino sin tierra, aire sin aliento, días blancos sin mancha, cerca sin siguiente. Pero si sigo la metáfora, viajo a donde quiero a través de la ventana oval y las nubes cruzan entonces el telón albo al ritmo del pestañeo de mis ojos. Velo después de velo, la memoria despliega muchas formas. Sé que he vivido varios mundos. Uno es haber sido, otro fue partir y, a veces, como ahora, volver a ti.



Map Traces

The formula for travel is to look through an oval window at a blank screen. The world will signal you, while light and eyes penetrate each other. It's a paradox. I have no eyes and do not see the purifying sky. Nor the blue land. I feel only cold or heat, yearning and, perhaps, joy. Without eyes, no sky, no clouds, not even tears. My unforeseeable road without land, air without breath, white days without stain, near without next. But if I follow the metaphor, I can travel wherever I desire through the oval window, and the clouds will cross the white screen to the rhythm of the blinking of my eyes. Veil after veil, memory has many forms. I know I have lived many worlds. One is to have been, another was to depart, and sometimes, as now, to return to you.

Ekleksographia:
Wave Two

November, 2009

Poems

Eugenia Toledo

Eugenia Toledo was born in Temuco, Chile. She came to the U. S. in 1975 to pursue a Ph. D. in Latin American Literature at the University of Washington, married and remained in Seattle with her husband and son. She has published eight texts and two manuals for adult education; a book about the Spanish writer Fray Luis de León (Editorial Cíclope, Santiago, 1986); two books of poetry, Arquitectura de ausencias / Architecture of Absences (Editorial Torremozas, España, 2006); Tempo de metales y volcanes / Time of Metals and Volcanoes (Editorial 400 Elefantes, Nicaragua, 2007); and a chapbook "Leaf of Glass," which won an Artella contest in 2005. Eugenia also writes literary articles and creates "book-objects," combining words and graphic materials. At Seattle's Richard Hugo House, she has taught poetry writing in Spanish, and with Carolyne Wright, team-taught a course on Pablo Neruda. A new manuscript of poems, Trazas de mapa / Map Traces, has won a 2009 grant from 4Culture. Other poems of hers in translation by Carolyne Wright have appeared in Rio Grande Review and the chapbook, La luz ambarina de la lluvia: Letras de Temuko / The Rain's Amber Light: Letters from Temuco; and are forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review, Palabra, and Poetry International.

Carolyne Wright

Carolyne Wright's eight books and chapbooks of poetry include Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire (EWUP/Lynx House Books, 2nd edition 2005), which won the Blue Lynx Prize and American Book Award; and A Change of Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2006), finalist for the Idaho Prize and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, and winner of the 2007 Independent Book Publishers Bronze Award in Poetry. Also published are a collection of essays and four volumes of poetry translated from Spanish and Bengali. A Seattle native who studied with Elizabeth Bishop and Richard Hugo, Wright spent a year in Chile on a Fulbright-Hayes Study Grant during the presidency of Salvador Allende. She is completing a memoir about this experience, while serving on the faculty of the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Program and the Richard Hugo House. Sponsored by an Education and Culture Travel Grant from Washington State / Chile Partners of the Americas, she returned to Chile in fall 2008, giving readings and workshops with Eugenia Toledo, and reconnecting with her Chilean past. Her volume of translations of Chilean poet Jorge Teillier, In Order to Talk with the Dead (U of Texas Press, 1993), won the National Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) in 1994.