Boricua en la Luna

Saturday, August 25, 2012

For my Spanish-speaking friends, here's an essay by a Puerto Rican journalist about using English in a "Calibanesque" way (Roberto Fernández Retamar's phrase). Excellent essay and in keeping with my own philosophy of why, as a Puerto Rican, I teach and write in English. (Thanks, mami, for sending it my way!)

¿Enséñame tu lengua para maldecirte?

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Poem 20 by Pablo Neruda (my translation)

Poem 20

Tonight, I can write the saddest of verses.

I can write, for example: “The night is covered with stars, and the stars shiver, blue, in the distance.”

The night wind spirals in the sky and sings.

Tonight, I can write the saddest of verses. I loved her, and, sometimes, she loved me also.

In nights like this I held her in my arms. I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me; at times, I also loved her. How could I not have loved her large still eyes.

Tonight, I can write the saddest of verses. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls on the soul like dew on grass.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is covered with stars and she is not with me.

That is all. In the distance, someone sings. In the distance. My soul cannot be content with having lost her.

As if to bring her closer, my eyes search for her. My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees. We, as we were then, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that is true, but how I loved her. My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before of my kisses. Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I do not love her, that is true, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, and forgetting so long.

Because in nights like this I held her in my arms, My soul cannot be content with having lost her.

Even if this is the last sorrow she gives me, And these are the last verses I write her.

Ay, ay, ay, de la grifa negra by Julia de Burgos