Rosario Castellanos
Translations by Julian Palley
The Other
Why pronounce the names of gods, stars,
froth of an invisible ocean,
pollen from the most distant gardens?
If life aches us, if each day comes
tearing us apart, if each night
falls convulsed, assassinated.
If the grief of an unknown person
grieves us, but he is
always present, and is the victim
and the enemy and love and all
that we need in order to be whole.
Never say that the darkness is yours,
don’t drink joy down with a single swallow.
Look about you: there is the other, there is always the
other.
The air he breathes chokes you,
what he eats is your hunger.
He dies with the purest half of your death.
The Everyday
For love there is no heaven, love; only this day;
this sad strand of hair that falls
while you are combing before a mirror.
Those long tunnels
that we traverse panting and breathless;
the eyeless walls,
the emptiness that resound with
some hidden and senseless voice.
For love there is no respite, love. The night
does not suddenly become bearable.
And when a star breaks its chains
and you see it madly zigzag, and disappear,
not for this does the law loosen its claws.
The encounter is in darkness. The taste
of tears mixes with the kiss.
And in the embrace you clasp the memory
of that orphanhood, of that death.
Mariana Yampolsky
Appeal to the Solitary One
At times it behooves us to find companionship.
Friend, it’s not possible to be born, or
to die, without the other. It is well
that friendship removes from work
that look of punishment, and from joy
the illicit air of theft.
How can you be alone at the total hour,
in which the things and you talk
and talk, til dawn?
Destiny
We kill that which we love. The rest
was never alive.
No one is as close to us. No other is so hurt
by forgetfulness, an absence, a mere nothing.
We kill that which we love. An end to the asphyxia
of breathing with another’s lungs!
The air isn’t sufficient
for the two of us, nor the earth
for our bodies entwined.
The dose of hope is small
and sorrow cannot be shared.
Man is made of solitudes,
a deer in flight, bleeding,
its loins pierced by an arrow.
Ah, but hatred
its insomniac fixity of glass:
repose and menace combined.
The deer inclines its head to drink,
discovers a tiger’s image in the water.
The deer drinks the water and its image. It becomes
(before it is devoured—astonished accomplice—)
equal to its enemy.
We give life only to what we hate.
