Six Translations from The Dickinson Archive
Translated from the Spanish by Allison A. deFreese
Pain
A spring of water where I must burn by myself until all flames are well extinguished, as if I were approaching death, a body — nearly without mouth or eyes or heart, and so on — flung into its own turbulence, with no beatitude whatsoever. Eros again (who else?), is beside me and far from me — irresistible pest. What can I do to love his ever-present wounds? My house laps up the flames, and the wrong creatures keep appearing throughout the musical score.
Eccentricity
My whole life, I wanted the self to be absent, so that the — blind — bees would give being to beings. Because of this yearning, a honeycomb of silence came into existence — and from it emerged a courage for which there is no pronoun.
I like to dream of other worlds, to write — with my lips — about desire as an abstraction.
Body below, unreality taking frantic sips.
If I continue like this, I will wind up completely orphaned.
Biography
My name is Emily. I was born in New England on a very white and lofty, and white again 10th of December. My father, with his Pentateuch eyes, read to us from the Bible, assuring us that this book, the Book of Books, contained everything that exists in what is undiscoverable in the real. I had to find a way to invent or engender myself; having to rely on silence — what an empty nest, quite peaceful. And so I invented the forests, a world insane, the antiquity of water. That was my way of parting. I have yet to return.
Aerial
A spiritual determination, the sketch of an idea, nearly nothing. Embarking from this moon. From that luster — liquid lantern — like a spark between two nothings. And then I move away, cunning, encouraged, from my earthly home, and I love religiously, that is, I confuse the forest of my body with the body of the forest, made from the mornings with their blaring sounds that turn to dusk somewhere faraway. Something like that, very precise. Like a fear arriving, filled with a human figure and crawling through the dust.
Birth
A temple is a country that cannot be consoled. It is there that the soul complains and death passes through the doors of the world, bringing, or taking with it, a nonexistent language.
Ritual
Standing at the center of the word templum, in the shadows that tend to themselves — like a queen without a crown, I await my initiation. I don’t know what I will say about myself, when asked. That the different women I am do not know me, that I am lost in their judgment, in this feeling of living in an orphan’s home, that despite being powerless to move, I don’t even know where to look for myself. The storm never comes. Vultures and wolves do not appear. No act of learning. No kiss. In the sky a shadow undressed, and modesty covers her, indiscreetly.
MARÍA NEGRONI is the author of over 20 books, including poetry, nonfiction, and novels. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and other awards.