Petit Plaisance
That’s what the robust Marguerite called her house
on the half-wild island of Mount Desert.
Petit Pleasure, not Hadrian’s Refuge.
Nor did she display a replica
of Trajan’s Column in the garden,
much less did she inscribe on her entrance
the words that were placed on coins
in the time of the emperor:
Humanitas, Felicitas, Libertas.
A small pleasure, written and spoken
in the language of pleasure.
There is no doubt that that place in Montpellier
was Marguerite’s true home.
If the company raises my pay a few cents
perhaps I can save enough to give myself the pleasure
of visiting that house in Mount Desert.
With this thought, I begin my day today:
apron on,
a sprig of rosemary in my mouth.
Its oil lashing my memory
like a whip.
Copper River Salmon
It’s the season for sockeye salmon,
a vivid orange color
served with seasonal vegetables.
It’s summer, a hot summer
after the president broke
environmental protocols.
The president who will be remembered
for his orange hair and his disinterest in protecting
men or salmon.
Upstream through the river rapids,
the salmon fast and store fat
for the long and difficult journey to spawn.
There are monks in orange robes whose lives
seem to have been hardened in the Copper River,
and there are ordinary men, so predictable
that they go to burn fat in gyms
to forget how difficult it is in these times
to adhere to the species’ purpose
of wanting to perpetuate itself and breed.
They say that in ocean waters
where reproductive rites don’t occur,
the sockeye salmon changes color.
Its belly turns silver
and its body a dazzling turquoise.
Pilgrimage
Annie Leibovitz’s love for Susan Sontag
was translated into sustenance; sizeable royalties
to reward a lineage.
There were sums and kisses.
A pilgrimage plan aborted by death,
that event that cancels offers and appointments.
For that trip, they promised to go see places
of high regard for both of them,
beginning with Amherst, where their eyes would rest
next to the absent eyes of Emily Dickinson,
until they reached the rough wooden table,
all scratched, where Virginia Woolf would write.
In an attempt to delve into the depths of what is venerable,
they would visit the endearing forms of what dies
but also of what remains.
When Susan left, Annie set out on her pilgrimage alone, camera in tow.
She photographed details of the journey that was and of what could have been.
It was a cult-like love, saturated with all the minutiae
that conspire to spill over
into that world called posterity.
It was a call from the heart, she admits.
The kind that doesn’t fit in Life magazine.
Translated by Robin Garrido
