Even Time Bleeds is a revelatory selection of the work of Jeannette Clariond, a major contemporary Mexican poet known for her sensuous lyricism and philosophical gravity. Translated and introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Forrest Gander, this volume gathers poems from across Clariond’s career and presents the English translations and the original Spanish texts on facing pages. Whether writing about science or Romanticism, childhood or the Chihuahua Desert, ancient Mexican myths or the pandemic of Mexican femicides, Clariond displays a complex self-consciousness that captures much about contemporary identity in Mexico and beyond. Born in 1949 into a Lebanese family that emigrated to Mexico, Clariond has spent much of her life traveling between Mexico, the United States, and Spain, and she writes about varieties of exile and the fearsome complexity of the US-Mexican border with rare insight. Even rarer: she gives voice to her own interiority in a way that is accessible and piercing, as though her true country is inside of each reader.
***
El poeta
1
Polvo
finísimo
que nadie ve.
Vidriosa soledad
que da al cuerpo
lo que no
sabe.
Alma que engendra otra alma.
Dice
mis ojos están rotos.
Clama en el vacío
por la luz
que un día fue paraíso.
Cuando deja de ver,
alumbra.
2
No acepta que su visión se incline hacia lo grandioso,
como si el vacío
guiara su mano, el color de su tinta.
Su morada semeja las valvas de una ostra,
allí concentra lo disperso
hasta florecer
perla,
nácar que lo regresa siempre a casa.
Suya es la sombra,
una sombra intuitiva,
discontinua.
Está en la luz, filo de ceguera
que asierra el sueño,
pero su voz
persiste
blanca muselina
muy dentro
de la blancura.
Reclama la aridez del vocablo.
Y su dolor
se precipita en silencio.
3
La textura oculta de la ostra
siega su dicha.
El poeta
se deslíe
en el lago de la palabra
como planeo del ánsar.
Su visión es blanca,
laten sus sienes,
laten con el pulso del río.
Pero ha encontrado el lugar
de su ilegitimidad
donde se mira
de nuevo
luchando
dolidamente
con las cenizas.
4
Muda cadencia, el poeta es relámpago suspendido en la encrucijada,
sol que despunta en la azucena, nunca engañado por el cristal.
Mancha de ocelote, se derrama sin traspasar su impronta.
Avanza protegido por su segura sombra. Curtida raíz,
su silencio aguarda como limo en el fondo del pozo.
Erosión y aurora, su grito estalla flor de abismo.
de Las lágrimas de las cosas
The Poet
1
There’s dust
so fine
no one sees it.
And a glassy loneliness
conveying to the body
what it doesn’t
know.
Soul engendering soul.
She says,
My eyes have broken.
Crying into the void
for the light
that once was her paradise.
Then, just when she can see no more,
the light brightens.
2
She won’t accept that her vision tends toward the grandiose,
as if it were the void
that guides her hand, her handwriting.
Her dwelling resembles the valves of an oyster
where dross condenses
until it blossoms
into pearl,
a nacre she calls home.
The shadow is hers,
an intuitive shadow
intermittent.
She’s there in the light, where the blade
of blindness severs dream,
but her interior voice
persists—
faint as white muslin
deep inside
a greater whiteness.
She still insists on the aridity of the word.
And so her pain
precipitates into silence.
3
There is something, she thinks, to value
in the occult texture of the oyster.
The poet
slides
into the lake of the word
like landing geese.
Her vision goes white,
the pulse in her temple beats
with the river’s pulse.
But she’s reached the place
of her illegitimacy
where she finds herself
once again
wrestling
achingly
with ashes.
4
Mute cadence, the poet flares like lightning at the crossroads,
the sun breaks over a lily, undistracted by the transparence of things.
The ocelot’s spots spill from the animal and leave no trace.
She moves forward, using her shadow as her shield. A weathered root,
her silence on hold, like slime at the bottom of a well.
Erosion and aurora, and then her cry erupts: a flower of abyss.
from The Tears of Things
Pavo real
Una leyenda sufí dice que Dios creó el
Espíritu en forma de pavo real.
El ave despliega su propio pasado.
Su luz resiste
en el reflejo del agua.
Viento sobre las lilas,
un paraíso de infinitos ojos contempla
el cobalto iridiscente derramarse
sobre la estela fiel del lago.
Lo que observo, sé que
nunca se repetirá, pues el pavo real,
sólo una vez se revela.
Abre su pecho, transmutar
su belleza en pura geometría. Pienso
en el cristal y los jardines
de la memoria mientras las aves
acompañan el murmullo del río. Esta vez,
me hace sentir
entero su misterio, la grieta, la llamarada.
Sólo existo porque me mira.
Peacock
A Sufi legend says God created the
Spirit in the form of a peacock.
The bird puts his own past on display.
His light sustained
in the reflective water.
Wind over the lilacs,
a paradise of infinite eyes beholds
an iridescent cobalt spilling
onto the lake in faithful array.
What I witness, I already know
will never be repeated, since the peacock
reveals itself like this just once.
His chest swells, transmuting
his beauty into a pure geometry. I think
of stained glass and the garden
of memory while the bird floats by
on the river’s murmur. This once,
he lets me feel
all his mystery, the flame, the wound.
I exist because he sees me.
Ayuno
El poeta no quiso ayunar en el Ramadán
ni comer la carne de los sacrificios.
No ahuyentó camellos hacia La Meca
ni se levantó al alba para asistir a la casa de la oración.
Sus actos nobles los convirtió en beber del vino
de Hasim, alzar tiendas en el desierto, bajar sus ojos
en la raíz sacra de los vocablos.
Y cuando su vista alzaba, era
para sentir el aroma del jazmín.
Y ver brillar la mañana.
Fasting
The poet didn’t fast during Ramadan
or eat the flesh of sacrifice.
He drove no camels to Mecca.
Didn’t rise at dawn to bow in the house of prayer.
He translated the acts of his life
into drinking Hasim’s wine, raising tents in the desert,
lowering his eyes to the sacred root of words.
And when he raised his face, it was
only to register the scent of jasmine.
To see the morning glisten.
Translated by Forrest Gander
Published with the permission of Princeton University Press.
Even Time Bleeds is available now from Princeton University Press.
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