{"id":44755,"date":"2026-03-09T15:00:01","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T21:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2026\/03\/even-time-bleeds-translated-by-forrest-gander\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T00:54:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T06:54:01","slug":"even-time-bleeds-translated-by-forrest-gander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/2026\/03\/even-time-bleeds-translated-by-forrest-gander\/","title":{"rendered":"Even Time Bleeds, translated by Forrest Gander"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even Time Bleeds<\/span> 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\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

El poeta<\/b><\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/p>\n

Polvo
\n<\/span>fin\u00edsimo
\n<\/span>que nadie ve.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vidriosa soledad
\n<\/span>que da al cuerpo
\n<\/span>lo que no
\n<\/span>sabe.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alma que engendra otra alma.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dice
\n<\/span>mis ojos est\u00e1n rotos.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clama en el vac\u00edo
\n<\/span>por la luz
\n<\/span>que un d\u00eda fue para\u00edso.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cuando deja de ver,
\n<\/span>alumbra.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2<\/span><\/p>\n

No acepta que su visi\u00f3n se incline hacia lo grandioso,
\n<\/span>como si el vac\u00edo
\n<\/span>guiara su mano, el color de su tinta.
\n<\/span>Su morada semeja las valvas de una ostra,
\n<\/span>all\u00ed concentra lo disperso
\n<\/span>hasta florecer
\n<\/span>perla,
\n<\/span>n\u00e1car que lo regresa siempre a casa.
\n<\/span>Suya es la sombra,
\n<\/span>una sombra intuitiva,
\n<\/span>discontinua.
\n<\/span>Est\u00e1 en la luz, filo de ceguera
\n<\/span>que asierra el sue\u00f1o,
\npero su voz
\n<\/span>persiste
\n<\/span>blanca muselina
\n<\/span>muy dentro
\nde la blancura.
\n<\/span>Reclama la aridez del vocablo.
\n<\/span>Y su dolor
\n<\/span>se precipita en silencio.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n3<\/span><\/p>\n

La textura oculta de la ostra
\n<\/span>siega su dicha.
\n<\/span>El poeta
\n<\/span>se desl\u00ede
\n<\/span>en el lago de la palabra
\n<\/span>como planeo del \u00e1nsar.
\n<\/span>Su visi\u00f3n es blanca,
\n<\/span>laten sus sienes,
\n<\/span>laten con el pulso del r\u00edo.
\n<\/span>Pero ha encontrado el lugar
\n<\/span>de su ilegitimidad
\n<\/span>donde se mira
\n<\/span>de nuevo
\nluchando
\n<\/span>dolidamente
\ncon las cenizas.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4<\/span><\/p>\n

Muda cadencia, el poeta es rel\u00e1mpago suspendido en la encrucijada,
\n<\/span>sol que despunta en la azucena, nunca enga\u00f1ado por el cristal.
\n<\/span>Mancha de ocelote, se derrama sin traspasar su impronta.
\n<\/span>Avanza protegido por su segura sombra. Curtida ra\u00edz,
\n<\/span>su silencio aguarda como limo en el fondo del pozo.
\n<\/span>Erosi\u00f3n y aurora, su grito estalla flor de abismo.<\/span><\/p>\n

de <\/span>Las l\u00e1grimas de las cosas<\/span><\/i><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Poet<\/b><\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s dust
\n<\/span>so fine
\n<\/span>no one sees it.<\/span><\/p>\n

And a glassy loneliness
\n<\/span>conveying to the body
\n<\/span>what it doesn\u2019t
\n<\/span>know.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soul engendering soul.<\/span><\/p>\n

She says,
\n<\/span>My eyes have broken.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crying into the void
\n<\/span>for the light
\n<\/span>that once was her paradise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, just when she can see no more,
\n<\/span>the light brightens.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2<\/span><\/p>\n

She won\u2019t accept that her vision tends toward the grandiose,
\n<\/span>as if it were the void
\n<\/span>that guides her hand, her handwriting.
\n<\/span>Her dwelling resembles the valves of an oyster
\n<\/span>where dross condenses
\n<\/span>until it blossoms
\n<\/span>into pearl,
\n<\/span>a nacre she calls home.
\n<\/span>The shadow is hers,
\n<\/span>an intuitive shadow
\n<\/span>intermittent.
\n<\/span>She\u2019s there in the light, where the blade
\n<\/span>of blindness severs dream,
\n<\/span>but her interior voice
\n<\/span>persists\u2014
\n<\/span>faint as white muslin
\n<\/span>deep inside
\n<\/span>a greater whiteness.
\n<\/span>She still insists on the aridity of the word.
\n<\/span>And so her pain
\n<\/span>precipitates into silence.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3<\/span><\/p>\n

There is something, she thinks, to value
\n<\/span>in the occult texture of the oyster.
\n<\/span>The poet
\n<\/span>slides
\n<\/span>into the lake of the word
\n<\/span>like landing geese.
\n<\/span>Her vision goes white,
\n<\/span>the pulse in her temple beats
\n<\/span>with the river\u2019s pulse.
\n<\/span>But she\u2019s reached the place
\n<\/span>of her illegitimacy
\n<\/span>where she finds herself
\n<\/span>once again
\n<\/span>wrestling
\n<\/span>achingly
\n<\/span>with ashes.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n4<\/span><\/p>\n

Mute cadence, the poet flares like lightning at the crossroads,
\n<\/span>the sun breaks over a lily, undistracted by the transparence of things.
\n<\/span>The ocelot\u2019s spots spill from the animal and leave no trace.
\n<\/span>She moves forward, using her shadow as her shield. A weathered root,
\n<\/span>her silence on hold, like slime at the bottom of a well.
\n<\/span>Erosion and aurora, and then her cry erupts: a flower of abyss.<\/span><\/p>\n

from <\/span>The Tears of Things<\/span><\/i><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pavo real<\/b><\/p>\n

Una leyenda suf\u00ed dice que Dios cre\u00f3 el
\n<\/span><\/i>Esp\u00edritu en forma de pavo real.<\/span><\/i><\/h5>\n

El ave despliega su propio pasado.
\n<\/span>Su luz resiste
\n<\/span>en el reflejo del agua.
\n<\/span>Viento sobre las lilas,
\n<\/span>un para\u00edso de infinitos ojos contempla
\n<\/span>el cobalto iridiscente derramarse
\n<\/span>sobre la estela fiel del lago.
\n<\/span>Lo que observo, s\u00e9 que
\n<\/span>nunca se repetir\u00e1, pues el pavo real,
\n<\/span>s\u00f3lo una vez se revela.
\n<\/span>Abre su pecho, transmutar
\n<\/span>su belleza en pura geometr\u00eda. Pienso
\n<\/span>en el cristal y los jardines
\n<\/span>de la memoria mientras las aves
\n<\/span>acompa\u00f1an el murmullo del r\u00edo. Esta vez,
\n<\/span>me hace sentir
\n<\/span>entero su misterio, la grieta, la llamarada.
\n<\/span>S\u00f3lo existo porque me mira.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Peacock<\/b><\/p>\n

A Sufi legend says God created the
\n<\/span><\/i>Spirit in the form of a peacock.<\/span><\/i><\/h5>\n

The bird puts his own past on display.
\n<\/span>His light sustained
\n<\/span>in the reflective water.
\n<\/span>Wind over the lilacs,
\n<\/span>a paradise of infinite eyes beholds
\n<\/span>an iridescent cobalt spilling
\n<\/span>onto the lake in faithful array.
\n<\/span>What I witness, I already know
\n<\/span>will never be repeated, since the peacock
\n<\/span>reveals itself like this just once.
\n<\/span>His chest swells, transmuting
\n<\/span>his beauty into a pure geometry. I think
\n<\/span>of stained glass and the garden
\n<\/span>of memory while the bird floats by
\n<\/span>on the river\u2019s murmur. This once,
\n<\/span>he lets me feel
\n<\/span>all his mystery, the flame, the wound.
\n<\/span>I exist because he sees me.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ayuno<\/b><\/p>\n

El poeta no quiso ayunar en el Ramad\u00e1n
\n<\/span>ni comer la carne de los sacrificios.
\n<\/span>No ahuyent\u00f3 camellos hacia La Meca
\n<\/span>ni se levant\u00f3 al alba para asistir a la casa de la oraci\u00f3n.
\n<\/span>Sus actos nobles los convirti\u00f3 en beber del vino
\n<\/span>de Hasim, alzar tiendas en el desierto, bajar sus ojos
\n<\/span>en la ra\u00edz sacra de los vocablos.<\/span><\/p>\n

Y cuando su vista alzaba, era
\n<\/span>para sentir el aroma del jazm\u00edn.
\n<\/span>Y ver brillar la ma\u00f1ana.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fasting<\/b><\/p>\n

The poet didn\u2019t fast during Ramadan
\n<\/span>or eat the flesh of sacrifice.
\n<\/span>He drove no camels to Mecca.
\n<\/span>Didn\u2019t rise at dawn to bow in the house of prayer.
\n<\/span>He translated the acts of his life
\n<\/span>into drinking Hasim\u2019s wine, raising tents in the desert,
\n<\/span>lowering his eyes to the sacred root of words.<\/span><\/p>\n

And when he raised his face, it was
\n<\/span>only to register the scent of jasmine.
\n<\/span>To see the morning glisten.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Forrest Gander<\/span><\/h5>\n
Published with the permission of Princeton University Press.<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even Time Bleeds<\/i><\/b> is available now from Princeton University Press.<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Buy books by the authors and translators featured in this issue on our Bookshop page!<\/b><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s career and presents the English translations and the original Spanish texts on facing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":44754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2893],"tags":[5629],"genre":[],"pretext":[],"section":[],"translator":[2831],"lal_author":[3033],"class_list":["post-44755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adelantos-de-traduccion-y-novedades-editoriales","tag-numero-37","translator-forrest-gander-es-2","lal_author-jeannette-l-clariond-es"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44755"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44966,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44755\/revisions\/44966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44755"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=44755"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=44755"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=44755"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=44755"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=44755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}