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HALTING STEPS
Collected and New Poems
By CLARIBEL ALEGRÍA Northwestern University Press
Copyright © 2013 Claribel Alegría
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8101-2919-1
CHAPTER 1
RING OF SILENCE (1948)
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
High are the pillars
Tall are the columns of my dream,
moving toward the song on bare feet,
they issue from somewhere deep within me
and spiral upward on the wind.
Sometimes I surprise them among the clouds,
In the golden afternoons, in the stars,
they linger in everything that's beautiful
and continue their illuminated voyage.
How delicate are the columns of my dream!
I almost confuse them with the mist,
I can't see them anymore, anguish, shadows ...
I fear that they will fall and break!
No, they can't fall, they reach toward the song,
To the song that is theirs and awaits them!
They issue
from somewhere deep within me
and spiral upward on the wind!
To My Mother
Someone is knocking at the door.
It's life waiting, pulsing with yearning,
life inviting me to see the world
from the unbound grace of its open arms.
I'm leaving, Mother, I'm leaving.
I want to feel the emotion of the instant,
get drunk with joy at the starry night,
and speak to pain without your knowing.
I'm not forgetting anything. It's late.
I will bring you garlands of hyacinth,
In my skirts I will gather the gold of stars
and from my lips you will see the song rise.
Good-bye Mother, don't cry.
Don't stop me, I am going with life.
Let Me Come in
Let me come into your grief,
I won't break the silence.
I will take fresh roses for scent
And my love like a lantern.
For your dark skies
I have the fire of stars,
birds aflame
and kingdoms of white clouds.
Let me come in,
I'll wait until you open for me.
I am alone in the shadows
and the whirling of wind bites.
Bold Wind
Stop chasing me,
Bold wind of the North,
leave me, I want to rest,
I want to lie down in the fields.
Do you want my silk ribbon?
Do you want my ring, my brooch?
Take them wind but let me go
I want to be alone in the forest.
I have run and run
From day to night!
I jumped rivers in my flight
and crossed horizons.
Stop chasing me,
Bold wind of the North;
Leave me, I want to rest,
I want to lie down in the forest.
A Spring
Hidden in the night there is a spring
my sleepless heart has told me,
nearby the music of water
and a scent of magnolias in the air.
Come, let's look for it among the leaves.
I want to get drunk with its white grace,
I want to moisten my lips in its waves
and wash my secret in its foam.
Let's run until we come upon its banks,
don't let the moon get ahead,
I want to see myself in its flowing
and sing with it as the day dawns.
Come See the Rain
Don't close the door,
come see the rain jumping and skipping,
come and see the rain falling from the depths of the sky
and setting its song afire on the wind.
I feel something beautiful today,
as if a tremor was rising to my lips from within
and wants to reveal wise words
and dance, dance with the white rain giving its secret
to the world.
I am bewitched listening to what the rain is telling me!
everything is shivering outside,
everything in suspense waiting for the ominous sign.
Open the windows,
look at the rain running barefoot across the earth.
CHAPTER 2
LOVE SONNETS (1953)
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
1
From what distant and blazing height
did love descend to knock at my door?
It surged naked from the silent shadow and
at the dawn there was sweetness on my lips.
The word, permeated with happiness,
is in my blood a warm and open flower.
An archangel that awakens in my veins
and erases all bitterness from my voice.
I am bound to the masthead of its ship
by the green caress of the ocean depths.
On the edge of its voice leaps the key
that held the anguish of my verse.
For it I rock the world in my arms
and breathe in a rose the universe.
2
Let us celebrate, Love, this joy
as together we look from the window,
and hear at the same time the bell
that with its song announces a new day.
With the first light of dawn
all things are born anew in harmony.
Even though I feel so much a human
there is something celestial in my joy.
Open my heart, it is there that shadow,
in a corner purified by sadness,
shelters its nocturnal designs.
But look well. Go down to the depths.
In a hidden pool, the deepest of the deep,
the rivulet of my life flows clear.
3
How shall I sing to you, Love, sing
that shiver left by your caress?
High peaks of delight
and my voice trembles with happiness.
From my bones rises news of you
and spreads through all body.
The blood in my veins unhinges
lodging its anxiety in my throat.
When I think of your miraculous dance
that fulfills the presence of the rose
and opens extravagant fields of color,
I want you to know, Love, that you cleanse me,
that your trembling inflames my tasks
but my word withdraws in the night.
4
You are, beloved, the everyday angel
that comes to me in the good and the bad.
You watch over my waking hours, and appear
in my sleep like the midday sun.
You lead me by the hand through the world
and smooth the wrinkles from my brow.
Sculptor of my song, sweet master
whose footsteps announce the summer.
You have made celestial the custom
of bolting the doors at night
and lighting the dawn with our love.
For you my solitude is resplendent,
the light of my eyes is clear
and the best of all moments is now.
5
I want to tell you, beloved, the poetry
given us in the bread, the bed, the song,
the audacious spring, the sweet weeping
of the child awaking to the day.
It tastes of winter earth, of distance,
the name that covers us with its mantle.
In my hours of shadow and of tears
it is a lily that lights my desert.
For all these reasons I love you.
The way you talk, your eyelids, your stature,
the grace of your gentle movements
as you lay your body down like a river.
When the sea closes me within dark night,
it is your voice that captains my ship.
6
Your serenity gives me such pleasure,
as well as that expression you hide
in a dark zone of your feelings, and
though typical of you, it is foreign to me.
It is the humble gesture of a good man
and it fills oblivions with songbirds.
It restores my injured heart
and transforms all venom into love.
Sometimes you lose love and it does not
come out to light your face with its aroma
of clear mountains or country fields.
And I welcome it with joy,
when in your eyes it glimpses me
and roses are born from my human shadow.
7
Wait, Love. Wait for me patiently
beside the quiet ardor of your wakefulness.
Wait for me to come, lifting to the sky
the jovial banner of your smile.
I shall attack you, lightly, imprecisely,
amid the ripe aroma of the plum,
in the stone smoothed by the stream,
among the deep currents of the breeze.
When I come back to you it will be without tears,
with summers rising from my song
and innocence instilled upon my lips.
I want to love you again with sweet fervor,
inflamed with sun in fields of gold,
with no dark abysses in my awareness.
8
Love's time passes by without hours.
It is as clean as the air in springtime.
At the clear signal of its banner
dawns will robe themselves in dew.
Love lights the things you don't know,
pointing out to you grain in the meadow,
the stone of a long mountain range
and a wall covered with climbing vines.
Everything ends in its embrace. Nothing forgets.
Love is a lamp in the night. In its reflection
every rose is a favorite rose.
Don't let it escape. Come back, beloved.
We will be reborn in it. In its retinue
figures of the past are alive and dancing.
9
With my most recent, my naked voice,
I will teach your name to a rose garden,
to the dawn wind in fields of wheat,
and to the dreams of climbing ivy.
Because your lineage is of love and it protects
the shorelines will tell it to the sea.
From hearing it so long in many forms
even mute stone will learn your name.
I will shout it now that it is summer,
beneath the brilliant, transfiguring sun
that high above is entirely mine.
Mine, like your kiss, the fecund seed
from which the flower will be born,
is what my body senses within me.
Elegy for a Sailor
Your heartbeat lay in the silent sea,
your exiled, wandering sailor's voice.
Like the wind that announces the coming storm
my wakened sorrow stirred, and shook.
It is now seven years. I can't forget.
I sense your footstep in the morning star,
in the hidden bend of the forest path,
in the heather that evokes your name.
So winged, so soaring, my sense of you!
But in that doleful clime of emptiness,
naught but the memory of my wound.
I call with my old voice but there is no answer.
Your throat, your words, are hidden in the sea
and in it my heart finds no repose.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from HALTING STEPS by CLARIBEL ALEGRÍA. Copyright © 2013 Claribel Alegría. Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
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