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FROM Yo, La Peor de Todas |
Estela Lamat (trans. Michael Leong) |
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everything now is yellow like a bee everything is a sun and I no longer see the foundations that support these bones the eyes look at the yellow reflections always the sun in the winter and the most furious bet of returning to hold you between my letters the pages are covered with bees and I vomit my waiting as they do and my yellowing fingers reflect you like a disc of brighter spheres where have you gone at 3:30 the rabid night shows me the most radiant sun and I turn towards the night as if I had sought a yellow shadow of astral bodies the lost fortress where the most ancient books reside and I touch my head and it is split in the middle they robbed me of the memory of my lives with you in an instant that I no longer remember they left me with an opened forehead and from it are filtered a thousand yellow reflections yellow stars men tied to the twinkle of their eyes and the boreal platforms on which to sleep and die like a bee I paint stripes on my skin and I go out roaming for buildings in bloom I paint stripes on my face I put on a coat of diamonds and search for a building to lay my eggs the night flashes in a window display and the sun follows me hidden between the castaways of a ruined planet I receive the call of distant voices and I decide to look at you at your body for the last time and I say goodbye to you with my crystalline wings and I say goodbye to you to go and roam for these streets of blue nights of white bridges and of yellow stars like suns I am the bee without memory the bee of blind eyes that have lived for millions of years awaiting this moment of madness and laughter the insomniac bee of remote places aged and mortal the earth turns yellow like a bee and I have no other remedy than smiling at my mirror the highest building is called hope and its rotting elevator cried yellow tears all the bees thundered their wings and all the streets yielded honey to the left a traffic sign impedes the flight to the right a belt cinches with yellow chains.
I the worst of all†,
where can I gather you and tell you that the spaces in my bed adjoin with your traces and call you like a child waving an underground snail I invoke you like a dead body looking straight into the eyes of night I watch you from the undecipherable register of asphalt from the first code hidden between the trees and spiders I see you coming from a tower of mutilated bodies millions of women fall beneath your little hands and you take them like a sick dog and carry them to your bonfire and you hurl them from a precipice that has the shape of your mouth and your skin and like a tattoo full of cells engraven by your embrace a huge invisible wound opens on my back I call you from the electric current of my bones and in my hand facing the door I hold the knife that I’ll place in your mouth so you can inscribe on my body the geography of your traces. I, the worst of all † [Translator’s note: “Yo, la peor de todas” was the famous formula used by the seventeenth century poet and nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz when she signed a petition renouncing her worldly life including reading and writing. Born in Mexico, she was called “The Tenth Muse” and is now widely regarded as the finest writer of the Spanish Baroque. For her defense of women’s rights to study and pursue intellectual activities, she has been called the first feminist of the Americas.] |
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