[Off To The Side]

Schools of horse mackerel come out to greet us,

weigh your lack of sleep and my jitters.

All things considered, they take my side…

The landscape is thematic: shellfish that crawl

along the shore, clots of algae,

villages of gulls established on concrete

poles. Closer, only air in broken

shapes and voices.

The cold bites slivers

of grammar, we debate

the interaction of opportunities and water

and isolated opportunities, that is,

we hug each other in the Italian style,

and now the matins bells are ringing

in town, and they’re waiting for us.

To be even clearer, you’ve said, isn’t difficult

if sentences

also make clumsy strokes, free

of expectations but not intention.

Have we snored

a lot?—the one who’s speaking is María.

 Translated by Curtis Bauer

 [Off To The Side] is from Un huésped panorámico [A Panoramic Guest] (Barcelona, DVD Ediciones, 2010).

You can read and listen to the poem in the original Spanish here.