G-NT3806KSJP

[IF they knew how they would invent anew the grass]





IF they knew how they would invent anew the grass
that which emulsifies in the heart of the wind
and leaves only
a viridescent lamp waning in the air
where it ripples

The order of things suggests
that they existed in that brilliance of hands
not only in writing
and in that color of time they standard bore themselves
they didn’t see it because they were in it
there’s talk of that blemish
an environmental imperfection that
constitutively is the breath of foxglove turning
properly into the world:

and it fuses
like in captivity or the way in which it happens in its
counterpart:
The bed makes the river in equal measure to the fury of the current of the
water which passes through it. And it is no bad thing that life comes rushing upon
us (…)

fused is the line of what could be touched
in the vast harmony they sailed
across thought: expansive plains of
words braiding esparto ropes polished by the summer heat
like the desert flower that foresees the climate and words section
the real and suspend time: liberated from temporality, two
articulate each other

And a coalescence occurs:
fusing and reunifying the line of what could be touched in the vast
harmony they sailed

As to what it concerns:
Documents speak of a particular form of knowledge
intangible to reason, but ripe for
interpretation by other means: based on its own wake
and therefore via lines of continuity plains
successions

As to what it also concerns:
An unctuous cavity in which to shelter and transition
a stop must be made in this membrane: the density which encases
the body in the instant of detachment
and descent into the pit of life
that which they made with touch
with one out of time one inundated
with a touch that can’t that can
be executed that defeats that was defeated
that a man in the window
still plays with the distinct yellow
serpents of his insides
I see him and think
that I drink you at night
like black milk
and your golden hair and your ashen
hair, that much I remember, a poem for Germany
Celan, in any case:

there is a joy that vaporizes from above
from the smoke of the fields in winter

do you all see the mist, the breath of the fields?
a happiness in flight
an inextinguishable curiosity came
and unfurled like the forest
with him was driven at the same time
as with him was blocked
the very linguistic construction and
a foreseeable possibility
was captured:

the contingency when it manifests
appears like a firefly
fragile firefly cracked pupil
a breeze couldn’t
—in nothing that the eyes had seen
on this truly upside
down and unspooled earth—
couldn’t stop her.

The nature of the wounded animal is as a rule obscure,
nocturnal bird of prey whose principal talents reside in the
development of a facial disc that can guide the sound
of the prey to its ear, in the silence of its flight and in the panic
that makes that radiant heart pump to the extremes
of its spanned wings: effectively the sun

not obscure, though, the determination with which it manifests
for what’s missing
which approached and infiltrated being the rhythm its medium
the meaning of the rhythm to elongate and to carry itself
a saying in succession a bridled tongue, equine

two as a multitude which presents
as the color of flame in the color of flame in dreams
they inserted themselves
they carried that same arrow of the universe to the shore
opposite
and as to what it concerns:

That which wanders in an expanse, an
errant plain with will enough to stretch into
infinity the horizon and
at the same time
fall before its line

What it concerns resides in two that can only bring the fall of a
horizon
to bring about the continuation of plains in their selfsame
progression toward a knowledge that they existed
bound to the beat of their impresences 
there is talk of a clouded territory that territorial
numen in which only
some forms some visions
could stop
the center of these ideas this melody
white totality
I like to think

There was a circular eyeing of the surroundings
they directed the eyeing toward
that shattered window in the brain, broken
but not broken the man not broken
the serpents, burning
the world’s temperature and simultaneously
in this rushed plexus condensing
sunken lane of mobile things
with wings of shadow with mouths so wide open
with a crack of light that opens between the stone that comes
from a temple, its finial

Two voices live

Oriana Méndez (Vigo, 1984) is the author of six poetry collections in the Galician-language, most recently, plains successions (Chan da Pólvora, 2023). Winner of several major prizes for her work, she has also translated into Galician books by Arthur Rimbaud (co-translated with Tamara Andrés) and Marguerite Duras. Poems from this collection have appeared in Pamenar Magazine, and she has also had poems published in Waxwing (trans. Neil Anderson) and Poem-a-Day (trans. Erín Moure).

Jacob Rogers is a translator of Galician and Spanish. He has received grants from the National Endowment of the Arts and the PEN/Heim Translation Fund, and has translated books by Manuel Rivas and Berta Dávila, with further work forthcoming by Xavier Queipo and Brais Lamela.