Lament for Cala Llonga *

Of your sand, we made a paradise
bound by the sea and the savins. **
All our dreams of youth
ran barefoot over the beach.
We revelled in the cradles of waves,
had the gift of foreign tongues,
delighted at the blossoming of feeling.
And, sun-dyed and moon-soaked,
believed that the times they were a-changin’. . . ***

Now, my memories lie under the weight
of cement, next to the injured sea.

[Translated with permission by Anna Argemí-Catllà Carson, Jacqueline Hurtley & Kristine Doll from En pèlag d’amor [In a Sea of Love] (1999).]

* Cala Llonga is an east-coast inlet on the island of Ibiza—Eivissa in Catalan—third largest of the Balearic Islands off the east coast of Spain.
** Savins or savines (l. 2) are an ancient species of the coniferous juniper within the cypress family of trees.
*** The times they were a-changing (l. 9), a past tense echo of the song composed by Bob Dylan in September/October 1963 during the period of civil rights movement in the United States, the full lyrics published by Special Rider Music, New York 1992, at: http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/times-they-are-changin/ .

Plany per Cala Llonga

Del teu areny, en vam fer un paradís
limitat per la mar i les savines.
Tots els nostres somnis adolescents
corrien descalços damunt la sorra.
Gaudíem del bres de totes les ones,
teníem el do de totes les llengües,
fruíem dels sentits a flor de pell.
I, tenyits de sol i amarats de lluna,
crèiem que els temps estaven canviant...

Ara els meus records jeuen sota tones
de ciment, vora la mar ultratjada.

Winter at the Foot of the Cadí Mountains *

The cold deepens;
autumn has come to an end.
The day grows short
and yesterday we saw the last
dead flowers of the wind.

The dogs are barking.
The hunters meet
at the Coll de Josa. **
A whiff of death at dawn; ***
deer flee.

High roads,
covered now with snow,
path of witches
and the occasional great-grandmother,
old medicine women.

The silent snow
bleaches the heights.
Tiny flakes fill
the dreams of waiting
children with joy!

The valley trembles
at the thunderclap.
A dazzle of lightning
glints above the crags
where the witches dance.

The light of dawn
sees the farms already at work.
In the milking
the buckets fill up
with warm snow.

As the pot boils
a grandmother recalls
old stories.
A magical world comes to life
hanging from the pothooks.

[Translated with permission by Mary Ann Newman from L’hivern sota el Cadí [Winter at the Foot of the Cadí Mountains] (2001).]

* By contrast with the southern face, the steep craggy limestone northern face of Catalonia’s twenty-kilometre Cadí mountain range is typically under snow between November and May each year.
** Coll de Josa (l. 8) is a high mountain pass in the Cadí, over 1,500 metres above sea-level, its steepest sections having a gradient above 14%. (Its eastern approach has gained fame for the village of Gǿsol where Pablo Picasso spent the summer of 1906 completing so-called rosa period before his first Cubist artworks.)
*** Whiff of death…” (l. 9), possibly suggestive of the first sighting of wolves in the Cadí at the turn of this century for the first time since the ‘thirties last century.

L’hivern sota el Cadí

El fred augmenta;
la tardor és acabada.
Curteja el dia
i ahir vam veure mortes
les flors de vent darreres.

Borden els gossos.
Els caçadors s’apleguen,
al Coll de Josa.
Flaires de mort a l’alba;
fugen corrent els cérvols.

Altes senderes,
ara de neu cobertes,
camí de bruixes
i d’alguna besàvia,
velles trementinaires.

Silenciosa,
la neu, els cims blanqueja.
Petites volves,
ompliu de joia els somnis
dels infants que us esperen!

La vall tremola
al so de la tronada.
Els llampecs brillen
per damunt les cingleres,
allí on les bruixes dansen.

La llum de l’alba
ja veu feinejar als masos.
I, amb la munyida,
les ferrades s’emplenen,
talment, de neu calenta.

Mentre bull l’olla,
la padrina repassa
velles rondalles.
Un món màgic pren vida,
tot penjant dels clemàstecs.

The Evening News

If you are not children of the chosen people,
how dare you raise your voice?
Forever bound to the yoke of an empire,
yet you must flee to survive . . .

I saw how tenderly you buried
both your children and your hope,
abandoned in the heart of the mountains,
as I watched the news tonight.

I know these images all too well,
I didn’t want to see them ever again,
and they have struck me once more here at home.

I had only to adjust the colour to black and white
to see, anew, the snow on the Albera *
and the passage, barefoot and slow,
of my defeated people.

[Translated with permission by Kristine Doll and August Bover from Blau marí [Navy blue] (2018), first published with Italian translation in Vicino al mare: Antologia poetica [Near the Mother: Poetry Anthology] (Càller [Cagliari, Sardinia]: Arxiu de tradicions de l'Alguer, 2006).]

* Albera (l. 14) is the massif or mountain range separating Catalonia from France upon the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in November 1659, ending more than two decades of Franco-Spanish warfare, including French support of the then principality of Catalonia known as the Reapers’ War between 1640 and 1652, but resulting in the northern portion of the principality being incorporated into the expanding French nation-state during the reign of Louis XIV.
More recently, by the end of the Spanish Civil War in March 1939, almost half-a-million anti-fascist refugees—Catalonian, Basque, and others—had fled across the massif to escape the tyranny of Francisco Franco. More than half that number were imprisoned in concentration camps in southern France such as Argelès-sur-Mer, Collioure, and Saint-Cyprien, for details of which see Francie Cate-Arries, Spanish Culture behind Barbed Wire: Memory and Representation of the French Concentration Camps, 1939-1945 (Cranbury: Bucknell University Press, 2004).

Telenotícies

Si no sou fills de cap poble escollit,
com heu gosat alçar la vostra veu?
Sotmesos sempre al jou d’algun imperi,
encara us cal fugir per sobreviure…

I he vist com enterràveu, tendrament,
alhora els vostres fills i l’esperança,
abandonats al cor de les muntanyes,
quan mirava, aquest vespre, les notícies.

Coneixia prou bé aquestes imatges,
que no volia haver de tornar a veure,
i m’han colpit de nou de casa estant.

M’ha calgut, solament, treure el color
per retrobar la neu damunt l’Albera
i el pas, descalç i lent,
dels meus vençuts.

Slate Lands *

Night settles in,
whilst the farms are slumbering
and the moon, alone,
rising over the hillocks,
glides among the terraced vines ...

On terraces sleep
the dormant vines, fog-covered,
on every branch
of almond and olive trees
a frost blossom in flower.

Patches of grass now
where Carthusian cells once stood **
within the cloister.
And some say, on certain nights,
you can still hear monks singing.

Snow in the mountains
and the vineyards stripped bare:
season of numbed hands,
of wine in casks and cellars
and oil in stone containers.

The sun arises
spreading over the yellow
scream of the scotchbroom. ***
Like one who takes no chances,
The tortoise peeks from his den.

Benevolent clouds
shower an afternoon rain
over arid land.
A perfume hangs in the air,
of grapevines freshly moistened.

* Translated with permission by Kristine Doll from Terres de llicorella Imatges del Priorat [Slate Lands:Images of the Priorat] (2008), a poetic evocation of the distinctive landscape of Catalonia’s southern wine country, El Priorat, by way of the thirty-one syllables of his verse adaptation of the tanka. The Priorat is bordered by the River Ebro, the ancient dividing line between the western Mediterranean empires of Rome and Carthage after B.C. 241 and, more recently, the staging ground for one of the major anti-fascist Republican offensives during the Spanish Civil War in 1938.
** Carthusian (l. 12) is a religious monastic order given to a life of solitude founded by Bruno of Cologne in 1084. The Catalonian monastery, Santa Maria of Escaladei was founded in 1163 at the foot of the Serra de Montsant, a mountainous region of the Priorat.
*** Scotchbroom (l. 23) is a leguminous perennial shrub of the genisteae family of plants with notably deep yellow flowers and contains a natural diuretic.

Terres de llicorella

La nit entrada,
quan s’adormen els masos
i es queda sola,
puja als tossals, la lluna,
s’esmuny per les terrasses…

Als bancals dormen
els ceps, sota la boira,
i a cada branca
d’ametllers i oliveres
hi floreix la gebrada.

Creixen les herbes
on s’alçaven les cel·les
de la cartoixa.
I diuen que, alguns vespres,
s’hi sent el cant dels monjos.

Neu a la serra
i vinyes despullades:
temps de mans balbes,
de vi dins cups i tines
i d’oli a les almàsseres.

El sol matina
i arreu s’escampa un xiscle
groc de ginesta.
Com aquell qui no gosa,
surt del cau la tortuga.

Núvols benignes
alguna tarda ruixen
la terra seca.
Queda un perfum, a l’aire,
de vinya eixamorada.

Long Distance Call

Surely, night will enfold me
and I can retreat to a small corner, somehow,
stepping into the chimera of a dream.
I will course the seas that yesterday you sailed,

Slipping into the woods and the forests,
distant lands, where often you ride your horse,
Soaring over high peaks
to glimpse traces of your route,

lit up by the evening star…,
when you relive a few moments of the day
that you began with the murmurs of waves,

the trembling of longing and desire
and ardour, in the voice and the rose
that you will find flickering on your answering machine.

[Translated with permission by Kristine Doll from The Seventh Quarry, Issue 12, Summer 2010 and subsequently appearing in Blue Gum Poetry, No. 2, December 2015.]

Long distance call

Segurament, m’haurà arribat la nit
i en un racó jauré, sense saber-ho,
vivint de lluny el miratge d’un somni.
I solcaré les mars que ahir solcaves,

penetraré dins selves i boscatges,
terres enllà, per on sovint cavalques,
o emprendré el vol fins a les altes tuques
per albirar traces del teu camí,

il·luminat per l’estel del capvespre...,
quan reviuràs alguns bocins del dia
que has començat amb remoreig d’onades,

el tremolor de l’enyor i el desig
i el roig encès, en la veu i en la rosa,
que trobaràs al teu contestador.

Fossils

Abandoned on time’s road,
buried under the dust of centuries,
heartbeats in the depths of ancient seas,
stones, nothing more, in a thirsty earth.
Shells, corals, sea-urchins in your hands…,
you know the names they never had
and the strata in which they’re trapped,
witnesses of our absence,
smithereens from remote ages,
a future made eternal from the stone age.

[Translated with permission by Anna Argemí-Catllà Carson and Jacqueline Hurtley from the recently published collection, Blau marí [Navy Blue] (2018).]

Fòssils

Abandonats en el camí dels temps,
entre la pols abocada pels segles,
batecs de vida al fons de mars antics,
còdols, només, en terra assedegada.
Tens a les mans cargols, coralls, garotes...,
en coneixes els noms que no tenien
i l’estrat on romanen atrapats,
testimonis de quan érem absents,
esmicolats bocins d’eres remotes,
eternitzat futur d’edat de pedra.

Sirocco *

The gale has swept away the clouds,
the moon gazes from above the palm trees
swaying, delicately, in the centre of the Raval. **
At rest upon a mat,
unaware of the passing of the storm now so far away,
you dream of the shade of other palms,

of the dry earth under your bare feet,
the stifled voice suffocated by
hunger and fear.

The rain has left you, behind glass panes,
this crescent moon framed by the window,
and some small brown drops from the desert.

[Translated with permission by Kristine Doll from the recently published collection, Blau marí [Navy Blue] (2018) and first appearing in Blue Gum Poetry, No. 2, December 2015.]

* The title Sirocco—Xaloc in Catalan—refers to the dry, dust-laden winds emanating from the Sahara and often reaching hurricane force for several days in northern Africa and southern Europe especially during the summer (and accompanied by heavy rain in winter).
** El Ravel (l.3), the old neighbourhood of Barcelona near its waterfront harbour, Port Vell, with the city’s main avenue, La Rambla, forming one of its boundaries, was previously known for its more notorious clubs, crime, and prostitution, although nowadays it is the centre of a highly diverse immigrant community ranging from Pakistani to Roumanian.

Xaloc

El vendaval ha escampat tots els núvols,
la lluna guaita sobre les palmeres
que branden, molles, enmig del Raval.

Però, ignorant el pas de la tempesta,
ara ets ben lluny: ajaçat a l’estora
somies l’ombra d’uns altres fassers,

la terra eixuta sota els peus descalços,
la veu negada que vol sobreviure
contra l’ofec de la fam i la por.

La pluja t’ha deixat, darrere els vidres,
aquest creixent que emmarca la finestra
i les ditades brunes del desert.

Paradise Lost

With trembling hand, we closed the door today
for the last time and delivered the key.
One hundred years remain behind us now
and forever. Walls and windows
great rooms in which we grew up together,
the large flat roof with views to a blue sea
and the Tres Creus, in front of the hill, *
places for games, for holiday repasts,
intimate coat of pleasure and sorrow,
chambers and beds in which the elders died . . .
We won’t return to sit on the stone bench
in that garden that was our paradise
where the blackbirds serenaded at dusk,
nor winter’s sun - that woke the mimosa -
nor summer nights - that sighed of festivals
and their perfumed scent of orange blossoms.
We will never descend the old staircase
leading to the street that once we called ours
overflowing now with the emptiness of absence.

[Translated with permission by Kristine Doll from the recently published collection, Blau marí [Navy Blue] (2018) and first appearing in Blue Gum Poetry, No. 2, December 2015.]

* Tres Creus (l. 7) refers to the Turǿ de les Tes Creus, the hill of the Three Crosses, at the highest point of the Park Gűell. It comprises a stone mound, allowing for panoramic views of Barcelona. The design of Park Gűell in upper Barcelona, originally planned as a utopian housing development, was assigned to Antoni Gaudí by his wealthy patron Eusebi Gűell, the park’s construction beginning in 1900. (Nowadays, Gaudí is acclaimed as the art nouveau modernist architect of the Gűell Pavellons, Casa Batllǿ, and La Sagrada Família amongst many others in Barcelona.)

Paradís perdut

Amb trèmul gest, avui hem clos la porta
per darrer cop i n’hem lliurat la clau.
Quasi cent anys n’han quedat al darrere
per sempre més. Parets i finestrals,
estances on vàrem créixer plegats
-l’ampli terrat que albirava un mar blau
i les Tres Creus, davant del petit puig-,
espai dels jocs, dels àpats de les festes,
íntim abric de joia i de dolor,
cambres i llits en què van morir els grans...
No tornarem a seure al banc de pedra
d’aquell jardí que ens va ser un paradís
i on cap al tard hi cantaven les merles,
ni al sol d’hivern -que exalta la mimosa-,
ni en nits d’estiu -amb aires de revetlla
i el seu perfum de flor de taronger.
No baixarem mai més la vella escala
que duu al carrer que un dia va ser el nostre
i és ple a vessar del buit de les absències.