WRITTEN BY MARJORIE MADDOX
TRANSLATED BY REI BERROA
CURATED BY CECILIA LLOMPART
Diagnóstico de cáncer
I. Oh
Las palabras, irregulares en su temblor,
meten corazón y respiro en una jaula.
¿Dónde están los brazos abiertos de la esperanza?
Este óvalo de pronosticación
sujeta la plegaria, interroga el pulso.
Hasta un alarido retumba
entre las costillas.
II. que esta carne tan tan manchada
A flor de piel y absoluta,
la rectitud huye de estos órganos
maduros con el lamento de la mortalidad.
Huesos huecos son los deseos.
Ni siquiera un trato como el de Fausto
puede remodelar lo obvio.
III. se derrita, se deshiele
Pronto la enfermedad lo disuelve
todo, liquida el yo.
Presta atención al goteo de la soledad
y tranquilízate. Las aguas oscuras
de la duda retroceden y fluyen de prisa
corriente abajo.
IV. y toda ella se transforme en rocío
No polvo, sino gotas
a punto de evaporarse al sol,
de levantarse ante el calor de la clemencia,
esta extraña curación que le quita
la piel al alma, santificando lo que se echa a perder
y se pudre en el estado
de quienes somos.
Sage Graduate Fellow of Cornell University (MFA) and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published eleven collections of poetry-including True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series and Illumination Book Award medalist); Local News from Someplace Else; Wives' Tales; Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); and Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award), the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite Press), and over 500 stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (Penn State Press), she also has published four children's books: A Crossing of Zebras: Animal Packs in Poetry; Rules of the Game: Baseball Poems; A Man Named Branch: The True Story of Baseball's Great Experiment (middle grade biography); and Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems + Insider Exercises. For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com
Rei Berroa is Chair and Professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern & Classical Languages, George Mason University. He has published more than 45 books of poetry, literary criticism, and poetry anthologies. Since 1992, he has coordinated Teatro de la Luna’s Poetry Marathon in Washington, DC. He was awarded the “Medaille de Vermeil” by the French Academy of Arts, Sciences and Letters in 2009, received the Trieste International Poetry Award for lifetime achievement in poetry in 2011, and the Mihai Eminescu Award in Romania in 2012. The 2014 Dominican Book Fair of New York was dedicated to his work.
Cecilia Llompart is the Spanish Poetry Editor for Luna Luna Magazine.