Three Poems by an Unknown Mexican Poet, Translated by Jee Leong Koh

PN Review 188, July - August 2009

Content warning: discussions of suicide.

Unless

I’m going to kill myself unless the day lets me in.
Every face is a closed door. Every tree is a curtain.
The small-headed pigeon brings no message for me.
The bright air gives way but doesn’t give entrance.

I think I have been walking for a very long while,
past tall chain fences, down smoked church aisles,
round and round the shrinking circle of a clock,
away from the turn of cliffs that I walk towards.

I’m going to the Brooklyn Bridge, to stop thinking
about fences and churches and clocks. I’m going
to the middle of the Bridge to throw myself over it
to find another door since the day won’t let me in,

unless some tree decides to raise its blind an inch,
unless some bird, perhaps a gull, begins to sing.

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Marriage

I’m married to the Mother of unbecoming sorrows.
I approach her like one would approach a shrine
smashed by boys throwing stones for ball practice.
What has a husband to do with sacred fragments?

I’m married to the Mother of unbecoming sorrows.
The children eat from bottles while the bone china
rattles from the cool dark of the heirloom dresser.
Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, I will trash the plates.

She was a girl, once, green as a stalk of grass
I held between my teeth. She was the dew, once,
translucent sun on the tip of the stalk of grass
I bit into. She was the sweet, once, in the grass,

now she’s the Mother of unbecoming sorrows
I’m married to, I’m married to, I’m married to.


The Night

The storm blew out the trees, and night became the night
all of the dark crossed the dark. The mountain heaved
to stony feet and climbed the straining rope of a track,
hand over hand over hand over hand over hand over hand.

The ground the mind rests on and dreams of thinking,
the water the river feeds to generous and gated pipes,
the fire the house subdues from lightning and burns,
the air the body breathes without breathing: all gone.

The mountain clambered, we hanged off its back,
a rope curling from waist to waist to waist to waist
to an empty noose that hanged straight by its weight.

The storm blew out the trees, and night became the night
all of the dark crossed the dark, on Christmas night.

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These poems by an unknown Mexican poet, translated by Jee Leong Koh, are taken from PN Review 188, July - August 2009. Further contributions from Koh, including the rest of the poems in this issue, are available in the archive to paying subscribers, as well as more poetry, features, reviews and reports from across the back catalogue.

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