Three Poems by Laura Solórzano, Translated by Adriana Díaz Enciso
PN Review 274, November - December 2023
(delonix regia)
The tree has died
The trunk has lived and has died
The leaves have fallen on dust
The branches sweat
The limbs’ shadows and the light
(the light of the tree)
The flower of light without tree
The arboreal emotions
The avid explosions, the emotive
Branches break
A tree goes on foot like one dead
With a zombie rustle
On goes a superfluous corpse, green
Like a living corpse, rootless
The tree descends from the wind
The voice comes from vertigo
There is no light like the canopy
Nor flight like the verb
The verb comes from the tree
(from Boca perdida, Bonobos, Metepec, Mexico, 2005)
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Planet:
It had opened wide – the garden. The boughs had come to set their two feet on air. The reeds’ body bent over in a joyful bow. The dragonflies pleaded to be bestowed with weight. In the open garden everything was: even the most preposterous requests blossomed or promised fruits. Desire fertilised reality. Roots bore every excess. In the growth of moss, the adventure of enshrouding everything. In the mandarin tree, a journey down the realm of scents.
It was here, in this time orchard, that the children raised in chorus the silent song, and like birds carried away the primitive elements and transformed their house.
(from El espejo en la jaula. Antología personal, Secretaría de Cultura, Gob. de Jalisco, Guadalajara, Mexico, 2006)
(farewell)
We went to place her inside a case and left her there (in the garden’s nevermore) and locked the metal latch and left her body and left her, who was that body, because she no longer breathed my father laid flowers on the white dress and he (who had no other eyes than those) touched her hand and held it there for a bit longer, seeing the way her hair had stopped shivering, looking at the corners of her inert mouth and when my father closed the case (our agitated foliage around him) we knew what an ending is and when that ending is shut and when the farewell triumphs above everything else, we understood (as if then we could understand) that we would never see her again.
(From Nervio náufrago, La Zonámbula, Guadalajara, Mexico, 2011.)
These poems by Laura Solórzano, translated by Adriana Díaz Enciso, are taken from PN Review 274, November - December 2023. The rest of Laura’s poems in this issue and Adriana’s note on the translation are available in the archive to paying subscribers, as well as more poetry, features, reviews and reports from across the back catalogue.