A translation of Rosa Vanessa Otero´s poem «El jardín»
By Christopher Maurer
When a woman keeps a garden,
she consummates the hours,
makes loneliness grow
and flower briefly
into a welcome fugue.
A garden, however small,
is bounty of tenderness,
sifting of affection,
temple of leisure,
an altar of silence
whose only first fruits
are duty.
Each seed that sprouts
is a reward for madness,
if in the sweet shadows
little animals of being
hide from memory.
And in the drops
I place on each leaf
my hand spells out
the strange disease
of a disdainful mystic.
As long as tiny roots
cling to the naked stem
I know there’s someplace
to rebuild happiness.
…
Death presides from within,
corrupting the root.
Strange, capricious art,
the death of plants.
A spot, a drooping,
color growing faint,
receding slightly,
no hurry, no anguish.
Human death
isn’t that elegant or discreet.
Whoever’s used to watching
plants struggle for life
forgets, if she’s intelligent,
the violence and furor
that brought her into the world
and the hard
noisy drama of her exit.
(To muddy death, 2013)
LaRosaDeletrea 