For a feature on Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry
For the poetry of María Baranda
______
This poem is reprinted with permission of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org.
Translated by Roberto Téjada
“Now that we’re nothing, for example”
Now that we’re nothing, for example,
we can be the rain. Certainly
the rain welcomes us with no hesitation, even
when it begins. And now it begins. Drops
on the windowpane: it welcomes us,
this item the rain welcomes us. Kiss me.
Frailty, weave a thread around the bird’s wee foot,
neighborly conclusion of the rain or finish, weave as much.
A kind of cardboard box with “Fragile” written
in agile hand, no trembling inside. Let us be fragile
now that we’re not the ocean. A form welcomes us.
