☀ What Sparks Poetry: Robin Myers on Javier Peñalosa M.'s "The Crane"

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September 26, 2022

What Sparks Poetry a series of original essays that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our new series focused on Translation a group of poet-translators share a seminal experience in translation. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.

The Crane

Javier Peñalosa M.
Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers

I’d never been so close to one.
When I found it hidden in the boat,
beside the riverbank,
its eyes still shifted back and forth,
as if sight itself were movement,
flight.
Its wings were broken, and its long, thin neck,
as graceful as the reeds,
could only intimate its feathers, slicked with mud.
The acid ants, bright red, ate from the gaping flesh,
the bird-blood streaming from its side.
I stared, afraid to touch:
I’d never known about the drawing-out of death,
this trembling beyond pain.
The crane was drawing labored breaths
when the handle of the oar I gripped
shattered its skull.
It made no sound, it never squawked,
but with a reflex, the kind that life can’t yield,
it moved that leg of river grasses
once or twice.
I felt a line of cold rise slowly to my neck,
my hands shook, since they couldn’t weep,
and in my soul, compassion
wore shame’s face for the first time.
But in the splendor of the body
that fractures had abased,
and as the spirit of the bird cut free,
something in me vanished, too, something fragile, dying.
That was many years ago, and sometimes, in the afternoons,
I watch the crane return, inside me,
across the broad sky of my youth,
lurching, barely in flight, nearing the ground.
I know it’s very tired,
as all things that repeat themselves are tired:
crickets’ unchanging song,
what’s on the other side of windows,
the constant weight of blame.
But I’m waiting for it to fall
so I can draw close again, the oar clutched in my hands.
La Grulla
Nunca había visto uno tan cerca.
Cuando la encontré escondida en el bote,
a la orilla del agua,
todavía sus ojos iban de un lado hacia el otro,
como si mirar fuera una forma de moverse,
de salir de ahí.
Tenía las alas rotas, y su largo cuello,
elegante como los juncos,
sólo insinuaba algunas plumas y estaba cubierto de lodo.
Las hormigas ácidas, rojas, comían de la carne abierta,
de la sangre de ave que manaba del costado.
Me quedé mirándola sin atreverme a tocarla:
yo no sabía de la lentitud agónica,
de esa forma de estremecerse más allá del dolor.
La grulla respiraba con dificultad
cuando el mango del remo que yo empuñaba
rompió su cráneo.
No hizo ningún sonido, no graznó,
pero con un reflejo, que no venía del lado de la vida,
alcanzó a mover esa pierna de carrizos
un par de veces.
Yo sentí una columna de frío subir despacio hasta mi nuca,
mis manos temblaron porque no sabían llorar,
y en mi alma, la misericordia
tuvo por primera vez el rostro de la vergüenza.
Pero en la majestad de ese cuerpo humillado por las fracturas,
en ese desprendimiento del alma del pájaro,
se fue algo mío también, frágil y moribundo.
Han pasado muchos años desde entonces y, a veces,
en las tardes, miro a esa grulla volver dentro de mí
sobre el cielo abierto de mi juventud,
volando apenas, con tumbos, cada vez más cerca del suelo.
Yo sé que está muy cansada,
como están cansadas las cosas que se repiten;
la canción monótona de los grillos,
lo que está detrás de las ventanas,
o el peso constante de la culpa.
Pero estoy esperando a que caiga,
para acercarme otra vez con el remo entre las manos.

from the journal WAXWING

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What Sparks Poetry:
Robin Myers on Javier Peñalosa M.'s "The Crane"
"I’d describe 'The Crane' as a deceptively narrative poem, in the way that a dream can present what feels like a coherent story you’ll then struggle to recapitulate once you’re conscious again. The story, as it were, is more like a snapshot remembered: the speaker finds an injured crane in a boat by a riverbank and uses an oar to put the bird out of its misery, an act that fills him both with shame and with a feeling of identification he can’t quite describe."

READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE

Luther Hughes' A Shiver in the Leaves
"As I was thinking about writing these poems, I was thinking about Seattle and all its lushness. Seattle and the Pacific Northwest has a really nice population of birds, and that relates to selfhood, in that there is this underlying theme of the speakers in the book wanting to be free from life, from themselves, from the violence, from police brutality, even from Seattle."
viaTHE SEATTLE TIMES

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