Key of Mist by Guadalupe Grande

BRUSSELS - Oct. 11, 2016 - PRLog -- ...the text of the city inhabited by the signs of the artefact and chaos of Babel, the personification of the labyrinth, a moral monster with a fortress-house for a body and a shelter for the desolation of shipwrecked as a head. Here, Guadalupe Grande's Key of Mist (La llave de niebla, translated to English by Amparo Arróspide and Robin Ouzman Hislop) maps the city soul, where linguistic chaos rearranges the poems' voices.

The city, the other civilization, the greatness and the spectrum of its intrinsic ruin, a memento mori for the urban castaway on the waves of asphalt. (...) Such is the ethical landscape in which Guadalupe Grande displays the moral alphabet of her poetic truth, recognizing the city as a hyperspace, where the epic idea of homeland, the country´s ideological circumstances, the historical concept of nation are devastated by the innocent look of someone who does not understand the rush, does not accept the urgency of sacrifice imposed each morning by the necessity of work, the laws of domination, the salary of loneliness.

~Juan Carlos Mestre

EN RELATIVO

Que el mundo es imposible. Que las calles no pueden cabernos en el pecho. Que nada cabe en el hueco que le está destinado y así nos van las cosas. Que las hojas de los árboles siguen cayendo y el mar sigue diciendo una palabra que no podemos descifrar: una palabra en movimiento, una palabra en la que cabe el tiempo. Que estamos hechos de tiempo, pero no de mar. Que llevamos la cuenta del tiempo que vivimos, mareados, como si pudiéramos llevar las cuentas del mar. Que contamos la lluvia de los días y los pasos tartamudos de las horas. Que hacemos balance de minucias. Que se nos caen las palabras de la boca, sin entenderlas, como la nieve se aturde en el asfalto. Que confundimos la nieve con la sal, los relojes con la sangre, el pecho con un garaje, y nos consolamos creyendo que todo es relativo, como este pronombre.

WITH A RELATIVE PRONOUN

That the world is impossible. That streets won't fit in our chest. That nothing fits in the niche for which it's intended and that's how things are. That the leaves of trees go on falling and the sea goes on saying one word we can't decipher: a word in movement, a word that fits time in. That we are made of time, but not made of sea. That we count the time we live as dizzy, as dizzily as if we could count the sea. That we count the rain of days and the stammering steps of hours. That we make fuss about trifles. That words drop from our mouth, without understanding them, like stunned snow on a pavement. That we confuse snow with salt, clocks with blood, the chest with a garage, and we console ourselves with thinking that everything is relative, like this pronoun.

POSTAL I
(Vista del horizonte desde la Costanilla del Farol)

Nada hay como estar lejos
y no saber dónde meternos;
contar los pájaros que emigran,
buscar la arena en el asfalto
y acurrucarnos bajo una farola
con espigado espíritu de álamo
mientras el tráfico de la noche
dice su palabra de río
que no llegará nunca al mar.

Una ciudad, hoy, es estar lejos.

POSTCARD I
(View of the horizon from the Alley of the Street Lamp)

There's nothing like being far away
not knowing where to get into;
counting the migrating birds,
searching for sand on the pavement
curling up under a street lamp
with the slender spirit of a poplar
while the night traffic
utters its river's word
that will never reach the sea.

A city, today, exists to be far away.


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