translated Laia Sales Merino
My mother bought a grave in Italy and said to me:
here both of us will lie with your father.
And, suddenly, I imagine her skull resting on my skull, taking refuge in the wood from the tree that saw our birth, and I smile at her.
Her hope brushes against me like a caress that one day I will leave Spain and come back, hers is a promise of love eterno. I think of my mother, my father, and myself, turned to dust, a family without offspring, mediterránea, united en la muerte like they never were en vida.
Someday the concierge will sweep the rotten flowers, he will leave us undressed before the world, he will look at the grave and sense our love in the family photo against a white background between so much naked bone, just as dry, just as white. If I think about it a grave is la utopia perfecta: without men or women, all extranjeros. We store an ideal world inside,
in our bones, pero so far away.
The tomb is the definitive family model.
We should all place our head inside a grave
until the world stops hurting us, deje deje de dolernos el mundo.
Insepulto
Mi madre compró un nicho en Italia y me dijo:
aquí descansaremos los dos con tu padre.
Y, de repente, imagino su cráneo apoyado sobre mi cráneo,
refugiados en la madera del árbol que nos vio nacer, y le sonrío.
Su esperanza me roza como una caricia
para que un día deje España y vuelva,
la suya es una promesa de amor eterno.
Pienso en mi madre, en mi padre y en mí,
convertidos en polvo,
una familia sin descendencia, mediterránea,
unida en la muerte como nunca lo estuvo en vida.
Algún día el conserje barrerá las flores podridas,
nos dejará desabrigados frente al mundo,
mirará el nicho e intuirá nuestro amor en la foto familiar con fondo blanco
entre tanto hueso desnudo,
igual de seco, igual de blanco.
Si lo pienso un nicho es la utopía perfecta:
sin hombres o mujeres,
todos extranjeros.
Guardamos un mundo ideal dentro,
en nuestros huesos, pero tan lejano.
La tumba es el modelo de familia definitivo.
Deberíamos meter todos la cabeza en un nicho
hasta que deje de dolernos el mundo.
____________
Ángelo Néstore (Lecce, 1986) is a non-binary queer poet, performer & translator. They were born in Italy and now lives in his adopted city of Malaga. They also are a professor in the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Malaga. They successfully defended their PhD thesis on Comics Translation and Queer Theory. They are director of the poetry publisher Letraversal and co-direct the Irreconciliables International Poetry Festival.
Laia Sales Merino is a poet from the Catalan Pyrenees currently based in Barcelona. Her work can be found in Ambit, harana poetry and perhappened among others. IG: lai_to_the_sound