Gervitz

Featured in this issue Migrations /Migraciones

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Available from Junction Press. SeeFeature for details.

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Photo of Gloria Gervitz by Garciela Iturbide

Photo of Mark Schafer byMarjorie Attignol Salvodon

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For more information on Mark Schafer’s new translation ofthe work of David Huerta, Before Saying Any of the Great Words: Selected Poetry of David Huerta, go to www.beforesaying.com

GloriaGervitz

V Equinox

                 Fires
                 burn in my heart.
                 No smoke rises.
                 No oneknows.
                                         Kenneth Rexroth

                 I moan for love
                 Before my birds
                 They are alsocaged
                                         GeishaSong

                 . . .is the shipwreck then a harvest,
                 does tempest carry the grain forthee?
                                         GerardManley Hopkins

out of what severance does the offering come?

monotonous
                    petals ofwater

                                     flappingwings
                                     sundering

splinters

                 and that billowing swellbeneath myskin

                          bolt of syllables

before June
before therain

                 saudades

itrains

                        aninitiation

as if she had drunkhemlock

        shelets her doit
        watches her doit

water bursts into
                          the passageways of her scream

close to thesobbing

                                the quickdrop

                          flowing
                                             in disarray

and thebodyopens
                             offers itself

in the vulnerabledarkness ofabandonment

                        your quick fingers full of mercy

bending legs

                        the obliging body

severedbranch

                    scent of freesia

a headlongfall

                     from the deepest of places

I amshattering

                    chalice

        noone

               pure flight

       the dryflow

flowers adam

            the body beyond all measure

and shesaid

       dark are my clothes
       and you who surmounts me
       darkest
       but it is I who pass all limits

             like alengthening stain
             like a raised fist

burning to theorphan’s core
                                 howling

                like a split ceiba

            thegrievous passion

I’m barely trembling now
or did mytrembling become a plea?

             in this silence
opens me like afurrow

        she-wolf
flesh of dreams

                             could fearbe

the pinnacle?

and it drops

between me
and myself

in that January lull
on itsslope

         a plea       a gash
a dislocation

in thisyellow landscape

there in that well
in that mirror ofthe flesh

on the edges where I lie
in myaloneness

and drops
to where it hurts

arching
swaying

and the exuberant
plunge

opens this flesh

and the eager
                    body

daresnot refuse

swallows drop like stones
from the toweringabyss

these words
beneath your weight

thehand sinks under the gaze

                        and the body surrenders

Translated from the Spanish by Mark Schafer