from The Knot the Flower
Translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem
dedicated to you At Mister Tate’s art gallery, rooms and rooms overflowing with paintings from the British XVII, the British XVII, the British XVII-XVIII, the British XVIII… and on like that until the XIX… and more XIX… and suddenly there on the wall a toy lightning bolt in a real painting. No, no, you’ll say later, that tiny thing was real lightning in a toy painting.
THE 2 POEMS First you want to find an existing poem that when you first hear it already rings an ancient bell and then you want to invent a poem, make one up brand-new and never-before-seen that unlocks a new and timeworn behold in the soul and on top of that aspire for both to coincide word for word.
BY NIGHT In the oh so simple living of so many complicated lives superimposed and braided you haven’t lost the thread and you know how to sing many tunes simply for the simple beauty and when all is sleeping and you rest and your head irons the pillow who knows where dreams travel or what dances dance the spirit
Goodbye, desert Passing through a desert so deserted and so filled and full and besieged by metaphors, by meta- fors big and small and many, many different ty- pes and many recurring too and all squeezed together which more than a desert is a jungle but in me- taphor because in fact it’s a desert and must be passed through, gotten over, because it’s awfully hard to skirt. And then one must enter into the void, which is full of people. clear day late september
HOW
IN THE PRESENT INDICATIVE
How will you take things?
However they come.
How will you face them?
However I can.
How will you look at me?
However you want.
IN THE INFINITIVE
How I expand, the more you squeeze me close.
SONG of the EGO Oh, you planets that come from amid the branches of the moon and fall onto the earth’s sky, do you see me? A BIT, SURE With only ego, life’s shit but without it, I quit.
AUTUMN DAUGHTER Draw for me a lily of springtime blue to sing winter. Offer me a thistle of old autumn gold to endure winter. Water my stain of dark thoughts kissing all winter. Show me the green field of paradise for sharing winter. Embrace the wool of my red suit now and all winter. And let us crack black pine nuts beside the fire that warms the winters beside you and beside us and stretched out on the gray grass of winter.
Enric Casasses is a poet in Catalan language whose work is both erudite and whimsical, drawing from a wide range of influences including medieval poetry and free verse. Innovative and diverse in form, his playful works come to life on stage, often with musical accompaniment, during his recitals. His more than 25 published volumes have earned him numerous awards including the 2012 Catalan National Literature Prize and the 2020 Catalan Literary Achievement Award bestowed by Òmnium Cultural.
Mara Faye Lethem is a writer, a researcher, and a mother of teenagers. Winner of the inaugural 2022 Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award for Max Besora’s The Adventures and Misadventures of Joan Orpí, she was also recently awarded the 2022 Joan Baptiste Cendrós International Prize for her contributions to Catalan literature. Her translation of Irene Solà’s When I Sing, Mountains Dance was shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Barrios Book in Translation Prize.
World Poetry Review 