Five Poems by Tania Ganitsky

from Rara (2022)

Translated from the Spanish by Guy Bennett

You can’t love and write poems. To be Orpheus,
Orpheus had to lose Eurydice.

Could it be that his sadness isn’t great enough
for Eurydice’s death to empty a space between you and me?

An empty space where I could start writing poems again.

First contact with
an invisible sound in my throat.
Questions for a star:
Do words float in deep space, too?
Do they ring in the emptiness
like a telephone?

The words were still breathing yesterday, I’m not really sure what 
          happened,
only that I found them like this when I got back,
stranded on the rug
like fish out of water that aren’t twitching any more.
Eyes wide open staring from the afterlife,
mobilizing future losses.

How did I not teach silence
to write for me?
I no longer expect it to follow me around
like a puppy
when I get old,
but to guide me
like a seeing eye dog.

This is how silence happens
– writing to empty myself out –.
I won’t be able to write all my life
if I do it well.
If I do it well,
I’ll appear in the constellations.
On Earth, people
will connect the dots
to see the shape
          I’ve unmade.

Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Tania Ganitsky has a PhD in Philosophy and Literature, and is Professor in the Department of Literature of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá) and co-editor of the fanzine La trenza. She has published five collections of poetry, including La suspensión de los objetos flotantes (2021), Rara (2022) and Desastre lento (2023). In 2022 she also published El fuego que quería recordar, a literary essay on writing.

Guy Bennett’s publications include works of both poetry and non poetry, in the English (and occasionally French) original as well as in translation. Recent titles include Poetry from Instructions, a collaborative work of (non-combinatory) generative poetry, and Vigilance, a co-translation of Benjamin Hollander’s eponymous “noir poem.” A new work, En exergue, is forthcoming from Éditions Lanskine in 2024. Guy lives in Los Angeles and teaches at Otis College of Art and Design.

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