from La tierra que nos falta (2021) [“The Land We Lack”] and Piel de víbora (2024) [“Viperskin”]
Translated from the Spanish by Georgina Fooks
From La tierra que nos falta [“The Land We Lack”]
VAPOUR
The mist comes down,
differed from the clouds
by her closeness.
The air feels foamy.
The storm coos
to those who kiss
near the pines.
Under the waves
you feel no turbulence.
An enormous quantity of ice
right this moment floats over the world.
In their bodies
the cold is unchanging.
LOST IN LADRILLEROS
Off we went
forging a path among the hills,
the earth squelching, swollen with water.
We wanted to turn our legs
into a motor, reach the sea,
flee the thick humidity.
Behind some vines
Gabriela found a blue butterfly,
the span of its wings equal
to the size of our hands.
The path grew longer
the heat condensed,
how dark the earth was,
how green those rivers.
How close the shipwreck.
GABRIELA
I was just thinking about us.
How we’re like those unexplored lands
that seem wonderful to all the world.
But once they’re inside, they realise
the lands are marked by their own cycles
There’s fragility, brutality,
all kinds of disasters.
Many get scared.
Then they see us from afar,
caught paralysed by beauty,
like those people
who say
we went to the Amazon.
FOREST BATH
Sequoia forests in California
are shaking off the snow.
The gathering ice covers those
who cross the paths.
I see that moment,
between winter and summer:
the grass begins to grow,
little sprouts burst from the ground.
But,
beneath the white,
the sequoias were evergreen.
I wish for my pulse to fuse
with their silent interior,
for my muscles to become fibres,
for them to change my structure and hold
my skeleton firm.
from Piel de víbora [“Viperskin”]
It is easy to get lost on this mountain
among all the quartz
all the plants with thorns.
The sun irritates my lips
they bleed.
I lie back. The stones
adjust, they take the form
of my legs, my chest.
Nothing seems to have weight
nothing seems to hold
enough water.
The canoe with its slow movement
the light kayak
stirred trails in the stream.
The sound of oars
turned weight into air
water hyacinths into lilac flowers.
We never did this before.
In the water, where you cannot love
without leaving something in return,
we submerged our feet
in the cold of the current.
A river carries sediment
the sediment creates islands
a pier a house a gallows
a bed I do not recognise
many red pears.
I asked, is there hot water?
I meant to say, if there was still some heat,
rather than ice, the chill in our words.
We bathed in the yard with a hose.
I taught you to use only one bucket of water;
first you get wet, then soap up, then rinse off
the rest, for the plants.
In some way we were sustained by the illusion of moving forward.
I wanted to stop, but I kept going.
Who am I to question the nature of things.
I ready the plants for winter make them comfortable, clean the leaves save the roots. There is a moment for everything. There is a moment for everything. It is dark, the days get short a headless snake slithers along until it loses itself in the depths of the compost that rots. Tell me, if the path cannot be seen do the waters go dark?
Violeta González Santos (Bogotá, Colombia, 1992) is a poet, visual artist, curator and researcher. She is the author of three poetry collections: Golpe de agua (2016), La tierra que nos falta (2021) and Piel de víbora (2024). She is the cofounder of the magazine Hipersensible and Híbrida Laboratorio (IN)Disciplinario, an interdisciplinary artistic project. Her poetry has been published in Argentina, Colombia, Portugal and elsewhere. As a curator, she has worked with the Museo de Art Moderno de Buenos Aires, MALBA Puertos, and ArtBasel Cities. She lives in Buenos Aires.
Georgina Fooks is a writer and translator based in the UK. Her criticism and translations of poetry and prose have been published in Asymptote, Hopscotch, The Oxonian Review, and Viceversa Magazine, and shortlisted for the John Dryden Translation Prize. She is the Director of Outreach at Asymptote. She studied poetry translation at the British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School in 2022 and is currently completing a doctorate in Latin American literature at the University of Oxford, specialising in Argentine poetry.
World Poetry Review 