from S (work in progress)
Translated from the Galician by Erín Moure
THIS fulgurance
as I retrace Robert Smithson‘s walk out onto Spiral Jetty
in a photo from 1970
three years before his death
I never actually did it
I remained in the Tate
surrounded by the grandiose paintings of Rothko
in the Boijmans watching a face that wails forever inconsolable
The best measure of my youth
is Smithson's body stepping from the Spiral to enter the waters
the inconsolable face in Rotterdam
Let them be the sum
of what I didn’t know and in them I recognize
in the irradiation of The Large Glass
photographed by Man Ray in 1920
“in Mycenae, remember, Aion
was viewed as a crucible of dust”
What they decapitate is the name
bird that flies up close
searing what once were bodies
Now
that it’s really real
death is skyborne
Thinking about Antón Reixa
1
In every single pore
in the pneumas
in the respiration of nettles
in words that leave the mouth and that we’ll never ever see
soul
writes
a past without closure
2
A cloud can birth a storm, a lightning bolt and clap of thunder
a cloud is the storm’s home
a storm is an optical and sonorous band
the cloud’s optical band is formed by the writing of verse-lines that are
not final,
but especially by the writing of final lines
a poem’s final line is a strategy that’s contrary to the sign
the cloud’s sonorous band is composed of all the poem’s lines
but especially those that memory can’t seem to forget
what defines the cloud is lightspeed and the slower speed of sound
a final verse-line operates in the conjunct of verses of a cloud
it’s not incorporated in the series
it is itself the series
it’s really outside the conjunct
we have to admit
it’s a total wreck
and seeing it as such
we ask
why not just write final lines?
without cloud, without storm
we’d be unable to perceive the final line
a verse-line that refuses the copula between sign and signified
a line faithful to this trajectory generates birth,
time that refuses
that won’t signify
that’s why we write clouds and storms
we write them because we refuse the immortal condition of the poem
we write oceans and navigations and islands because we insist on the
living and mortal condition of the poem
its necessity
its freedom
We write ocean
a wind that blows the dorna toward an island
indomitable always
the island is a verse outside the norm
an impossible conjunct of final lines
now back to the birth
back to the antelope
a final poem-line lives inside the antelope’s black hide
resists the optical dazzle of a lightning bolt
the clap of thunder
that’s how we think of it
A storm, a navigation, an antelope
one that’s composed of verse-lines
and includes a final line
or several final lines or a conjunct of winds
that blow us to the island
verses that don’t discriminate between light and dark
verse-lines that don’t enjamb
detained
they lay off tracing the furrow
they are a horizontal coordinate
they survive storm
survive ocean
island
birth
the black antelope
we can confirm this
3
The psyche abides in many organs of the body, visible and invisible
if we think of it that way
as cloud organ
as storm organ
amid other possibilities
as organ of black sails
inside the black hide of an antelope that is not sacrificial and marks the
way
faithful to a trajectory that begins at birth (from a conception)
and that is contrary to any referential capture
the psyche is a cloud that offers resistance to meaning
archaic
frontal
amidst lattices that are oak trees
and from the headlands
gift that drifts above then drops into the waters
We are of the lineage of those women who stoked bonfires in lighthouses
Ecstatic
completely beside ourselves
transfixed by the song of a bird
with you
we sleep
Galicia, Funeral Oration
Blanketed in oceanic magma
deep inside stone
–long before we were even a dream of being–
we emerge
We are not of those women who weave and unweave
nor of those men who take one step forward then one back
we are of the long beach, extensive and dark
of the heavy crows, the singular plovers
From this home
inequivocably ours
comes a voice
"wake up"
we don’t obey
we communicate
“we know the world is ash”
yet come solstice
tick-tickety-boom-tickety-bloom
we overwhelm the footpaths like honeysuckle
We adore the embers that sunset leaves behind in the ether
amid lattices that are oak trees
and from the headlands
the gift that drifts above and drops into the waters
We are of the lineage of those women who stoked bonfires in lighthouses
and contemplated the islands
Ecstatic
completely beside ourselves
transfixed by the song of a bird
with you
we sleep
Translator’s Note:
In these new poems by Galician poet Chus Pato, there are a few references to highlight for non Galicians. “Of the long beach, extensive and dark, of heavy crows” comes from Xosé Luis Méndez Ferrín’s poem “Galicia,” and pays homage to his influence on Pato’s own development, and on all contemporary evocation of Galicia in poetry. Second, the birdsong evokes a saint known to all, Ero, the 12th c. abbot of Armenteira who, on a stroll, stopped to listen to a bird and knew paradise for an instant. On returning to his abbey, he realized he’d been gone 300 years. Third, the dorna is a traditional Galician fishing vessel, with oars and a single square sail. Finally, Antón Reixa is a poet, film director, musician, and producer, a major cultural figure of Pato’s generation who emerged on the Galician scene in the 1970s, in the waning years of Francoism (which repressed Galician language and culture), when the rock scene was a huge force for cultural renewal.
Chus Pato is a celebrated Galician poet. Seven of her twelve books of poetry are translated into English, including Sonora (Veliz Books, 2026) and In the Face of the Quartzes (Veliz Books, 2021), and her books and talks have also been translated into Spanish, Catalan, Dutch, Portuguese and Bulgarian, with individual works in many other languages. She has performed throughout Europe and in South America, Canada, USA and Mexico, Cuba, as well as in India and north Africa. After a career teaching history and geography, she lives and writes in central Galicia in the northwest of Spain.
Erín Moure is a Canadian poet, translator, and essayist. Often hybrid in form, her books explore the possibility of queer citizenship as well as the potentialities of language/s. She has published more than 19 books of poetry, and more than 25 books of poetry by others translated from Galician, Spanish, French, and Portuguese (including Nicole Brossard, Andrés Ajens, Chantal Neveu, Rosalia de Castro, Chus Pato, and Fernando Pessoa). Her most recent book is Theophylline: an aporetic migration via the modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké (Anansi, 2023), and her most recent translation is of Galician poet Chus Pato’s Sonora (Veliz Books, 2026).