WITTY PARTITION (formerly The Wall)

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  • ISSUE 12
    • Table of Contents12
    • A WORD-12
    • InSight 1: The Nile
    • POCKET ANTHOLOGY >
      • Osip Mandelstam
    • CONVERSATIONS >
      • Myer-Darton-Meinecke
    • InSight 2: Hand Truck
    • ESSAYS >
      • from SWAMPITUDE
    • KONGO >
      • Kongo Crucifix
      • Four Moments of the Sun
    • VENTANAS >
      • Frontera II
    • FICTION >
      • Mabel, the Slave
    • MEMOIR-12
    • InSight 3: Carabou Hunter
    • ¡VIVA! >
      • Collado
    • POETRY >
      • Francesca Gargallo >
        • Before the Lamps Go Out
        • Before the Lamps Go Out2
        • Songs of the Journey
        • Songs of the Journey2
      • Stephanie Johnson
    • PORTFOLIO >
      • Leslie Wagner
    • REMARKABLE READS >
      • The Lovers
    • Colophon
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  • ISSUE 11
    • A Word
    • Table of Contents
    • American Pride
    • ¡VIVA! >
      • Cardenal
    • FICTION >
      • Canary Club
      • Autobiography of a Book
    • VENTANAS
    • POETRY >
      • Levent Yilmaz
      • Levent Yilmaz Turkish
    • Like it never even happened
    • MEMOIR
    • PORTFOLIO >
      • Gwendolyn KD
    • REMARKABLE READS >
      • Shahr-e Jaanaan
      • Three Books Three Trips
      • Keiichiro Hirano
    • Summer Reads
    • INCITE!
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  • ISSUE 10
  • News
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  • EXTRA!
    • Everything Must Go!
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  • ABOUT
    • About Us
    • Contact
  • Submissions
  • ISSUE 12
    • Table of Contents12
    • A WORD-12
    • InSight 1: The Nile
    • POCKET ANTHOLOGY >
      • Osip Mandelstam
    • CONVERSATIONS >
      • Myer-Darton-Meinecke
    • InSight 2: Hand Truck
    • ESSAYS >
      • from SWAMPITUDE
    • KONGO >
      • Kongo Crucifix
      • Four Moments of the Sun
    • VENTANAS >
      • Frontera II
    • FICTION >
      • Mabel, the Slave
    • MEMOIR-12
    • InSight 3: Carabou Hunter
    • ¡VIVA! >
      • Collado
    • POETRY >
      • Francesca Gargallo >
        • Before the Lamps Go Out
        • Before the Lamps Go Out2
        • Songs of the Journey
        • Songs of the Journey2
      • Stephanie Johnson
    • PORTFOLIO >
      • Leslie Wagner
    • REMARKABLE READS >
      • The Lovers
    • Colophon
    • Contributors
  • ISSUE 11
    • A Word
    • Table of Contents
    • American Pride
    • ¡VIVA! >
      • Cardenal
    • FICTION >
      • Canary Club
      • Autobiography of a Book
    • VENTANAS
    • POETRY >
      • Levent Yilmaz
      • Levent Yilmaz Turkish
    • Like it never even happened
    • MEMOIR
    • PORTFOLIO >
      • Gwendolyn KD
    • REMARKABLE READS >
      • Shahr-e Jaanaan
      • Three Books Three Trips
      • Keiichiro Hirano
    • Summer Reads
    • INCITE!
    • Contributors
  • ISSUE 10
  • News
    • News & Links
  • EXTRA!
    • Everything Must Go!
  • Back Issues

Songs of the Journey*
by
Francesca Gargallo
​

trans. Dana Delibovi




 
Germina en cualquier tierra el hueso
corre el agua y amanece la materia
a cada instante.
Toda tierra es santa para el peregrino
desciende su humor por las frondas inermes
corre cual hilo de sangre por las grietas del cerro.
 
Quien camina con el mismo pie que sembra
y canta sus actos cotidianos
en el alba del tiempo permanece.
 
Es andar un acto mágico
origina los pasos
y del ojo que mira la fruta jamás mordida
despunta una risa inmortal.
 
Perdura la imagen
viene cruzando el Atlántico en balsa
salta continentes
y avanza a orillas del Orinoco
labra senderos
semillas esparce
canturrea en el centro de la Amazonia
para la defensora de la Puna
para la madre del ocelote
y detiene la flecha
que amenaza el arma de fuego
del soldado de frontera.
 
Nadie niega el peligro
se muere en el mar y en Brasil
se caen los puentes colgantes en Venezuela
los bandidos acechan en el Darién
pero desarrolla su propio carácter
la sobreviviente fecunda.
 
Hay hierbas con las cuales
nos curaremos del miedo.

She Plants Her Feet Firmly When She Walks the Earth
 
Kernel and pit, flesh and bone
can grow on any soil
as long as water runs and elements rise
instant by instant.
All the earth is sacred to the pilgrim,
who cuts her way through the helpless foliage that runs,
a trickle of blood, down the gullies of the hill.
 
She walks on feet that sowed her rows of corn.
She sings of ordinary life,
lasting since the dawn of time.
 
It is magical to walk,
to conjure footsteps.
When she sees unbitten fruits along the way,
she laughs an immortal laugh.
 
She lives on,
crossing the Atlantic in an open boat.
She jumps continents
and trudges the banks of the Orinoco.
She clears a trail, scattering
its wild grains,
and sings her soft music deep in the Amazon--
songs to defend the Puna zones,
songs for the mother of the ocelot.
She stops the arrow
aimed at the border soldier’s gun.
 
No one denies the danger of death
in the waters of Brazil,
when suspension bridges fall in Venezuela,
or where the bandits lurk in the Darién Gap.
But still,
the fertile survivor grows whole.
 
And there are herbs
to cure the fear.
 
Hondureña
 
Débil blancura la de una página profanada de cifras
cuaderno abierto a la luz de su linterna
cálculos portátiles
motivo y signo de una larga marcha
cinco limones dos panes y una lata de atún                 
          la toalla de la niña, el huevo para el muchacho
                 y treinta y seis años de deudas.
 
Migrar es la última esperanza—y como todas, una ilusión--
si tu país es meta turística y territorio de dictaduras.
 
Madre migrante me habla a medias
tramos de vida en todo semejantes a los trazos
del cuadernito de cuentas
que hay que rendir a dios
sin una solo prueba de su existencia.

 

Hondureña
 
The feeble whiteness of a page profaned with figures,
a notebook opened in the circle of her torch,
calculations--
these are her traveling companions,
both motive and sign of the long march:
five lemons, two loaves of bread, and a can of tuna,
            the girl’s towel, the boy’s egg,
            and thirty-six years of debt. 
 
Migration is the last hope,
                                    and like all hope, an illusion,
when your country is a hub for tourists and a home for dictators.
 
            The migrant mother talks to me. The fragments of her life
            resemble the strokes
            in the notebook of numbers,
            and these, she says, she must surrender to God--
            without a single proof of God’s existence.


 
Tres limones,
“tres limones es todo lo que tengo”
dice el muchacho
y los exhibe en la palma sucia y triste
“tres limones que necesito compres
para que me des cinco dólares
porque mi madre tiene hambre”.
La lógica del muchacho es perfecta--

​circular y explicativa--

o tan solo justa y la justicia no es de este mundo.
 
Un golpe a la mano desplegada
ruedan los tres limones
la risa informe del capataz se levanta.
Un eco de malestar y silencio.
 
La limosnera sin pasado levanta los frutos
a los pies callosos del muchacho
y le tiende cinco dólares

"Three Lemons
 
“Three lemons,
three lemons is all I have,”
says the boy, and he shows them
in his mournful, dirty palm.
“I need you to buy
three lemons, I need to get
five dollars,
because my mother is hungry."
The boy's logic is perfect:
circular but clear,
 
since justice is a contradiction in this world.
 
A whack to the boy’s unfolded fingers;
the three lemons roll away.
The foreman’s nihilistic laughter
echoes in the boy’s uneasy silence.
 
Near the boy’s calloused feet,
a beggar without a past picks up the fruits
then hands him five dollars.
*Note: These poems have been excerpted from a group of new poems, LIricas del viaje, publication pending.
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