Successful from early in her writing career, ceremonially baptised “Juana de América,” and once popular way beyond her own country and continent, the face of Juana de Ibarbourou (1892-1979) is on thousand-peso notes in her native Uruguay, but she seems no longer to be as well known internationally or as much published in translation as one might expect. Read more (if still frustratingly little) about her on Wikipedia.
Surfing through online poetry sites, skittering through countries and centuries, pulling out a few – not necessarily the most representative – poems that grab me and having a bash at translating them, is an ahistorical and superficial approach, perhaps. But it’s a bit like being an inexperienced prospector panning for gold – and finding it. The second of these poems, Bajo la Lluvia, is set to join my all-time favourites.
What I Am for You
A doe
eating fragrant grass out of your hand.
A dog
that follows everywhere in your footsteps.
A star
twice as bright and sparkly just for you.
A spring
rippling snake-like at your feet.
A flower
whose honey and whose scent are yours alone.
For you I’m all of these,
I gave you my soul in all its guises.
The doe, the dog, the heavenly body and the flower,
the living water flowing at your feet.
My soul is all
for you, my
Love.
Lo que soy para tí
Cierva
que come en tus manos la olorosa hierba.
Can
que sigue tus pasos doquiera que van.
Estrella
para ti doblada de sol y centella.
Fuente
que a tus pies ondula como una serpiente.
Flor
que para ti solo da mieles y olor.
Todo eso yo soy para tí,
mi alma en todas sus formas te dí.
Cierva y can, astro y flor,
agua viva que glisa a tus pies,
Mi alma es
para tí,
Amor.
Being Rained On
How the rain is sliding down my back!
How it’s soaking into my skirt
and planting its icy cold on my cheeks!
It’s raining, raining, raining.
And I’m off, I’m on my way,
with a lightness in my soul and a smile on my face,
with no emotions, no dreams,
just full of the pleasure of not thinking.
Here’s a bird taking a bath
in a muddy puddle. Surprised by my presence,
it pauses… looks me in the eye… feels like we’re friends…
We’re both in love with sky and fields and wheat!
Then the startled face
of a passing labourer with his hoe on his shoulder
and the rain is drenching me in all the scents
of October hedges.
And, soaked to the skin as I am,
a kind of wonderful, stupendous crown of crystal drops,
of flowers stripped of their petals,
pours over me from the astonished plants I brush against.
And I feel, in this mindless,
sleepless state, the pleasure,
the infinite, sweet, strange delight
of a moment’s oblivion.
It’s raining, raining, raining,
and in my soul and in my flesh, this icy cold.
Bajo la lluvia
¡Cómo resbala el agua por mi espalda!
¡Cómo moja mi falda,
y pone en mis mejillas su frescura de nieve!
Llueve, llueve, llueve.
Y voy, senda adelante,
con el alma ligera y la cara radiante,
sin sentir, sin soñar,
llena de la voluptuosidad de no pensar.
Un pájaro se baña
en una charca turbia. Mi presencia le extraña,
se detiene… me mira… nos sentimos amigos…
¡Los dos amamos muchos cielos, campos y trigos!
Después es el asombro
de un labriego que pasa con su azada al hombro
y la lluvia me cubre de todas las fragancias
de los setos de octubre.
Y es, sobre mi cuerpo por el agua empapado
como un maravilloso y estupendo tocado
de gotas cristalinas, de flores deshojadas
que vuelcan a mi paso las plantas asombradas.
Y siento, en la vacuidad
del cerebro sin sueño, la voluptuosidad
del placer infinito, dulce y desconocido,
de un minuto de olvido.
Llueve, llueve, llueve,
y tengo en alma y carne, como un frescor de nieve.
The Fig Tree
Because she’s rough and ugly,
her branches uniformly grey,
the fig tree moves me to pity.
At my country place are a hundred lovelies,
bushy plum trees,
upright lemons,
shiny-leaved orange trees.
Every springtime,
clothed in blossom,
they crowd around the fig tree.
Poor thing, how sad she looks,
with her twisted, truncated branches
that never sport tight little buds…
That’s why
each time I’m near her
I murmur, summoning
my sweetest, blithest tones:
“the fig tree is the loveliest
of all the orchard’s trees.”
And if she hears me,
if she understands my words,
what a deep sweetness will make its nest
in her sensitive tree-soul!
Perhaps, in a trance of pleasure,
while the wind fans her topmost branches,
she’ll tell the night:
Today I was called beautiful!
La Higuera
Porque es áspera y fea,
porque todas sus ramas son grises,
yo le tengo piedad a la higuera.
En mi quinta hay cien árboles bellos,
ciruelos redondos,
limoneros rectos
y naranjos de brotes lustrosos.
En las primaveras,
todos ellos se cubren de flores
en torno a la higuera.
Y la pobre parece tan triste
con sus gajos torcidos que nunca
de apretados capullos se visten…
Por eso,
cada vez que yo paso a su lado,
digo, procurando
hacer dulce y alegre mi acento:
«Es la higuera el más bello
de los árboles todos del huerto».
Si ella escucha,
si comprende el idioma en que hablo,
¡qué dulzura tan honda hará nido
en su alma sensible de árbol!
Y tal vez, a la noche,
cuando el viento abanique su copa,
embriagada de gozo le cuente:
¡Hoy a mí me dijeron hermosa!
More of a version, an approach, somewhere towards a translation of this experimental work from the 1970s. Probably no coincidence that, of all the random selection of poetry from Quebec to be found on the web, this impossible text drew me, since I’m more or less of the poet’s generation and marked by the explosion in women’s lives, identities and language forty years ago. Anyway, I love it. It’s incantatory. It’s feelings trying to burst out of language and almost managing to do so.
Born in 1901 in Quebec, Simone Routier studied music, education, literature, philosophy and art, lived for a decade in Paris as a journalist and returned to Quebec in 1940 to spend some years as a Catholic nun before embarking on a successful career as a diplomat. She died in 1987. She published novels, essays and several collections of poetry. She was one of the first to write haiku in French. Little of her work appears to be still in print. These small poems, found online and first published around 1930, seemed not at all dated. Some of her haiku adopt the 5-7-5 syllable format, others not. Two of the three lines have a low-key end rhyme, which I tried to suggest or compensate for rather than rigorously translate.
