CORAL BRACHO (translated by Forrest Gander)

from It Must Be a Misunderstanding


By means of what song, what bird,
do you go through me like a flame, a thin     
fiber?
And this deep placidity,
this silky tenderness, into what cross-section of the cosmos
does it settle now, onto what edge
and propitious nuance, into what relief?
 
The afternoon trembles
between the leaves, flowers.
The bark of the world
trembles,
and it's a high, floaty sound,
a note barely there: an internal
gesture,
a stroke. Through what unobstructable channel?
desde Debe ser un malentendido


¿Desde qué canto, de qué pájaro,
me atraviesas como una flama, una fibra
delgadísima?
¿Y esta abismada placidez,
esta blandura suave, en qué perfil del cosmos
se asienta ahora, en qué filo
y matiz fortuito, en qué relieve?
 
Tiembla la tarde
entre las hojas, las flores.
La corteza del mundo
tiembla,
y es un sonido alto, ligero,
una nota muy tenue: un gesto
interno,
un trazo. ¿Desde qué cauce indetenible?



221 The Paris-American
Coral Bracho is one of the most influential poets in Mexico, her country of birth, and in all of Latin America. In each of her books, a shifting network of images stimulate phenomenological meditations on what happens to the self who becomes the reader of book and world. She has won most of the major prizes—The Villaurrutia Prize & the International Jaime Sabines-Gatien Lapointe Prize among them. Her work has been translated into dozens of languages. In English, she is best represented by ​Firefly Under the Tongue from New Directions. A new book in translation, It Must Be a Misunderstanding is forthcoming from New Directions.
Forrest Gander, a writer and translator with degrees in geology and literature, was born in the Mojave Desert and lives in northern California. His books, often concerned with ecology, include Be With, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize, and Twice Alive, forthcoming from New Directions. Gander often collaborates with artists such as Ann Hamilton, Sally Mann, Graciela Iturbide, and Vic Chesnutt.