rain & memory via claribel alegria
[image error]This week brought the release of my new poetry collection, Small Fires (FutureCycle Press), which includes the poem “Cazar Means to Hunt Not to Marry” originally published in december magazine. This particular poems travels through a series of memories on the back of two words that sound the same but are spelled different. Language as an experience beyond us acting within us, that’s where I try to go in poems.
I see memory working in a similar way as this in this week’s poem “Rain” by Claribel Alegría. Memory wends its way through rain and stones, until it overwhelms the speaker. By the end, memory becomes a means, something happening within the speaker through which they can love the world “without knowing why.”
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Rain – Claribel Alegria
Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
As the falling rain
trickles among the stones
memories come bubbling out.
It’s as if the rain
had pierced my temples.
Streaming
streaming chaotically
come memories:
the reedy voice
of the servant
telling me tales
of ghosts.
They sat beside me
the ghosts
and the bed creaked
that purple-dark afternoon
when I learned you were leaving forever,
a gleaming pebble
from constant rubbing
becomes a comet.
Rain is falling
falling
and memories keep flooding by
they show me a senseless
world
a voracious
world–abyss
ambush
whirlwind
spur
but I keep loving it
because I do
because of my five senses
because of my amazement
because every morning,
because forever, I have loved it
without knowing why.
*
Happy raining!
José
P.S. Copies of Small Fires can be purchased from Amazon and FutureCycle Press.
