The other day I received a comment on this blog from a most wonderful person, Ramon. I couldn’t believe someone living in a city near Barcelona, Spain would have found my work and contacted me with such wonderful thoughts and emotion.
It has been almost a year since my reconnecting with lost friends from grad school, finding true love, and having an all-inclusive wave of goodness coming to me from people. Any dark that has come at all has not been as dark as it once was. Now, there is always a light there and someone waiting at the end of hallway in my heart.
Now this, from Ramon. From across an ocean I have never crossed yet myself.
The soul in Spain has always possessed a sweet resonance for me — I think a lot of it is the magic I have always returned to again and again, lying in bed kissing the words of Lorca with my eyes.
And now, this message from across the sea.
And his intensely kind eyes do me a daily good.
Please visit Ramon’s blog (great artwork on her but I need to learn Catalan).
http://poesiaendins.blogspot.com
And watch www.carriemcgath.com … I am now hoping for an International Readers with an array of translations link soon!
Interested in doing some translations, Ramon?
Best blessings.
So mote it be …
Thank you very much for your compliments, Carrie.
Federico García Lorca gave us the gift of his words, his music, his dreams, his draws, his theater, his love, his life-love…his eyes…
LORCA, BUÑUEL, DALÍ, FALLA, yes, yes, yes,….
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I´ll collaborate in your project about translations(little by little) although I´m not used to write in english…. but I´ll try to do my best!
Since I discovered your poetry I´m visiting your website and I will be attentive to your translating proposals.
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I´d like to send you these two little poems written by a very close friend of mine, PILAR CABOT.
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Ja ha passat l´hora
de rabejar-nos en el plany.
Mira la lluna
com ens daura les ombres!
.
The time´s already gone
to revel in the lament.
Look how the moon
gilds our shadows.
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Tens el vers obstinat, em deies.
Encara no sabies
que hi visc en els meus versos.
.
You got the wilful verse, that´s what you said.
Still didn´t know
that I live in my verses.
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PILAR CABOT. (Catalonian poet, from her book Els versos obstinats, The Wilful Verses)
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Maybe the version-translation of these lines that I´ve attempted to, don´t suggest the liveliness, agility, determination and intensity that the two poems really have in Catalan, their original language. But I imagine, and know, that you, as a poet, will catch all their significance.
.
Be happy,
Ramon
So glad to have seen your post, Ramon. The poem is beautiful. It is still marinading in my mind.The moon gilding shadows is beautiful and I will never see the moon the same with my Love, my Dove Don, the same again.
Today has been trying. I am attempting to trudge through the unknown of things. I need to be vague, now. I am superstitious, a residue from my Irish grandparents.
So I have been carrying a Jade stone and a piece of fluorine. I am in the market for a nice piece of topaz, citrine.
I feel woozy tonight, if I am not making sense.
Here is a poem I am still revising for my new book.
Hope you enjoy it. I will comment more on the poem you sent after it marinades a bit longer.
Here is my poem. Best to you.
Self-Portrait in Handcuffs
It is a story told from the perspective of bedclothes.
My tongue-tied wrists are someone else’s doing
so feel better now than usual,
after my one last hospital-cornered gasp.
Today I am panty-lines and painful boots
are humming like afternoons.
Yes, I really am at your mercy.
Control me sometimes, like this,
with keys threatening to be lost.
We would be having a good bit of explaining to do.
So we make a B-line for our love-full chests,
our hearts like suitcases dusting hotel lobbies.
2008, Carrie McGath
I´ve enjoyed the poem very, very, very, much, and i´ll enjoy it for a long, long time. Thanks for allow its reading. It´s hard to explain all the sensations that it produces in my mind,… I´ll write my impressions and i´ll send you another day.
It´s a gift your poetry!
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Embrace
this sudden arrival of words
as if little protective stones
posted to you
and carried by joyful birds
that cross speedily the ocean.
A rattle of signs
that want you to make feel good.
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Ramon
Dear Ramon,
I have embraced your words. This is all something so otherworldly, you writing to me, you and I writing back and forth. I needed this so badly now. I hope this makes you happy also.
I thought I would send another poem and then no more for awhile.
Hope you enjoy it.
Welcome to the Cabin
Welcome has no good connotation,
You taught me that on a dark night
with a faltering moon,
addressing me like an envelope,
while undressing me with commands.
That was the night you kept me around for,
a fastidious bang on your high-traffic Serta
where I once found a pink lace B-cup
and knew I wasn’t the first, the last,
but the middle child with a body image complex.
You sat next to me only when you wanted me,
as if I were a cordial cherry dessert
melting under your eyes.
Be happy, Carrie.
Till soon!
Ramon