This is the mineral hour of twilight
when the crystaldreamsof being the incandescent bubbleof defeated metal.Dreaming is the extreme temptation to become confused.On the back of horsesthe mountain goes down to the plains.At the foot of the path a treeagainst the lightthe fruit hangs the way a momentflaresflower of time.The world is the shells’ secret. Esta é a hora mineral do crepúsculocando o cristalsoñase-la burbulla incandescentedo metal vencido.E soñar é a extrema tentación de confundirse.Ó lombo dos cabaloso monte baixa ás chairas.Ó pé do camiño unha árborecontraluzsuspende o froito como un instantese prendeflor de tempo.O mundo é o segredo das cunchas.
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- June 11, 2020
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from Landscapes of the Void (Edicións Xerais de Galicia, 1999)
Translation Copyright © 2019 by Jonathan Dunne
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Eva Veiga (b. 1961 in Ombre, Pontedeume, northwest Galicia) is the author of eight poetry collections to date, including Paisaxes do baleiro (Landscapes of the Void, 1999) and A luz e as súas cicatrices (Light and Its Scars, 2005), from which these poems are taken. She studied English at university and has had an intense and successful career as a journalist on the Galician newspaper El Ideal Gallego and on Galician TV, where she is known for directing and presenting cultural programs. She presented the TV documentary on the history of Galician art, Galicia no tempo (Galicia in Time), which received an honorable mention in the Media Save Art 91 meeting. Her poetry has been similarly recognized. In 2014 she received the Galician-Language Writers Association’s award for best work of poetry and in 2016 the Spanish Critics’ Award for Galician poetry.
Jonathan Dunne translates literature from Bulgarian, Catalan, Galician, and Spanish. His translations of work by the Galician writer Manuel Rivas are published by Penguin Random House. He directs the publishing house Small Stations Press, the largest publisher of Galician literature in English, which includes the poetry collections Galician Songs and New Leaves by the Galician poet Rosalía de Castro in Erín Moure’s translation. A list of their publications can be found on their website here. He has written three books on the English language: The DNA of the English Language (2007) about English word connections, The Life of a Translator (2013) about coincidence in translation, and Stones Of Ithaca (2019) about the connection between language and the environment.
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