The Boatman

Gemma Gorga
Translated from the Catalan

To get up early and check that everything is in place:that the windows have not aged too much overnight,that yesterday's bread remains soft enough for the new day'sbaby teeth, that the yellow smell of curry lingersin the kitchen, the smell of our hands making dinner,making love, slowly, under the white sheets of flour,that the books stubbornly still preserve the memoryof their words, that everything is, in fact, where it should be,starting with our bones and ending with butterflies,with meridians and silences that occupy the exactcelestial latitude someone assigned them. And thus, eachday, the same labor continues from yesterdayto today, crossing the dark waters of nightsuccessfully, and starting again as if nothing hadpassed, except for a little time, the clay of seconds.Until one night we embark, but it's another riverand another boatman. And then, tell me, whowill keep the names of things? Who will save the aromaof all we have been, that for us has been? Which lookwill preserve the windows, bread, hands, memory,books? What muck will dare devour so much life? El barquerLlevar-se d'hora i comprovar que tot és al seu lloc,que les finestres no han envellit tant en una nit,que el pa d'ahir segueix tendre per a les dents de lletdel nou dia, que a la cuina perdura l'olor grogadel curri, l'olor de les nostres mans fent el sopar,fent, lentes, l'amor sota els llençols blancs de la farina,que els llibres encara conserven, tossuts, la memòriade les paraules, que tot és, en fi, on ha de ser,començant pels ossos i acabant per les papallones,pels meridians i els silencis que ocupen l'exactalatitud celeste que algú els va assignar. I així, cadadia, la mateixa feina per passar de l'ahira l'avui, per creuar les aigües fosques de la nitamb èxit i tornar a començar com si res no haguéspassat, tret d'una mica de temps, el fang dels segons.Fins que una nit embarcarem, però serà un altreel riu i un altre el barquer. I aleshores, digue'm, ¿quimantindrà el nom, qui salvarà l'olor de tot allòque hem estat, que per nosaltres ha estat, quina miradaguardarà les finestres, el pa, les mans, la memòria,els llibres? Quin llot s'atrevirà a engolir tanta vida?

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Image of Gemma Gorga

Gemma Gorga (born in Barcelona in 1968) has published seven collections of poetry in Catalan. Her most recent collections are Viatge al centre (Godall Edicions, 2020) and Mur (Barcelona: Meteora, 2015), which won the Premi de la Critica de Poesia Catalana. Her other recent books include her essay on India, Indi Visible (Barcelona, 2018) as well as translations from English to Catalan of the Indian poet Dilip Chitre and a co-translation of selected poems by Edward Hirsch. She is Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Spanish Literature at the University of Barcelona.

Image of Sharon Dolin

Sharon Dolin is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Manual for Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) and Whirlwind (Pittsburgh, 2012). Her fourth book Burn and Dodge (Pittsburgh, 2008) won the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. Her translation of Gemma Gorga’s Book of Minutes (Field Translation Series: Oberlin College Press, 2019) received grants from PEN and Institut Ramon Llull. Her prose memoir Hitchcock Blonde (2020) was published by Terra Nova Press. The recipient of a 2021 NEA Fellowship in Translation, she is Associate Editor of Barrow Street Press and directs Writing About Art in Barcelona.

Cover of Late to the House of Words

Ardmore, Pennsylvania

"In a Spain (indeed a world) where the legitimacy of Catalan language and culture must be continually defended (the language was once banned from public use by Franco), Gemma Gorga's celebration of the protean vitality and champion beauty of words comes as no surprise. The highest kudo that I can give Sharon Dolin's remarkable translations is that the poems, in this impressive sampler of six of Gorga's books, seem reliably adept and effortless, allowing Gorga's verse to dazzle and beguile us in English. There's an air of enchantment to her work ("The bee drew near my lips to dictate / the beginning of a poem…"). With the sheer inventiveness and will of a contemporary Scheherazade, with the flint of her at-the-ready intelligence, Gemma Gorga strikes sparks again and again."

—Cyrus Cassells, author of More Than Watchmen at Daybreak and Still Life with Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas

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