Translations by Vanessa Pérez-Rosario
Ella lo declaró
pero nadie le creía
lo dijo muy pronto y balbuceando/confundiéndose en racismos
denunciando el de las islas
practicando el racismo contra los negros del Norte.
Demasiado pronto dijo
“soy la grifa negra”
como los hipógrifos violentos que corrían cadenas con el viento.
Pero otras voces gritaron “ensoñación”
le administraron una buena dosis de morfina
mientras ella huía a Cuba, a Washington,
a Nueva York
mientras ella moriá en la cicatriz que era su canto
Todo el mundo creyó que ella moría de amor
pero era de otra índole su enfermedad
se le coló en su canto
fue llenándole de ayes y de espíritus el hígado, los lamentos.
Los Fon dicen que las palabras nacen del hígado
los Yoruba que la alegría es un dulzor que se empieza en el vientre.
Desde allí explotó Julia hecha un hedor
la primera en estas islas en apalabrarnos.
Todos pensaron que sí, que se moría de amor
porque era demasiado ella, demasiado mujer que sigue las rutas de su cuerpo
para ser la esposa del candidato presidencial de la isla de al lado.
Pero era de otra índole su amor, perdón, su muerte
era demasiado oscura
y demasiado evidente aunque la pintaran con amapolas en el pelo crespo
y una mano posada en su mejilla.
Demasiado ella la negra confundida y de otras sendas,
las sendas de su piel, el cuerpo expuesto de su desamparo.
La apócrifa
La hipógrifa en cadenas con el viento.
Julia
She declared it
but no one believed her
words spoken too soon and babbling/confusing racisms
denouncing it on the islands
practicing racism against Blacks of the North.
Too soon she said
"I am the black grifa"
like the violent hypogriffs running chains with the wind.
But other voices screamed "reverie"
they gave her a good dose of morphine
while she fled to Cuba, to Washington,
to New York
while she was dying in the wound of her song
The world believed she was dying of love
but her illness was of another kind
it slipped into her song
her liver filled with woes and haunts her laments.
The Fon say words are born from the liver
The Yoruba say joy is a sweetness that begins in the womb.
Birthed from this place Julia made a stench
the first wordsmith in these islands to speak our truth.
Everyone believed it, that she was dying of love
because she was too much herself, too much a woman who follows the routes of her own body
to be the wife of the presidential candidate from the island next door.
But her love, forgive me, her death was of another kind
it was too dark
and too obvious even though they painted her with poppies in her coarse hair
and a hand resting on her cheek.
She was too much this black woman, confused and of other paths,
the paths of her skin, the exposed body of her despair.
The apocrypha
The hippogriff in chains with the wind.
Contributor Notes
Mayra Santos-Febres is an award-winning novelist and poet. She is professor at the University of Puerto Rico. She obtained, among other awards, the Letras de Oro and the Juan Rulfo, both in the short story genre. She is the recipient of a John S. Simon Guggenheim scholarship (2017) and the Rockefeller Bellagio Center Residency in 2018. She is the author of the poetry books Anamú y manigua (1990), The escaped order (1991), Boat People (1994), Tercer Mundo Lecciones de resignation (2014-20), Huracanada (2018). She also published the novels Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2001), Cualquier miércoles soy tuya (2002), Fe en disfraz, Nuestra Señora de la noche and La amante de Gardel and the collections of essays entitled Tratado de Medicina Natural para Hombres Melancólicos and Sobre piel y papel.
Vanessa Pérez-Rosario is a translator and professor of English at Queens College, City University of New York where she teaches U.S. Latinx and Caribbean literatures and cultures. Her translations have appeared in The Nation and sx salon. She translated Boat People by Mayra Santos Febres (Cardboard House Press 2021). She is the author of Becoming Julia de Burgos: The Making of a Puerto Rican Icon (University of Illinois Press 2014) which will be published in a Spanish edition, Julia de Burgos: la creación de un ícono puertorriqueño (University of Illinois Press 2021). She is currently editing a bilingual anthology of Julia de Burgos’ collected writings. She is editor of Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration: Narratives of Displacement (Palgrave 2010), and managing editor of Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.
