The Bread of Every Shadow
El pan de cada sombra
Jeannette Lozano Clariond
Translated by Lawrence Schimel
I
This tendency,
this grave tendency of losing oneself every time threads,
lance-shaped leaves,
the tenuous light
of faces
come undone
and bodies blur
like in an old photograph.
The ranch house, the bread,
everything hides its name beneath the shadow.
Seven dips in the road before entering the city
…..still spread their misty stain.
II
Ruins, walnut trees, sycamores crumbling in my hands
and between traces
the memory of a place.
Dust lies thick,
mountain ranges, nocturnal the canyon
where the white geese of Babícora
scatter the ashes you left buried in the Chuviscar,
in that distance we call close indifference,
its multiples adding themselves to the trajectory of your days.
The echo of your laments between walls,
the loneliness that clung to your death,
myth of nights and distance,
the certainty of what is not.
III
The dawn burns
illuminating the city in ruins,
the broad-vaulted corridor,
the earthen paths,
the marshy oor of the cavern:
and you search within your body
that lost
body
disintegrating.
*These poems belong to the book Desert Memory (Formite, 2021).
Jeannette L. Clariond is a Mexican poet and translator. Her books include Mujer dando la espalda, Desierta memoria (winner of the Efraín Huerta National Poetry Prize), Todo antes de la noche (winner of the Gonzalo Rojas National Poetry Prize), Leve sangre (finalist for the Cope Prize in Peru), and Ante un cuerpo desnudo (winner of the second San Juan de la Cruz International Poetry Prize), among others. She was just recognized with the Enriqueta Ochoa Award 2020. Her Twitter is @JLClariond
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