Gemma Gorga

TRANS. BY SHARON DOLIN

The BoatMan

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’s
baby teeth, that the yellow smell of curry lingers
in 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 memory
of their words, that everything is finally where it should be, 
starting with our bones and ending with butterflies,
with meridians and silences that occupy the exact
celestial latitude someone assigned them, and thus, each
day, the same labor continues from yesterday
to today, crossing the dark waters of night
successfully, and starting again as if nothing had
happened, except for a little time, the clay of seconds.
Until one night when we embark, but it will be another
river and another boatman. And then, tell me, who 
will keep the names of things? Who will save the aroma 
of all we have been, that for us has been? Which look
will preserve the windows, bread, hands, memory,
books? What muck will dare devour so much life?

Gemma Gorga was born in Barcelona in 1968. She has a PhD in Philology from the University of Barcelona, where she teaches Medieval and Renaissance Spanish Literature. She has published seven books of poetry since 1997, most recently Mur (Barcelona: Meteora, 2015) and Viatge al centre (Barcelona: Godall Edicions, 2020).

Sharon Dolin is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Manual for Living (Pittsburgh,  2016) and a prose memoir, Hitchcock Blonde (Terra Nova, 2020). A 2021 recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Translation, her translation of Late to the House of Words: Selected Poems of Gemma Gorga is forthcoming from Saturnalia Books in 2021.