Celia
but you are already a forest.
while your eyes are filled with the sea,
while everyone welcomes you as in a station,
where one is always waiting,
while all is nascence and wonder,
maps that give no assurance as to a place to go.
sadness unperceived,
you are pure time,
the fragrance of wood and silence,
questions without shadows
and the humble love of one who has lost everything.
the waves, the ocean,
your bird-like laughter.
your little feet, as little
is the trace of snow that you have left behind
in those January moments.
What will your life be like when it grows in your hands
with the fragility of good news,
like a fish that slips away to return to the river.
with the same surprise as a loved one,
you will feel the breeze that has touched the trees
with its ancient weariness.
when it lights up a memory. . .
there are no shadows or knives,
I can see the comets
streaking through the night
like a boat that sets sail and enters into the fog.
a garden from the past you won’t return to,
a shore that you search for while fearing its ghosts.
a light behind a window
when darkness
occupies every niche and every continent.
the train searches for arms
that are on the other side of time.
Meanwhile, I think of a way to tell you
that dreams are part of us
like a pier is a voyage.
and there are dolphins and lakes and mountains,
and impossible loves
that will be called Celia.
and an empty house will fill with people,
everyone will sit down at the table.
it was happiness that planted this sorrow,
it was happiness the same as a storm
above an empty glass.
and all the cherries have fallen into the mud,
and seagulls cry out over
the intolerable abandonment of an injured woman
who feels that to advance is to be more alone . . .
remember the manner in which rain
turns into a tree
and the way that waves
are the water’s end and the sea’s beginning.
but you are already a forest that a river runs through.
as to what the words mean.
You can find them
inside of a dictionary:
adverbs, nouns, and pronouns,
with their etymology,
history of the language,
history of the men who wrote
the final word on stone,
or perhaps on wood,
it could be: Jew.
mean
on the Cross
or on the knees
of a few women
who are waiting for the end
because the end is all that’s left
to wait for
because their hearts
know failure and the words,
the books that contain the words,
old meanings, so old
that they arouse fear and warn of disaster
such as the word summoned to become flesh
because in the beginning there was always the word.
about their meanings
that were barely intuited:
head bowed praying in a school
of nuns of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus with a skirt
that must cover the knees well
because only a few fingers beyond
you will be able to touch the fruit,
the apple,
you who were the origin of sin.
That innocent girl has already learned
that to be a woman is to be temptation,
the voice of a serpent,
whoever is free of sin
and shout out your name now
without the word virgin,
with her legs crossed,
all the time watching out for the men,
because their stares are not lechery,
it is your unsullied, immaculate body
of a woman,
of a girl
born to be a wife and mother,
the voice of the serpent redeemed
perpetuating a name and a bloodline.
by the words,
to what point their importance is elevated:
Listen well, don’t forget
the word guilty,
the word condemnation,
or the word whore, divorced
that tries to create its life
there where traditions and lips reside
that lie and pray
in the same way.
whoever is free from sin may he cast the first
word
Whore
Tramp
beside your mother,
who purges herself on her knees every Sunday
before the altar,
without remorse,
after seeing how the men at her side
cast the words against you
until turning you into the name
for the word dead.
that leaves its tracks in the snow.
Stealthy and hungry,
it passes through a city
that looked confidently toward the future.
Today they have lowered all the blinds.
It’s late,
I try not to make a sound
and to let my poems progress as the days go by
so that the wolf might choose
a path that leads somewhere else,
a weaker prey.
But in this poem awaits a wolf
that has come to seek me out.
Even though I try to be still and not make a sound
a memory leaps through my words
that wrenches a howl out of me and devours me.
*Fernando Valverde
(Granada, Spain, 1980) has been voted the most relevant Spanish-language poet
born since 1970 by nearly two hundred critics and researchers from more than
one hundred international universities (Harvard, Oxford, Columbia, Princeton,
Bologna, Salamanca, UNAM and the Sorbonne). His books have been published
internationally in over twenty countries and translated into several languages.
His complete poetry was collected in a single volume by the prestigious
publisher Visor in 2025. For his collaboration in a work of fusion between
poetry and flamenco he was nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2014. He teach
poetry the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, EEUU).
(Photograph by Hana Galal)