Eight Poems by Salvador Espriu
Translated from the Catalan by Andrew Kaufman and Antonio Cortijo Ocaña
It Will Rain
It will rain. Grandma Muntala
puts the sun away in a cupboard
of bad weather, among the manila lace
stitched by small Sineran fingers.
Some bird would like
to pierce the dense
prison walls of light. I contemplate
the serene cypress trees in the vast
garden of my silence.
Dolphins pass by in the far reaches
of this ancient sea.
Hyacinths
Just to sense, to know the common name
for each thing, the simple name,
would be like April's gentle caress over the fresh leaves,
while the hyacinths disappear
in the fading light of afternoon rain.
The bright moment of the blossom,
fully preserved, reflected the ultimate
beauty of a flower within my eyes.
Then, in the air, barely a fragile memory
beyond the deep green of the grass,
wet with this light rain.
Without Name or Symbol
Without name or symbol,
beside the cypress trees,
below a handful of dusty sand
hardened by rain.
Oh, that the storm might scatter
the ashes over the boats,
and the deep furrows
and the light of Sinera.
The brightness of April and of this homeland
that is dying with me as I watch
the years pass by: the journey
through slow dusk.
My Eyes Can Do No More
My eyes can do no more
than contemplate lost days
and suns. How I hear now
the rattling wheels of old horse carts
on Sinera’s dry riverbeds.
Memories of sea scents
bring back clear summers keeping watch
over the waves. The rose
I plucked lingers in my hand.
And on my lips, wind, fire, words
now turned to ashes.
Flights of Remembered Rain
Flights of remembered rain
sharpened the agony
of these flowers, dying
in fragile harmony
with the afternoon and water.
How silent the sea! From on high
wait daggers of triumph, fate, and kingdom.
The cypress trees hold
the brightness of a sky that wept
in momentary mirrors.
Hawthorn and Holly
Hawthorn and holly,
hidden snow, the thin air
of the north wind.
Winter sea: weak sun
on empty beaches.
Spiders have Spun Palaces
Spiders have spun
palaces for kings,
rooms that imprison
winter’s footsteps.
Sinera’s boats
no longer leave port
because the pathways of the sea
are broken.
The sun cannot help
blind eyes see festive damasks
spread over ice.
There is no sound
of cowbells on the dry riverbeds.
I make my way between long rows
of cypress trees.
Marshes
Cold, slow
chiming of bells
spreads across the marshes.
Mists and crickets now reign
over all the pathways of evening.
Plourà
Plourà. L’àvia Muntala
desa el sol a l’armari
del mal temps, entre puntes
de mantellina fetes
per ditets de Sinera.
Algun ocell voldria
penetrar les difícils
presons de llum. Contemplo
serens xiprers a l’ample
jardí del meu silenci.
Passen dofins pels límits
d’aquesta mar antiga.
Els Jacints
Sentir només, saber de cada cosa
el nom senzill, el simple nom, carícia
com de l'abril damunt les noves fulles,
mentre la llum de pluja de la tarda
s'allunya a poc a poc amb els jacints.
Clar moment de la flor, emmirallada,
molt guardada, darrera
bellesa d'unes flors dintre els meus ulls.
Després, per l'aire, a penes
fràgil record, enllà del verd intens
d'herba que mulla aquesta lenta pluja.
Sense cap nom ni símbol
Sense cap nom ni símbol,
ran dels xiprers, dessota
un poc de pols sorrenca,
endurida de pluges.
O que l’oratge escampi
la cendra per les barques
i els solcs dibuixadíssims
i la llum de Sinera.
Claror d’abril, de pàtria
que mor amb mi, quan miro
els anys i el pas: viatge
al llarg de lents crepuscles.
Els meus ulls ja no saben
Els meus ulls ja no saben
sinó contemplar dies
i sols perduts. Com sento
rodar velles tartanes
pels rials de Sinera!
Al meu record arriben
olors de mar vetllada
per clars estius. Perdura
en els meus dits la rosa
que vaig collir. I als llavis,
oratge, foc, paraules
esdevingudes cendra.
Vol de records de pluja
Vol de records de pluja
aguditzà el suplici
d’aquestes flors que moren
al fràgil pas harmònic
de la tarda i de l’aigua.
Com calla el mar! Enlaire,
triomf, destí, reialme,
escomesa de puntes.
Els xiprers recollien
claror de cel plorada
en miralls momentanis.
Arços i grèvol
Arços i grèvol,
oculta neu, prim aire
de tramuntana.
Hivern del mar: sol fràgil
damunt platges desertes.
Les aranyes filaven
Les aranyes filaven
palaus de rei,
estances que empresonen
passos d’hivern.
Les barques de Sinera
no surten més,
perquè els camins de l’aigua
són fets malbé.
El sol no pot estendre,
per als ulls cecs,
domassos de les festes
damunt el gel.
Als rials ja no sona
cap cascavell.
Avanço per rengleres
de xiprers.
Per la maresma
Per la maresma
s’estén un fred, lentíssim
toc de campanes.
Boires i grills dominen
tots els camins del vespre.
Translators’ Note
Salvador Espriu (1913-1985) was described by Harold Bloom as having been “deserving of a Nobel Prize” and as “an extraordinary poet by any international standard.” Although Bloom, who read Catalan, is the only American critic we know of who discussed Espriu, at least four European critics describe his work as equal to that of the great twentieth-century modernist poets. Despite remaining all but unavailable and unknown this side of Catalonia and Spain due to the obscurity of the Catalan in which he wrote, Espriu’s poetry is the subject of two full-length critical studies in English. A book by Didac Llorens Cupedo titled T. S. Eliot & Salvador Espriu: Converging Poetic Imaginations, is based on the stated premise that the two are equally accomplished poets. A second book, by D. Gareth Walters, describes Espriu’s treatment of place as comparable in its power of evocation to that of Frost’s rural New England, and Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County.
Espriu maintains the stature of a national poet in Catalonia forty years after his death. He wrote nine books of poetry, six novels, along with two plays that have been produced, and won every major award for which Catalan poets were eligible during his lifetime. Writing in the wake of Franco's subjugation of Catalonia and although fully bilingual in Catalan and Spanish, Espriu chose to write in Catalan, despite knowing this would significantly curtail the size of his potential readership.
Nature serves two interrelated roles in his poetry, functioning at different times as a place of inner retreat or self-exile, and as a lost paradise. The movement and tensions between these elements, though often subtle, form the driving force of his poems. This is true throughout his work but nowhere more so than in his early book, Sinera Cemetery, from which all eight poems in this selection have been taken.
Sinera is a near-palindrome of Arenys (de Mar), a picturesque village overlooking the Mediterranean, twenty-seven miles northeast of Barcelona. It has a long history of seafaring and fishing traditions and is distinguished by extensive beaches backed by vineyard and cypress-covered hills that slope to the sea. Having spent large portions of his childhood with his family in their ancestral home here, Espriu mythologizes Sinera / Arenys, with particular attention to its natural features, along with its cemetery, and, more obliquely, brief allusions to the impact of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, during which these poems were written. As he makes Sinera the locus of his work he transforms it into a synecdoche for Catalonia itself.
In the poem that begins, “My eyes can do no more,” he writes of “clear summers keeping watch / over the waves,” and “The rose / I plucked lingers in my hand. / And on my lips, wind, fire.” But these images of nature into which he would retreat by way of memory, along with “memories of sea scents” and of “the rattling wheels of old horse carts” quickly become a lost paradise, “now turned to ashes,” as “my eyes can do no more / than contemplate lost days / and suns.” In a somewhat different way, the tension and interrelationship between nature as a place of inner refuge and the evanescence of its beauty underlie the poem, “Hyacinths.” “The bright moment of the blossom / fully preserved, reflected the ultimate / beauty of a flower within my eyes.” Yet this is no sooner said than the actual flower becomes “barely a fragile memory / beyond the deep green of the grass.” Here and throughout, his awareness of himself gazing at nature heightens what is at stake for him in the tension between the fleeting essence of the natural world into which he would retreat, and the extent to which the paradisal world is irrevocably lost.
When Espriu writes, as he does in the poem that begins with “Spiders have spun / palaces for kings,” that “Sinera's boats / no longer leave port / because the pathways of the sea / are broken,” his Catalan readers recognize this at once as a reference to the plight of their homeland, while in the book's broader context the lines resonate with the biblical sense of a lost or despoiled paradise. Likewise elegiac in tone are the “dry riverbeds” in this poem, where “there is no sound / of cowbells.” In the two last lines, Espriu writes, “I make my way between long rows / of cypress trees.” This can mark his speaker’s retreat into a place of inner exile within nature, albeit one that is equivocal, as cypress trees in his work represent not only renewal but also death, since they are conspicuous features of cemeteries.
In sum, nature as a place of internal refuge or self-exile is ephemeral and fleeting for Espriu. What endures is his vision of a lost paradise whose essence is rooted in the natural features of Sinera / Arenys. For him as for Proust, it turns out that the only enduring paradise is a paradise lost.
Andrew Kaufman’s books include The Cinnamon Bay Sonnets, winner of the Center for Book Arts manuscript competition, Earth’s Ends, winner of the Pearl Poetry Award, Both Sides of the Niger (Spuyten Duyvil Press), The Complete Cinnamon Bay Sonnets (Rain Mountain Press), and The Rwanda Poems: Voices and Visions from the Genocide (New York Quarterly Books). His awards include a grant from National Endowment for the Arts.
Antonio Cortijo Ocaña, a professor of classical, medieval and Early Modern Hispanic Literatures and Cultures at the University of California, is the founding director of the Center for Catalan Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of over fifty monographs and editions on Catalan and Spanish literature and history and has translated numerous Catalan classics into English. His translation of Ramon Llull's A Contemporary Life was awarded the 2017 Francesco Saverio Nitti Award (Naples). He is a member of the Royal Academy of Good Letters (Barcelona).
Translations from this project have appeared or been scheduled to appear in a number of magazines and journals including Commonweal, World Literature Today, Another Chicago Magazine, Today's American Catholic, On the Seawall, and The North Dakota Quarterly. Kaufman and Cortijo’s translation of three of Espriu’s early books of poetry, Sinera Cemetery, The Hours, and Mrs. Death, is due out as a single volume from Rain Mountain Press in June 2025.
Published January 15 2025