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language: Spanish
country: Venezuela
year: 2021
form: poetry
dates read: 29.12.25
published for the first time in 2021, Lo que trae el relámpago contains two unpublished collections by the groundbreaking Venezuelan trans poet Esdras Parra, one written in the mid-1990s but not published and one left unfinished at her death in 2004.
as with Parra’s other collections, both of Cada noche un camino and El extremado amor are comprised primarily of short, untitled poems — the longest poem in either is perhaps 20 lines; most are around 10-12, and a few at the end of Cada noche un camino are only a single line — that are at times (deceptively) straightforward and at times evasive, elusive. Parra characterized her poetry as an effort to subvert the logics and syntax of ordinary language, and the result is some tasty syntactic structures and enjambments.
the poems return repeatedly to a few core subjects: solitude/loneliness, love (lost or not-quite-realized), regret. but if the overall tone is melancholy, there’s always something more than (just) melancholy at work: “Detienes tus pasos cuando escuchas, sin haberlo / esperado, el sorpresivo latido de tu corazón” [You stop in your tracks when you hear, without / expecting it, the sudden beat of your heart].
the poems in the first section, Cada noche un camino, are perhaps stronger overall, presumably as a result of Parra’s meticulous editing over a long period of time. nonetheless, my favorite individual poem, “¿Será verdad que la desgracia no ha llegado aún?…”, is in the second section, whose tone is overall more hopeful, though still elusive and marked by regrets.
Si recogemos los frutos que nos dio la desdicha
si permitimos que esta ciudad nos aprisione
si desatamos ese cúmulo de ansiedades
huyendo por la oreja del cielo
qué revés tan desolado, qué indomable aflicción
medianamente tibia
nos espera.Pero veneramos a quienes nos hacen burla
y abrimos un hueco en el centro de la mano
aguas arriba y
contra la voluntad de la cerradura
abriremos el cielo.[If we collect the fruits that unhappiness gave us
if we allow this city to imprison us
if we let loose this host of anxieties
fleeing past the ear of the sky
what desolate misfortunate, what unbreakable sorrow
lukewarm
awaits us.But we revere the ones who mock us
and we open a space in the center of the hand
upstream and
against the drive to lock away
we will open the sky.]
really good stuff. if you haven’t read any of Parra’s work, you can get a taster of her poetry in translation by Jamie Berrout here and of her prose (also in translation by Berrout) here; there’s also a translation of her (at the time) collected poetry by Berrout.
moods: hopeful, mysterious, reflective, sad