Nada hay como remar de noche
por un río negro y conocido
tan negro que la luna reverbera
sobre el perfil tornasolado de los peces
cruzando el caudal antiguo
mil cuchillos arrojados desde el fondo
por una mano ciega.
En este río domado por represas
las ramas se vuelcan mansas lejos de
la orilla, y besan el agua donde
abrevan las luciérnagas que una vez
pareció que nos seguían. Este río
lo cruzamos juntos una noche, desde
una costa de arena hasta la otra de
espinas.
*
There’s nothing quite like rowing in the dark
along a black, familiar river
so black the moon reverberates
against the gleaming profile of the fish
crossing the ancient course,
a thousand knives flung from the depths
by some blind hand.
Inside this dam-tamed river
boughs jostle gentle far from
shore, kissing the water where
the fireflies, which once had seemed
to follow us, have come to drink. We crossed
this river once, together, from
a bank of sand onto another one of
thorns.
__________________________________
Excerpted from The Law of Conservation by Mariana Spada, translated by Robin Myers. Copyright © 2023. Available from Deep Vellum.
Mariana Spada and Robin Myers
Mariana Spada was born in Entre Ríos, Argentina, in 1979. She studied Literature in Santa Fe, Argentina, and lived in Buenos Aires for about a decade before moving to Barcelona, Spain, where she currently resides. The Law of Conservation is her first book.
Robin Myers is a Mexico City-based poet and Spanish-to-English translator. Robin’s poetry has been selected for the 2022 Best American Poetry anthology and appears in journals such as the Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Annulet Poetry Journal, and Massachusetts Review, among others. Her collections have been published as bilingual English-Spanish editions in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Spain.
