Liturgia de las horas is part of the author’s personal journey in which she transforms her relationship with violence into a ritual that allows her to be in the world without feeling like a victim. Throughout the work, a triptych is built (pain, pleasure, and desire), in which each part converses with a dimension of existence. Both pain and desire transform the body (whether through violence or through the erotic) into a space of revelation through gestures that the author renders into language. A ceremony in which she consecrates her biography, her flesh, and her thought as material for art. The poetry collection, inspired by the symbolic structure of the canonical hours, establishes Fernández de Sevilla as one of the emerging voices in Spanish-language poetry.
Zenda shares five poems from Liturgia de las horas by Beatriz Fernández de Sevilla.
***
Closure
I step onto this threshold only once:
the morning light attends the ceremony
few decisions tend to take this form of onslaught or knife.
If I am here, it is because you have opened
solemnly
the gates
to cradle my presence,
I have lit the embers, arranged the kneelers,
you have gathered the tubers and fruits from the garden
and the oven remains hospitable, warm.
Not without fear do I caress
the tips of my fingers with your fingertips
laid out as an offering toward me.
I have waited to assist you until the glow of the first seduction fades.
In fact, it is the filaments of resentment, the unease
that occupies part of my blood
the reasons for which I present myself
for we promised each other only love in doubt
and only in doubt is love then.
The grand words we mythologize at the altars
no longer serve us.
Sometimes we will be that mask we detest. From where does the notion
of love originate if not from disappointment or anger, in that slow return, in that creeping walk
after disagreeing about the time
that we can govern in common.
So that my fingertips, your fingertips
together resemble a tarantula but also a swan
a final glance at the old notes, at the chimney of the old factory, with its stork.
No longer the illusion of beginnings,
only this caution, this certainty
that we will fail each other and we will have to rebuild ourselves
non-possession has welded our hands.
You return to the back of the narrow hallway
we haven’t said all the words because we don’t know all the words
in silence, in liturgy, we will come to understand
I cover my hair, I advance my knee.
I cross this threshold only once.
***
Contemporary Art Colloquy
There is a fireplace that gives off a smell of wood
The wood is piled to one side, perfectly
each log to my left glitters
– a philosopher interrupts me and reads –
as if the trunks had come from a factory
what trunks so perfect and what
handsome people at this event.
Contemporary art and Botox are one.
A log falls and the people tremble
of course perfection does not contemplate that a log might fall
there, amid the cheekbones and the suits and the Botox.
In the projector there is an anonymous person from the seventeenth century
that I love
today I feel insecure perhaps that is why I am bothered by the perfection
of art
of the fireplace that doesn’t even smoke
of the bud that created a gorgeous still life in the seventeenth century
of this directionless generation
of this generation that complains
of the other generation that complains
but what can I do, I put on Botox
when do I put on Botox.
For the cost of the monthly Simba’s caregiver I could do it
having a dog is absurd, I want it but it’s absurd.
If I leave Simba at my parents’ house I could get Botox
because, of course, I could also be a man
the men at this event wear ties,
which is cheaper than Botox.
If I were a man I wouldn’t have to think about what to do with Simba.
Today I feel insecure
perhaps genetics will accompany me and I won’t need it:
The Botox.
Or the dog.
Or art.
***
The Lavender
When I lived at home there was always lavender,
not the kind sold tied with a satin ribbon
to decorate a vase
but wild lavender, a dull violet,
that dried in the car’s glove compartment,
hung from the entry mirrors
or appeared in pockets
crumpled and faded.
After twenty minutes on the phone she tells me
she forgot to give me the lavender she had gathered for me.
with the rush of tucking the cheese into the suitcase. She says.
And the white coat,
that you haven’t worn for a year.
It’s nothing, mom
next time you’ll give it to me.
It’s just that lavender is disinfectant, she emphasizes,
I ask if it’s disinfectant like Sanitol,
anticipating a scene of purple flowers in my bags,
on the kitchen table, at the entrance to the house.
She tells me no, but it repels moths.
Undoubtedly it is a priority to repel moths.
More than the silent “I love you” that hides its call?
***
White Silence
Silence first
Observe this place
loaded with promises
this sacred place
that receives you impure yet resolute
the dawn and the dusk tighten your waist
you are wrapped in a sacrament
first of silence
perfectly executed
as if from a cloister ripped open.
It will be the same one that will surge on your wedding day
when you open the window, summoning
a cloudless sky.
You will also find it in the mirror
that looks at you solemnly as you wait
– the zipper open at the back or at the side –
to your mother or friend who search the house
for that urgent pin
already in the afternoon
that shadow under the eyes, the nude palette
Interlude
And like drums and trumpets
that this March afternoon
make the columns of Genoa tremble
the uproar will bloom.
And seized by the cheers, the triumphant glances,
the songs, the revelry,
and the cups that break, enthralled by euphoria
your heart will be a festival
a Palm Sunday
a reel desired and measured
of punched flowers and a wedding banquet
where the easy coexist
the dark and the sacred.
Last Silence
Years later
in the attic, in some bedroom,
looking for that handkerchief you loved so much
your hands will discover the immaculate fabric
of this snow-white silence
that today hangs pearlescent.
And in the empty bedroom
cornets and drums will be heard
***
A Grounding Cable
You sleep
while I seek a poem
to slip into your dream
it won’t be cotton candy
nor popcorn
because they cling to your throat
and I don’t want to leave your dream a mess,
then we would have to clean it all up.
I don’t know about fish either
because in my town for many years
there was only salmon and hake
at the fishmonger’s,
but I’m going to venture placing
a mass of turquoise water
resembling a sea
in your dream.
You choose the landscape so that the sun can shine on your face
and you can dampen your nape and wrists
if you’re hot
and there is a giant fish
such as a humpback whale
or a dolphin
The sky in whatever color you want
but the sea must be calm
since you prefer it slow
yet I do not know your favorite color.
Allow yourself to forget in your distant journey
the silences of others, the rage of others
they do not fit in your dream.
The night will fall and you will move playfully
crabs will dance with you
suddenly in your hands you will hold a drum, you will be
an alchemist of a rhythm previously unknown.
Upon returning from your dream you will have to face
reality.
When elements appear that you do not want
remember the sea, the whale,
the sky, the light, and the drum.