The contemplation of a crew of bricklayers at work by the sea inspires the title of this book. In the apparent chaos of a construction project, the author discovers an unexpected harmony, a collective order that reminds him of the movement of the waves. Two worlds seemingly different that share the same creative force.
In Zenda we publish five poems fromCimbra (Visor), by Fabio Morábito.
***
WHAT I WRITE
What I write,
before it leaves the clay for paper,
I etched in clay,
my poems are cuneiform,
my poetry is Mesopotamian,
there is little room on the tablet
and I cannot afford the luxury
of a verse that does not fill the entire line
or of a blank space,
each tablet is subjected to firing,
and it is the fire, not the reader,
the judge of what I write,
I write cuneiformly,
I cannot permit myself to wander off the paths,
I come from a writing of tillage
where everything, before it is verse, is furrow.
LIKE A STEM WITH LEAVES THAT SITS IN A GLASS OF WATER TO GROW ROOTS
Like a stem with leaves that sits
in a glass of water so that roots appear
before transplanting to a pot,
I am a resident of this country. For fifty years
I have lived here with my stem
and my leaves, waiting to leave my glass
of water to sink in with roots like everyone.
I wonder what for, if I will never
cease to be the one who resides, not the native,
I do not have the gift of wandering among branches,
my roots proliferate in the water,
they extend into the liquid and there
they become subtle as veins, incapable
of wood, of the thickness that breaks the earth.
A SAND CASTLE
A sand castle
is for the surf,
and if the waves do not reach it,
a trench is dug to guide the tide
and one gazes with delight at the cataclysm
of its walls.
I have taken care
to shape mine into an amorphous mass
that imitates the destruction of water,
so that when the sea reaches it,
it will pass by on seeing
that I have learned nothing clear from the sand.
WE KNOW WHERE EVEREST ENDS
We know where Everest ends,
but we do not know where it begins,
in which step you take, on which rock
you can say you are on Everest,
that you have left behind the mountain chain
and entered the solitude of Everest.
Everest is always ahead of you,
it retreats toward the summit
and the retreat lasts as long as the mountain lasts.
How can you scale Everest if it recedes with every step?
How will you descend from Everest if you never managed to climb it?
Everest will not acknowledge your steps
when you begin the descent,
and you will feel unfamiliar on every stone
and on every footprint you left while climbing
and as you descend it will descend behind you
reclaiming the mountain you thought you had seized.
TOTO EVERYTHING SANCHO PANZA SAID
Everything Sancho Panza said
is in the Quixote.
A single book was enough
to say what he wanted to say.
But one can search for Sancho
between the lines in other books
and in other centuries.
Searching for Sancho
justifies books,
it justifies Don Quixote.
Author: Fabio Morábito. Title: Cimbra. Publisher: Visor. Sales: Todos tus libros.
BIO
Fabio Morábito, though born in Alexandria in 1955 to Italian parents, has written all his work in Spanish and has earned the highest literary awards.