Las Desaparecidas canadienses: El Día Internacional de la Mujer 2014 / International Women’s Day 2014

Posted: March 8, 2014 | Author: Zócalo Poets | Filed under: Anna Marie Sewell, English, Spanish, ZP Translator: Alexander Best | Comments Off on Las Desaparecidas canadienses: El Día Internacional de la Mujer 2014 / International Women’s Day 2014

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Anna Marie Sewell

“Lavando el Mundo”

.

En la oscuridad al fin de este año,

hay tanto amontanado contra la luz entre nosotros,

contra las “apuestas”,

a pesar de las lágrimas, en el viento amargo de esta estación;

Escucha el sueño en que las abuelas se mantienen

– hombro con hombro –

al borde de una colina,

inclinándose al unísono, agarrando una cosa – juntas.

Pregúntales, en su mundo de sueños: ¿Porqué lloran ustedes?

Y te mostraron sus chales en muchos colores, extenderán sus alas,

te barrerán dentro de ellas para enseñarte como

– una vez, cada año –

cuando hace el tiempo más oscuro,

lavamos el mundo entero durante solamente un día.

Un día para llorar.

.

De un alba al próximo:

recordando a los caídos,

lamentando a los destrozados,

gimiendo por nuestros arrepentimientos.

El amor perdido, las palabras injustas y acciones malas;

momentos desequilibrados…

y todas las rajaduras entre corazón y corazón,

entre padre y criatura,

entre el amante y su querida amiga,

entre nación y nación,

animal – y animal del otro tipo.

.

Por lo que escogemos y lo que descuidamos,

por lo que deseamos que habíamos sabido,

por cada mano soltado / cada lengua desenfrenada,

un susurro quedándose corto y inaúdito;

el pan lejos del hambre;

la disculpa;

el desconcierto;

el camino fracturado.

.

Estas cosas que recogemos en esta cobija

– pardo, carmelito, canela –

Lavamos el Mundo, y entre nosotros

agarramos la cobija, llenándola con lágrimas.

Y cuando hemos llorado

– de un alba al próximo –

pues subiremos y bailaremos,

acunando un océano de tinieblas amargas que nos cura.

.

Déjales poner tus manos sobre la verdad de una belleza perdida

– intensa pero blanda como musgo –

y esta cobija lleno de las lágrimas del polvo y de los moribundos

se vuelve

– al momento que llega la luz del amanecer –

la promesa lavada y limpia por nuestra pena.

No es – tanto – la redención

sino la lógica de las estaciones que

clama por la justicia, para recuperar el ritmo.

Algun día, los legisladores tendrán que salir de sus salones de ecos, y

juntarse con la danza de la abuela,

para llevarla y llorarla – limpiada – hasta que

la luz pasa a través de sus cuerpos y

traduce a un arco de iris a lo largo de la tierra.

Ella me dice éso – y sus ojos están rojos.

Y encoge los hombros.

Y camina arduamente por el manto profundo de nieve

que cubre este resto de un otro año

esperando.

.

Versión de Alexander Best

.     .     .

Anna Marie Sewell

“Washing the World”

.

In the dark at this end of the year,

so much stacked up against the light

between us, against the odds,

despite the tears, in this season’s bitter wind,

listen to a dream

in which grandmothers stand

shoulder to shoulder, on the rim of a hill,

they bend as one, and grasp one thing together.

Ask them, in the dream world, why

do they cry?

And they will show you in reply:

their shawls of many colours, spread these wings,

sweep you in and teach you how

once a year, in the dark of the year,

we wash the whole world in a day.

For one day, we cry.

.

From one dawn to the next:

remembering the fallen

mourning for the broken

wailing for regrets.

Love lost, wrong words, wrong actions,

unbalanced moments and all the cracks

between heart and heart, parent and child,

lover and beloved friend, nation and nation,

creature, and creature of another kind.

.

For what we choose and what we neglect to choose,

for what we wish we’d known,

for each hand unclasped,

the tongue unbridled,

one whisper falling short of heard,

the bread far from the hunger,

the apology,

the confusion,

the broken road.

.

These things we gather in this blanket,

brown and sand and beige,

we wash the world, between us

we hold this blanket, fill it with our tears,

and when we have cried

from one dawn to the next,

then we will rise, and we dance

cradling this ocean, bitter, healing, dark.

Let them lay your hands upon the truth of beauty lost,

heavy, soft as moss,

this blanket full of tears and dust and dying

becomes, as the light is returning,

the promise,

washed clean

by our sorrow.

Not so much redemption

as the logic of seasons

calls for justice, to restore the rhythm

one day, the lawmakers must exit

their echoing halls, fall in

with the grandmother’s

dancing,

carrying it,

cry it clean,

until light through their bodies

translates to rainbows strung over the land.

She tells me that – her eyes all red.

And shrugs.

And trudges off through the deep

snow blanket that covers

this end of another year

waiting.

.     .     .

Anna Marie Sewell is Ojibway, and Mi’kmaw from Listuguj Mi’kmaw First Nation in Québec – Polish, too! She is the author of Fifth World Drum (Frontenac House, 2009) and was Edmonton’s 4th Poet Laureate (2011-2013). She has other work as well – as part of The Learning Centre Literacy Association at http://prairiepomes.com/tag/anna-marie-sewell/.

Sewell will be opening for Joy Harjo at the Edmonton Poetry Festival – April 20th, 2014.

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As with Las Mujeres de Juarez in México, so too in Canada, Native Women who are poor and therefore invisible become “Las Desaparecidas canadienses” (The Vanished Canadian Women). They are our oh-so-progressive country’s Open-Secret Shame. Women from small towns and Reserves, faceless in big Canadian cities; the roll call of missing or dead along British Columbia’s “Highway of Tears”…There are eight hundred Native and Inuk women who have gone missing – or have been found murdered – often without resolution of the crime – in the last two decades in Canada. This has occurred in a nation with statistically low murder rates nationally.  The pattern is a systemic one; the disappearance of these women and girls is not important enough in Canadian society for a concerted effort at crime-solving; their lives are expendable because they are not “mainstream”.  With all due respect to her untimely end, they are no Jane Creba.

Jorge Antonio Vallejos, a.k.a. Black Coffee Poet, has been concerned with just such human-rights issues for several years now. For a committed perspective about this national tragedy – violence against women – visit Vallejos’ site: http://blackcoffeepoet.com/.

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