THE WORDS
There is sadness behind
words, slow carts
in line that carry
your rubble, the tedium
of a Sunday afternoon,
fear of damage. Books and friends,
the lips of things,
are closed to you. Malevolent
apprentices of gray men
want you for difficult
returns to God. You try
to hide deep in your winter,
where you can with your many memories
burn the last fire. Afterwards you’ll look
with eyes now empty and think
you’ll sleep. But still,
blindly, appear
a porcelain wound,
nocturnal silk, and you break,
from deep waters,
voices of the forgotten, the intact
old glass of words.
Author and Translator Bios
Salvador Espriu (1913–1985) is an icon of Catalan culture. He was the author of a number of plays and narratives but was especially acclaimed for his imposing opus of poetry. During the oppressive regime under Franco, he became a spokesman for the students and other intellectuals who opposed Franco’s persecution of the Catalan language and culture. In addition to earning some of the most prestigious awards in his native Catalonia, including the Gold Medal of the Generalitat de Catalunya in 1980, Espriu’s work has been recognized internationally, most notably with the Montaigne Prize from the Universität of Tübingen in 1972. Furthermore, he was a Nobel candidate in 1971 and 1983, with no less an advocate than Harold Bloom.
Sonia Alland has published works by the French writer, Marie Bronsard: The Hermitage (Northwestern University, 2001) and The Legend (Seagull Books, 2013), as well as two volumes of poetry by Salah Al Hamdani: Baghdad, Mon Amour (Curbstone Press, 2008) and Baghdad, Adieu (Seagull Books, 2018). Publications from the Catalan are: Portbou: a Catalan Memoir by Maria Mercè Roca (Pinyon Publishing 2020) and works by the Catalan poets, Narcis Comadira and Feliu Fermosa. Her translations of their poems appear in a special Catalan issue of Metamorphoses published in 2024. She has also translated the poet, Salvador Espriu, in collaboration with Richard Jeffrey Newman, and co-translated one of Salvador Espriu’s plays, Antigone, into French.
Richard Jeffrey Newman has published three books of poetry, T’shuvah (Fernwood Press 2023), Words for What Those Men Have Done (Guernica Editions 2017) and The Silence of Men (CavanKerry Press 2006), as well as a chapbook, For My Son, A Kind of Prayer (Ghostbird Press 2016). In addition, he has co-translated three books of classical Persian poetry, most recently The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Junction Press 2011). Newman is on the executive board of Newtown Literary, a Queens-based literary non-profit, and he curates the First Tuesdays reading series in Jackson Heights, NY. He is Professor of English at Nassau Community College. His website is www.richardjnewman.com.
© Salvador Espriu. Translation © by Sonia Alland and Richard Jeffrey Newman. All rights reserved.
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