>> Another contemporary poet whose work I've really loved is the Mexican poet Coral Bracho.
The Spanish word for lightning bug is really a pretty word, is luciérnaga
and where I grew up we call them lightning bugs.
And it's just lightning bug, luciérnaga, bug.
No, so we do have firefly.
And so, I ended up translating her book as Firefly under the tongue.
This poem, when you hear it, you'll probably be asking yourself the same questions I was asking
myself when I translated it.
One, is this a carnal poem?
Is it about sex, really?
Or is it a philosophical poem about the reciprocal relation
between subjectivity and the world?
Or is it a concert, a sound pattern, stressing long os and us, which are basically love sounds?
Or is it an account of synesthetic perception?
Should lengua, in the title, be translated as language or tongue?
What happens to those pronominal guides, is what I had.
What happens with them pronouns, I and you, after the first line.
So let me read you a little bit of it in Spanish because in translating her it's the sound
that I'm really anxious to recover in some way in English.
Una luciérnaga bajo la lengua.
Te amo desde el sabor inquieto de la fermentación,
en la pulpa festiva, insectos frescos, azules.
En el zumo reciente vidriado y dúctil.
Grito que destila la luz por las grietas frutales,
bajo el agua musgosa que se adhiere a las sombras, las papilas, las grutas,
las tintas herbáceas, instilantes, desde el tacto azorado,
brillo que resuma agridulce de los goces falaces,
de los juegos hendidos por la palpitación.
I love you from the sharp tang of fermentation in the blissful pulp, newborn insects, blue,
in the unsullied juice, glazed and ductile, a cry that distills the light through the fissures
in fruit trees, under the mossy water clinging to the shadows, the papilla, the grottos,
an herbaceous dies instilled from flustered touch, luster, oozing bittersweet
from feracious pleasures, from play splayed impulses, hinge, wrapped in the night's aura
in violaceous clamor, refined the child with a softened root of his tongue,
expectant touches from that smooth unsustainable lubricity,
a sensitive lily folding into the rocks.
If it senses the stigma, the ardor of light, the substance, the aura is fine and vibrant,
in the ecstatic pedal distended jewel pulsing half-open, utter, the acid juice, bland ice,
the salt marsh, the delicate sap, kabbalah, the nectar of the firefly.
I still, it's like--
It kind of wraps everything up.