In 1977, I began the work of translating
the poetry of Claribel Alegria, and I
started to do this with the help of a dictionary
and my studying of Spanish.
And I found out that I couldn't do the translations because I
did not understand the sensibility of the work,
because these were poems about contemporary human condition
in Latin America.
So I went to Spain and spent the summer living
with the poet in the village of Deya on the island of Mallorca,
off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean.
And there are two kinds of life on this island,
and one is the international jetset,
and the other is the circle of Latin American exiles
who come to Claribel's house to stay
or rest or stopover on their way to some other country.
And I watched her all summer, and the kind of despair
that she had being so far away and unable to make contact.
So this is a poem in tribute to her and that summer.
It's a letter of admiration to a Salvadoran woman poet
20 years older than myself.
You will hear Miguel Asturias and Pablo Neruda.
You will also hear mention of Jose Marti, who
is the great Cuban poet of the beginning of this century.
And the name of the book that Claribel wrote,
Ashes of Izalco, this was the work
which forced her to go into exile when she was young.
"The Island," for Claribel Alegria.
In Deya, when the mist rises out of the rocks,
it comes so close to her hand she could tear it
to pieces like bread.
She holds her drink and motions with one hand
to describe it, what she would do
with so many baskets of bread.
Mi prieta, Asturias called her.
My dark little one.
Neruda used the word negrita, and it is true.
Her eyes, her hair, both violent, as black
has certain mornings have been for the last 14 years.
She wears a white cotton dress.
Tiny mirrors have been stitched to it.
When I look for myself in her, I see the same face
over and over.
I have the fatty eyelids of a Slavic factory girl,
the pale hair of mixed blood.
Although Jose Marti has said we have
lived our lives in the heart of the beast,
I have never heard it pounding.
When I have seen an animal, I have never reached for a knife.
It is like Americans to say it is only a bear
looking for something to eat in the garbage,
but we are not unalike.
When we look at someone, we are seeing someone else.
When we listen, we hear something
taking place in the past.
When I talked to her, I know what I will
be saying 20 years from now.
Last summer, she returned to Salvador again.
It had been 10 years since Ashes of Izalco
was burned in a public place, 10 years without bushes of coffee,
since her eyes crossed the finca like black scattering birds.
It was simple.
She was there to embrace her mother.
As she walked through her village, the sight of her
opened its windows.
It was simple.
She had come to flesh out the memory of a poet whose body was
never found.
Had it changed?
It was different.
In Salvador, nothing ever is changed.
Deya, a cluster of the teeth, the bones
of the world greener than Corsica.
In English, you have no word for this.
I can't help you.
I am safe here.
I have everything I could want.
In the morning, I watched the peak of the Teix knife
into the clouds.
To my country, I ship poetry instead of bread.
So I cut through nothing.
I give nothing, so you see I have nothing
according to myself.
Deya has seven different shawls of wind
the sky holds them out to her, helps her into them.
I am xaloc, a wind from the southwest, as far away
as my country, and there is nothing
to help me in or out of it.
Carolina, do you know how long it takes
any one voice to reach another?
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]