Nightingale
The good nightingale
carries her song in her throat.
It’s me you were discovering. The joy of those sunrises:
that we were our own joy.
She knew how to skip contentedly, like a little tomboy, in the middle of the street.
She knew how to speak, how to be silent, to sleep.
Yes, she was lovely and sweetness, familiar with the hues
of the wind and all of dawn’s colors,
your desire started in me,
like wave upon wave,
I used to leave new words on your tongue,
I was laughter and your need for laughter,
I was the calm.
For the good nightingale
one springtime should
suffice.
Reflection on Roses
In the garden the roses perfect time.
There is no death, Santiago, there are
identical roses, and you.
It’s Christmas again, and they’re selling pine-trees in the streets. Wet with rain,
they smell just like those Castilian pines we went to see once, in another
rain, meaning to create another memory of each other as we were then. There is no more
present
than the one we want to keep extending. Your hand was large and firm, almost hostile,
and yet your fingers curved upward a little, almost lady-like.
Those hands are real, you are real. The rest is like the time that passes
between one rose and the rose that comes next.
I live in a theater, behind a blue curtain. Outside it rains, for instance,
a man who looks somewhat like you pours me wine,
I write discourses full of definitions,
wear a silk sweater you would have liked,
miss my flights for thinking of you. At times it’s hard to live without living. But in the echoing emptiness
your voice is exact.
Through the fiction of language,
we are together, and will be together. Our present, repeated forever,
forever the rose.
Graciela Reyes was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and her book Poemas, a bilingual edition of selected poems, translated by Ruth El Saffar, was published by the Consulate of Argentina in Chicago in 1991. Her other books of poetry include Reflexiones de una mujer sola and Poemas para andar por casa (Buenos Aires, 1982), and Que la quiero ver bailar (1989), which won both the Letras de Oro prize and the Premio Cuidad de Rota, and she also is a renowned scholar of linguistic theory. She retired from her position as Professor of Spanish (Linguistics) at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007.
Jackie K. White earned her PhD in Creative Writing (poetry and translation) from the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC) and was a Professor of English, now Professor Emerita, at Lewis University. She is the author of three chapbooks—Bestiary Charming, Petal Tearing & Variations, and Come Clearing, and her poems and translations have appeared in ACM, Cagibi, Ezra, Hobart, The Los Angeles Review, Spoon River, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Her chapbook of collaborative poems, with Simone Muench, Hex & Howl (2021) and their full-length collection The Under Hum (2024) were published by Black Lawrence Press.
