Four Poems by Manuel Becerra

Translated from the Spanish by Kristin Dykstra

Small-time papers

Three horses are running along Insurgentes Avenue in Mexico City. Their reason and their origin are unknown. On the asphalt their hooves suggest an ice skater’s boots; sometimes they slip, but they get back into the race quickly. The horse is returned to speed. The police initiate pursuit. An expectant public shoots photos and shares them swiftly, following the chase on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. The horses do not respect traffic lights, they turn among the streets. But above all, they stay together. One horse under the light of the sun is two. All three and their shadows are legion. Humanity, which interrupts its workday, is not prepared for subversion by horses but doesn’t know that. The next day, notes appear in a couple of small-time newspapers. The incident moves a publicist to design a three-headed figure on a medal, which he will place, in the near future, around the neck of one of the most renowned wines from the south. Their story will be inscribed on the back label.

Diarios de baja monta

Tres caballos están corriendo por la avenida Insurgentes de la Ciudad de México. Se desconoce el motivo y su procedencia. Sus pezuñas contra el asfalto tienen el efecto de la zapatilla de la patinadora de hielo; algunas veces caen, pero se incorporan pronto a la carrera. El caballo es devuelto a la velocidad. La policía inicia la caza. El público expectante toma fotos y las comparten velozmente siguiendo la persecución por redes sociales: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. No respetan semáforos, doblan las calles. Pero ante todo, permanecen juntos. Un caballo a la luz del sol es dos. Los tres y sus sombras son un ejército. La humanidad, que interrumpe su jornada laboral, no está preparada para una subversión de caballos, pero no lo sabe. Al día siguiente, algo se comenta en un par de diarios de baja monta. El suceso mueve a un publicista a moldear su figura de tres cabezas en una medalla que colgará, en un futuro cercano, en torno al cuello de uno de los más afamados vinos del sur. Su historia quedará escrita en la etiqueta trasera.

Montague Book Mill

What once was a mill is now
a bookstore. By the entrance, in the section
with vinyl records, they used to put out
the water for horses. Today the loft
shelters a radio station.
One by one, red wood slats
raised the cupola. A river to one side
has spent hundreds of years listening.
Sound moves off with the river and its violence
of greenstone, of thronging waters.
We know, without any doubt, that this sound
is one of those animals
who conform to human existence
and we know that when it is lost
—the psyche follows—
our compass rose loses its northern bearing.
In this way the sound is a sort
of positional animal. After returning to my body I
retake the composition of this letter.
On the back of the envelope are coordinates
for your house in the former Petrograd.
It will travel by plane, bearing a logo for a postal
agent, and not as I would have
preferred: an arrow
directed toward you with a spell.
The horse neither creates nor destroys itself,
it only transfigures, I write. And later
a slender girl arrives with a camera
over her shoulder and leans toward the jet
of the water fountain.

Montague Bookmill

Lo que antes fue un molino ahora es
una tienda de libros. Por la entrada a la parte
de discos de vinil se abastecía
de agua a los caballos. Hoy el ático
resguarda una estación de radio.
Una debajo de otra, las maderas rojizas
construyeron la torre. Un río a su costado
lleva cientos de años escuchándose.
El oído se va con él y su violencia
de piedras verdes, de gentío de agua.
Sabemos, sin lugar a dudas, que el oído
es uno de los tantos animales
que conforman al ser humano
y sabemos que al extraviarlo
—en ello va la psique—
pierde su norte nuestra rosa náutica.
De modo que el oído es una suerte
de animal que sitúa. Al volver a mi cuerpo
retomo la escritura de esta carta.
En el envés del sobre están las coordenadas
de tu casa en la vieja Petrogrado.
Viajará en un avión con un logo de agencia
de correos y no como lo hubiera
preferido: semejante a una flecha
dirigida hacia ti por encantamiento.
El caballo no se crea ni se destruye,
sólo se transfigura, escribo. Y después
una chica espigada llega con una cámara
fotográfica al hombro y se inclina hacia el chorro
suspendido del bebedero eléctrico.

Montague Barn
(Massachusetts)

Be it by chance or design, this voyage includes a river and a man riding a bicycle. Next to him marches the Connecticut River, wide of back, more voluptuous – as is well known – than the words river or Connecticut. The man takes a back road from Turners Falls to Montague and as he progresses, an abandoned barn rises along his path like a rare species of African tree. It must have been there for a long time. Probably the bleach of waves from some now-extinct sea beat against it for years. Caribou were left at the mercy of the wind and dragged from side to side as they gasped, stretching their necks above the tide and turning their martyr eyes toward a protective heaven. Wood situating the cellar creaks. Though the darkness calls, you keep your distance. Inside the barn, a prominent notice reads Private property.

Granero de Montague
(Massachusetts)

Ya sea por suerte o designio, esta travesía incluye un río y a un hombre montado en una bicicleta. A su lado desfila el río Connecticut, ancho de espaldas, más voluptuoso —como es bien sabido— que las palabras río y Connecticut. El hombre toma un camino alterno a Turners Falls hasta Montague y mientras avanza, un granero abandonado en medio del camino crece como una especie inusual de árbol africano. Mucho tiempo habrá estado ahí. Probablemente, la lejía de las olas de un océano ya extinto lo golpeó por años. Los bueyes de agua quedaron a merced del viento y fueron arrastrados de un lado a otro mientras boqueaban alargando su cuello por sobre la marea y elevando sus ojos de mártir hacia a un cielo protector. La madera que encumbra al sótano, gime. Aunque la oscuridad llama, se mantiene lejos. En su interior figura un letrero de Private property.

Walk through the zoo
(Muer sa tête)

My older daughter is named Sky
shading into night.
Until yesterday her name was Nebulous.
With the tips of her fingers she was touching
the nose of a mammal
who approached to examine her blood
from behind a metal net.
She tells me about learning new tree species,
about a house that does not yet exist
about windows through whose caesuras
one beholds the world in fragments,
the new day, as it is written.
Something is continuously originating.
She adopts as her own the cats
who come to live in public gardens.
She will have a son, she says, and she will name him Mexico.
South Pole for his little sister.
From now on she’ll care for their future plants.
If time nears and ruins the arrangement:
house, loved ones, garden
still on the air today,
it will be necessary to build the
tower, decision, and destiny all over again.
And not necessarily in that order.
If something lasts, then it is living.

Remember. Life has no master.

Paseo por el zoológico
(Muer sa tête)

Mi hija mayor se llama Cielo
que se hace de noche.
Su nombre hasta ayer era Nebulosa.
Con la punta de los dedos tocaba
la nariz de un mamífero
que se acercaba a otear su sangre
por detrás de una malla de metal.
Me habla de conocer nuevas especies de árboles,
de una casa que todavía no existe
y de ventanas por cuyas cesuras
se aprecia el mundo fragmentado,
el nuevo día que se escribe.
Algo continuamente está iniciando.
Adopta como suyos a los gatos 
que llegan a vivir en los jardines públicos.
Tendrá un hijo, me dice, y le llamará Méjico;
Polo sur para su pequeña hermana.
Cuidará de sus plantas futuras desde ahora.
Si el tiempo se aproxima y arruina lo acordado:
la casa, los amores, el jardín
hoy todavía en el aire,
habrá que levantar una vez más
la torre, la decisión y el destino.
Y no precisamente en ese orden.
Si algo resiste, está viviendo entonces.

Recuerda que la vida no tiene dueño.

These poems by Mexican poet Manuel Becerra are among his most recent, appearing in Los trabajos de la Luz no usada (Fondo Editorial Estado de México, 2021). As they show, animals recur throughout his poems with practical and mythological resonance. Becerra’s fascination with the permeable boundaries between what is "animal" and what is "human" is a core aspect of his many books.

One poem in this set uses the phrase “Muer sa tête.” Becerra notes that while the words literally refer to someone moving their head, he associates that motion and the phrase with the constant transformations of which lives are comprised. In another recent poem, he uses the same phrase in reference to a gazelle losing its antlers. Here, he places these words in a poem about foreseeing the future; a daughter is poised between stages of her own life, while surrounded by other species. Becerra adds that the speaker narrating the poem desires a kind of movement.

In addition to the attention he gives to animals, Becerra is highly responsive to place. While he has completed some formal study and held professional residencies in creative writing, in Mexican commentary he has been credited with the spirit of a street poet. Always on the move, the street poet seeks knowledge on trains, in bars, on a plaza. The beauty Becerra creates emerges where his attention to exquisite detail poises in tension against sweat, grit, deprivation, death. The geography of his recent poetry shifts, in this book moving between central Mexico and New England. Through this trans-local swiveling, Becerra’s poetic observations about each place mingle distance with familiarity, past with present.

Manuel Becerra (Mexico City, 1980) is the author of La escritura de los animales distintos (Writings on the Other Animals, tr. Kathleen Archer, Song Bridge Press, 2022), Los trabajos de la Luz no usada (FOEM, 2021), Fábula y Odisea (Mantis editores, 2020), Instrucciones para matar un caballo, (Conaculta/Fonca, 2013), and Canciones para adolescentes fumando en un claro del bosque (Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, 2011). Becerra has won numerous poetry prizes in Mexico: Laura Méndez de Cuenca (2020), Alonso Vidal (2019), Enriqueta Ochoa (2014), the Ramón López Velarde National Literary Award for 2011, and Enrique González Rojo (2008). He was a resident at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa (2019), Stockton University (2019), and Art Omi (2018). 

Kristin Dykstra is a writer, literary translator, and professor. The Lady of Elche, her translation of a collection by Amanda Berenguer, appeared from Veliz Books in 2023. Dykstra is also principal translator of The Winter Garden Photograph, by Reina María Rodríguez, winner of the 2020 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and finalist for the National Translation Award. Previously she translated numerous editions, such as books by Juan Carlos Flores, Marcelo Morales, Tina Escaja, and others. Poems from her own current manuscript appear in Lana Turner, Seedings, Clade Song, The Hopper, Almost Island, La Noria and El Nieuwe Acá (tr. Escaja), and Acrobata (tr. Floriano Martins). Her recent translations and reviews also appear in a variety of venues, including Astra, Asymptote, Chicago Review, Big Other, Latin American Literature Today, The Common, Two Lines, and The Rumpus.

Published April 15 2023