Translator’s Introduction
When the best-selling Spanish novelist, Almudena Grandes, died in November, 2021, it was front page news in Spain and across much of the Spanish speaking world. For years, her popular historical novels about those who lost Spain’s bitter Civil War and her activism in progressive politics made her a well-known public figure. But she was equally known as the beloved partner of one of Spain’s other most important literary figures, the poet and scholar Luis García Montero. For almost 30 years, they were seen as the power couple of Spanish letters, each a muse to the other, each dedicating to the other every book they wrote in loving and literary epigraphs.
Grandes’ death came as a shock to friends and fans because she died, just one year and three months after diagnosis, of breast cancer, a disease that modern medicine has made often survivable. García Montero fell back on his poetry to cope with “bitter optimism” to the process of diagnosis, treatment, grief and acceptance. The result is a deeply moving collection of love poems that capture the passion and complicity of two people facing loss with resilience, courage and an ever-present devotion to literature.
The three poems below, selected from One Year and Three Months (Un año y tres meses, 2022), illustrate García Montero’s signature style, called “poetry of experience,” which emphasizes everyday language and artifacts to express complex emotions and ideas. Footprints washed away by the tide, wigs that are sorrows imposed by chemotherapy, a sea of medical tests that mingle with the sands of life – these are expressions of a loving farewell and days that, in the end, García Montero declares as “the happiest of my life.”
— Katie King
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
The Mystery and the Secret
We walk alone along our shore
as the sun sets,
as our footprints come and go.
What the surf washes in departs with the tide.
To protect you from the sun,
we’ve come out almost at dusk,
when emotions bare themselves
on the still warm sand
and a murmur of light
sketches the horizon that observes us.
Like a highway,
where red lights are brakes in the night,
we watch the questions pass slowly by
not knowing what to say.
A mystery is not the same as a secret,
but the two intermingle:
our hushed conversations
have learned this now.
How hard it is to walk with bare feet and
in fear of what might cut you. How hard
to know what hides within this shell.
Shores of the sea,
let us dream.
/ / / / /
The Truth of Fiction
I watch her in the mirror
as she arranges her hair
like someone lining up at the boarding gate
in search of her destiny.
I don’t know what her patience promises,
nor what my silence holds.
The mannequins watch me
with their shadowy eyes
and their wigs fashioned by
the verb to seek and the meaning of art.
Tresses caught in the winds of life,
blonde, brunette, and redheaded sorrows
imposed by chemotherapy.
It’s you, I tell her, and she smiles at me.
Never before, ever, had either one of us
felt, in this way, how
truth exists in fiction.
Never have two gazes held
so much love for life.
/ / / / /
One Year and Three Months
Like tales told by the rain
or entries in a log,
the disease followed its own narrative.
I complain of nothing. I still maintain
the bitter optimism with which we responded,
September 2020,
when the doctor’s visits and the sea of tests
mingled from one day to the next
with the sands of life.
I will never complain about the disciplined
way you counted our steps
to see the city with other eyes,
the physical and mental resistance
demanded by the chemo.
I don’t complain about the weakness
or Christmas with no hair
or the strange way we bade farewell to the year
when love went under the knife.
The pandemic prohibited visitors.
Disguised as a doctor without a lab coat,
I snuck upstairs to room
5427.
We shared the grapes they gave you for dessert,
listening, hand-in-hand, to the chimes
on the television,
that did not yet ring of death.
I don’t complain about all that followed,
the body little by little so defeated,
the hospital windows,
the wheelchair in 2021,
November’s weary shadows,
eight in the morning amid the Clínico’s hum,
with final results in the waiting room.
I don’t complain about the fear of falling,
the difficult shower,
the arduous transfers to reach the bathroom.
Nor do I complain
about the palliative care,
memory bound in gauze,
and the inevitable conversation.
I don’t complain about watching you die in my arms.
I understood that our travels and our books
with their dedications
have always been how we cared for each other.
I understood the roots of our activism,
I understood the cost of loving
in a way so completely Friday.
I understood the narrative of this story
in the starry night,
a love story,
this year and three months,
these final days that are already,
now, remembered,
as the happiest of my life.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
El misterio y el secreto
Por nuestra orilla caminamos solos
bajo el atardecer,
mientras la huellas van y vienen.
Lo que acerca la espuma se va con la resaca.
Para que no te dañe el sol
hemos salido casi en el crepúsculo,
cuando los sentimientos se desnudan
sobre la arena todavía cálida
y un murmullo de luz
escribe el horizonte que nos mira.
Como una carretera,
donde las luces rojas son frenos de la noche,
vemos pasar despacio las preguntas
sin saber qué decir.
No es lo mismo un misterio que un secreto,
pero los dos se mezclan:
lo han aprendido ahora
nuestras conversaciones contenidas.
Qué dificil andar con pies descalzos
y miedo a lo que corta. Qué dificil
saber lo que se esconde en esta caracola.
Orillas del mar,
dejadnos soñar.
/ / / / /
La verdad de las ficciones
La veo en el espejo
mientras se arregla los cabellos
como quien hace cola en la puerta de embarque
en busca de un destino.
No sé lo que baraja su paciencia,
ni lo que cabe en mi silencio.
Me vigilan a mí los maniquíes
con su sombra de ojos
y sus pelucas educadas
en el verbo buscar y en la razón del arte.
Cabellos en el viento de la vida,
tristezas rubias, pelirrojas, negras,
ordenadas por la quimioterapia.
Eres tú, le comento, y me sonríe.
Ninguno de los dos, ninguno, nunca,
habíamos sentido de este modo
que existe la verdad en las ficciones.
Nunca tuvieron las miradas
tanto amor a la vida.
/ / / / /
Un año y tres meses
Como las narraciones de la lluvia
o los cuadernos de bitácora,
tuvo la enfermedad sus argumentos.
No me quejo de nada. Hoy sostengo
el optimismo amargo con el que respondimos,
septiembre, 2020,
cuando las citas médicas y el mar de los análisis
se mezclaron de un día para otro
con las arenas de la vida.
Nunca me quejaré de la disciplinada
manera que tuviste de contar nuestros pasos
para ver la ciudad con otros ojos,
la resistencia física y mental
que exigía la quimio.
No me quejo de las debilidades
o de la Navidad sin cabellera
o de la extraña forma de despedir el año
cuando el amor pasó por el quirófano.
La pandemia prohibía las visitas.
Disfrazado de médico sin bata,
subí para esconderme hasta la habitación
5427.
Dividimos por dos las uvas de tu postre,
oyendo de la mano aquellas campanadas
de la televisión
que no sonaban todavía a muerto.
No me quejo de todo lo que hicimos después,
del cuerpo poco a poco tan vencido,
de las ventanas de los hospitales,
de la silla de ruedas en 2021,
penumbras fatigadas de noviembre,
ocho de la mañana en el rumor del Clínico
con resultados últimos en la sala de espera.
No me quejo del miedo a la caída,
de la ducha difícil,
de los duros transbordos para llegar al baño.
No me quejo tampoco
de los cuidados paliatives,
la memoria con gasas
y la conversación inevitable.
No me quejo de verte morir entre mis brazos.
Comprendí que los viajes y los libros
con sus dedicatorias
siempre han sido maneras de cuidarnos.
Comprendí las raíces de nuestra militancia,
comprendí la factura de querer
de un modo tan completamente viernes.
Comprendí el argumento de esta historia
en la noche estrellada,
una historia de amor,
este año y tres meses,
estos días finales que ya son,
ahora, recordados,
los más felices de mi vida.