Radar
This poem
is not formed
by the thirty words
that appear here,
only deformed
by all those
that do not appear:
radioactive submarines
beneath the clear text of the sea.
*
Radar
Aquest poema
no està format
per les trenta paraules
que hi apareixen,
sinó deformat
per totes aquelles
que no hi apareixen:
submarins radioactius
sota el text tan clar del mar.
* * * * *
Poetic Minimalism
From a great desire to be like her,
creature of changing tonality
depending on the angle
of light
or
red-hot glow
of rock.
Instructor Lizard,
she teaches me how
to imagine being
someone else.
*
Mínima poètica
De gran vull ser com ella,
criatura que muda de tonalitat
segons el prisma
de la llum
o
la roentor
de la pedra.
Ella, mestra Sargantana,
m’ensenya a fingir
que puc ser
una altra.
* * * * *
Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)
It grows along the ground, the dandelion.
Along the ground, accruing bitterness.
“Being upright”—I tell it—“is not a better stage.”
*
Dent de lleó (Taraxacum officinale)
Creix ran de terra, la dent de lleó.
Ran de terra, acumulant amargor.
“Ser vertical –li dic– no és pas millor”.
* * * * *
Impressions of the Empiricist David Hume
When a leaf falls
skyward —
and proceeds impertinently in its ascent —
it’s time to admit
we are talking about a butterfly.
*
Impressions de l’empirista David Hume
Quan una fulla cau
en direcció al cel
– i prossegueix impertèrrita l’ascensió –
és moment d’admetre
que es tracta d’una papallona.
* * * * *
Illumination
Twelve noon
and the bee lights up
like a pinch of sulphur
burns like a fine
filament
at the heart of the solar
lightbulb.
Does she know
you only pay
for so much light
with death?
*
Il·luminació
Dotze del migdia
i l’abella s’il·lumina
com un pessic de sofre,
s’enardeix com un filament
primíssim
al cor de la bombeta
solar.
Ho sap, ella,
que tanta llum
se sol pagar
amb la mort?
* * * * *
High-Speed Train
North of the color black, the country
of white begins. North of white
the first blue-greens condense.
From the corner of your eye, ochres, oranges,
wet lilacs, turquoises, old pastels go by.
Tell me, which color is immobility?
*
Tren d’alta velocitat
Al nord del color negre, comença
el país del blanc. Al nord del blanc
es condensen els primers blauverds.
Passen de cua d’ull ocres, taronges,
liles mullats, turqueses, vells pastels.
De quin color –digues– la immobilitat?
* * * * *
Gemma Gorga (b. 1968) is a Catalan poet living in Barcelona and teaching at the University of Barcelona, who is in love with words as much as silence. In her seventh book, Voyage to the Center (Viatge al centre, Godall Edicions, 2020), from which these six poems are drawn, there is often a self-reflexive, playful, and minimalist quality to the work. Of this group, “Radar” is a poem comprised of 30 words. Thus, the reader either consciously or unconsciously takes note of the word count, and in a rhetorical flourish through the figure of negatio, the poet informs us that all these written words are not the constituents of the poem; only the ones not mentioned in the white space of the poem come close, in that they “deform” what is written here. As the reader follows down the page, it is as though, through the metaphor of radar, she is taking a deep-sea dive to the place where those unwritten words exist.
In each of the other poems, there is an attempt to pin down meaning with words, while also allowing them to gesture toward the white space, the unsaid, from which they emerge. In “High-Speed Train,” analogous to Rimbaud’s sonnet “Vowels” which assigned vowel sounds to colors, Gorga gives her colors directions and speed, only to inquire what the color of immobility might be — again gesturing outside of the poem. Her micro-poems “Impressions of the Empiricist David Hume” and “Dandelion” read like aphorisms about perception. Finally, “Illumination,” though ostensibly about a bee, through its title implies that the price of all kinds of illumination — be it spiritual or intellectual — may be death. Gorga’s economy of means, already on display in her prose poem collection Book of Minutes (Oberlin College Press, 2019), gets pushed to the brink of silence in these new poems — suggesting silence is the source of all poetry as well as its destination.