Lalomanu

Book_Cover.indd 3 31/03/10 11:02 AM

LalomanuJorge Salavert

Inside_pages.indd 3 31/03/10 11:32 AM

To my daughter Clea, in memoriam

Copyright © Jorge Salavert 2010

Published by Jorge Salavert, Amaroo, ACT 2914

All translations from the Spanish and Catalan are the author’s.

First published 2010

ISBN: 978-0-646-53089-5

Cover design by Maria Vidal

Photographs © Anthea Wykes and Carolyn Green

Typeset by Maria Vidal

Printed in Canberra by CanPrint Pty Ltd

Inside_pages.indd 4-5 31/03/10 11:32 AM

Contents

Preamble: The Polaroid (3rd January 2003) page 9

Part I: At Lalomanu page 11

Part II: The haikus page 29

Part III: The homecoming page 47

Epilogue page 75

7

“…there are no second chances in a universe

Which must get on with the business of living”

Peter Porter, ‘Talking to you afterwards’

“Those people who do not like to associate with death were soon keeping clear… Who

were going about as if nothing had happened. […] So the death-shy began to flicker

their eyelids up at the bereaved. They even came out and did good turns to those who

absolved them from the embarrassment of sympathising.”

Patrick White, The Tree of Man

“… me desperté oliendo a menta sobre arena mojada y sal …”

Ojos de Brujo, ‘Nueva Vida’


Preamble

Against an aseptic maternity-ward background

He holds her tiny hand

While he looks up smiling at the flash;

The Polaroid slits his happy eyes and captures

The greying hairy blur around his mouth,

A paling purple polo shirt – his wife’s birthday present from a few years back –

And the early January tan that the ruthless Australian sun

Gives those who grow beans, carrots or tomatoes

In a backyard garden.

He looks a happy man despite his many struggles,

Despite the long hours of driving and the stress.

He holds her minuscule body wrapped in a white hospital cotton blanket,

And knows those tiny hands are a cherished treasure for him:

They’re a promise of lasting love and laughter,

They’re a pledge of long days and nights, of songs, of fun-making by the swing.

They hold a future he can look forward to:

A giggling girl who will laugh at his tongue-twisting wordplay,

A devoted daughter who he will walk on his back while he tells her the stories

Of faraway lands, of placenames like Morella, San Pedro de Atacama or Nam,

Of so many people she will never get to meet.

The Polaroid (3rd January 2003)

98


I - At Lalomanu

1110


On Lalomanu Beach

Beautiful hues of surrounding green and blue,

An inviting golden sand.

The soothing breeze blows under the Samoan sun:

Peace is close at hand.

The horizon is a white line of reef and surf,

Fish come near the shore,

Twisting and zigzagging curiously around their feet.

Sunlight brightens their spirits, the sea enlightens the life in them,

The hill stands majestic, an idyllic backdrop of lushness and mystery.

Three noisy children are gathered around him and his sandcastle.

He can’t keep up with their demands,

For they keep coming back for more.

As they grab these wet sand balls,

They hurry to the water shrieking: “¡Mi pelota!”

Giggling, they drop them, they let them go.

The sand vanishes into the ocean,

His eyes melt into dreams of love.

1312


Skipping on the seashore

She’s skipping on the seashore.

The gentle sunlight of the early morning kisses her

As she follows the giant’s footprints ahead.

His furtive peep at the horizon,

While the ballerina skips on this mild ground

That was shaking five minutes earlier.

Shells are shining on her as she chases his tempo and giggles again

At this perfect synchronicity: father and child

Exultingly living life.

Yet the horizon arches: an invisible arrow is cutting through

His unknowing heart.

It’s their last walk together,

On foreign soil, on a mysterious island

Where Stevenson imagined pirates and hidden coves,

A land of precipitous ridges and lushness,

Full of emerald eyes and bluish sea-dazzles.

For death is rushing towards them.

Soon the dark waters will be cruel and brutal,

The seashore will vanish,

The sky will seem oddly dislodged.

All that superb azure will be tarnished,

And dreadfully dark waters will be dumping death on her.

15

Sonnet #1

Her hazel eyes hold a firm grip on him.

She’s the flesh of his flesh, her loving child.

This is his true love, not the transient whim

When in frenzy lustful bodies go wild.

Her skin has tanned under the Samoan sun.

The silk-gentle breeze stirs her wet black hair,

A kind sea, the mellow sands, all the fun

A lovely six-year-old can have is there.

Yet deep below dark forces are at play.

The earth will dislodge itself and rumble,

Pushing a wall of water the next day.

These hellish waters will swirl and tumble,

A beast of doom, it is about to slay

His true love, his child; his heart will crumble.

14


The monster

My five-year-old told me

Of how he saw the monster coming:

He said it had white teeth and that it rushed on us

While we were running for the hill.

It was a water-wall of devastation

Engulfing us in less than a second,

Tossing us around,

Hurling the destroyed Lalomanu fales against our backs and legs,

Thrashing our lives in little less than two minutes.

I should be looking after my five-year-old:

Keeping all those white-toothed monsters away

From his dreams, from his future.

One day I’ll have to explain to him that the water beast

Would have taken him away,

Could have taken me away,

But chose instead to take

His big sister.

For Jordi Salavert

17

Running

He was running, running, running

Running for his life

Fleeing the beast of white-toothed darkness

Past the palm trees and the little pigs

Past the modest house at the edge of the village

Past the taro plants at his feet

Running, running, running yet holding his son’s hand

Unable to look back, too scared to look back and stare at approaching death.

The Samoan woman lay on the ground, in clear distress.

In her eyes was a beseeching look yet the ultimate peacefulness

Of those who know their time is up.

Her crying, her wailing made him stop:

He briefly looked at her and into her eyes

Powerless, unable to help, paralysed by fear

As the water fell on their world, tearing it all apart:

the home, the lives, the peace, the happiness

They once had.

16


Untitled

Six years and nine months amount not to a long life,

Yet the endless love she gave him during that brief time

Is as vast as the sea surrounding this fateful isle.

Hers was a wonderful, so loving, full-of-joy smile.

Infectious giggles, a supple stubbornness inside.

Grief has raided his heart - the intruder with a scythe

Slashing down the promise of tenderness and care

In his old age. He can feel the pulsating pain, bare,

The fear of a forlorn future, an infinite scare.

Now there is only a daily dose of odious pain:

The absence, the emptiness, the unfillable space,

An unbearable sadness, a self that has been slain.

For Brody Butt

19

The killing water

The sea arches over the reef,

Not the gentle giant you might think.

Death is galloping towards them, riding

The white foam of the water,

Opening its dark jaws,

Readying to swallow and tumble.

The roar paralyses all.

There is only an instant of powerless resolve:

Love cannot outrun the killing water.

Soon they’ll be fighting to stay afloat.

Months later, they’ll be struggling to forget the lot.

18


The earth has stolen her from him

He dreamt of a kindly future in his old age

Of days of long walks holding her hand,

Remembering the jokes and the songs, the kisses and the fights.

When she was his babita, his little girl

But Earth has cruelly stolen her from him.

He counted on the certain promise

Of her smiles, of the affection in her hazel eyes.

But Earth trembled on a faraway beach,

And a white-fanged monster grabbed them in its jaws

And tumbled them in the dark waters of a black vortex.

Earth has altered his presence-less present,

Has robbed of his most cherished tomorrow mercilessly,

And now he cries, he cries broken-hearted,

Cries because the knife of destiny has stabbed

His soul.

21

La terra li l’ha furtada

Somniava ell amb un futur acollidor a la vellesa,

Amb dies de llargs passejos agafat de la seva mà.

Recordant les bromes i les cançons, els petons i els empipaments

De quan ella era la seva babita, la seva xiqueta.

Però la Terra li l’ha furtada cruelment.

Comptava amb la segura promesa

Del seu somriure, de l’afecte dels seus ulls avellana.

Però va tremolar la Terra a una platja molt llunyana,

I un monstre d’ullals blancs els va agafar amb la seva gargamella,

Els va tombar dins les aigües tenebroses d’una voràgine negra.

La Terra ha capgirat el seu present sense presència,

Li ha furtat el seu demà més benvolgut sense clemència,

I ara ell plora, plora amb el cor partit

Plora perquè el punyal del destí li ha ferit

L’ànima.

20


At 45

At forty-five years of age

He has been left

Daughter-less

In a strange land

In a random act of nature

and cruelty


He feels lost for words

He lost more than his own language

In the killing whirl of water:

He lost his loving daughter, a giggly girl skipping on his footprints

on a beautiful distant beach

At forty-five

Waking up to his nightmare

Has become the nightmare itself

The light of dawn is a harbinger of horror

Sadness sinks in his heart, though he wishes he’d sunk in the water

As the sun brings him another day of pain


He feels the future may have left him behind

He has been left a broken heart

In a silent purple room

Plastic letters on a fridge and pictures

Of much happier times

23

The void

He does not speak his language

As often as he used to.

Words are left in a vacuum, unheard

In her empty purple room, where only her Barbie doll keeps smiling these days.

Mornings bring back echoes of now painful giggles,

Of a youthful voice full of life and promise, calling out ‘¡Papá!’

Silence makes its presence felt in the dewy dawn

The built-in wardrobe hides pink secrets and playful moments of love

behind its closed doors.

He stands there, inmóvil, sensing the void, the futility,

The huge gap in his life

A massive mountain of murderous water has made.

For Gustavo Rivera

22


Lalomanu sunrise

Amid the blue, the yellow and the green,

Lalomanu wakes up to another day.

The ocean casts its glorious sheen,

A gentle breeze salutes and finds its way

Around svelte palm trees.

Paradise cannot be far from here,

An eerie place girt by the seas.

There can be nothing to fear.

Yet as the sun was rising in the east,

The ground, the sands, fiercely shook

Unleashing a ravenous beast.

It rushed across an emptiness of blue-green water

Charging deadly towards the shores.

A brutal sea-tongue, full of force, a slaughter

Wiped out their lives with a grisly roar.

My loved one, my loving daughter,

Was one of the many children it took.

2524


Red hearts on paper

Mi babita, my little darling baby,

You were not given enough time

To learn all those little menial tasks

That make life such a tedious yet joyful affair.

Like learning to tie up your own shoelaces,

Or how to spread butter on your morning toast.

Mamá would cut up your dinner

Into smaller pieces, bite by bite, bit by bit, for you to eat,

The way your school teachers had taught you

To join the letters to make the sounds that were words

for you to read.

You learned to draw big loving hearts and paint them red.

They are now mementoes holding despair and stabbing sorrow.

I pinned those red hearts you drew for me

Above the office phone: your call of love.

They are now painful remnants of a winter day,

You were sick at breakfast time.

Playfully you peeped into the mysterious world

Of a staff meeting, your smile beaming at us.

Winter reigned, yet your warmth was present.

For my friends at 3 Liversidge Street

2726


II. The Haikus

29

What’s in a name?

Her parents always thought hers was a name

Full of honey-sweet promise, sky-blue hope,

That she’d be able to walk the tightrope

Of life. For their daughter, they craved not fame

Or unmerited honour or praise.

Seeing her grow was sufficient for them,

For time would polish their beautiful gem,

She’d certainly make good their old-age days.

Now they have instead an untold story.

There is only grief, pain, a feeling of loss

That could well make anyone feel sorry.

At dawn with tear-strained eyes they look across

The sky and wonder why should they worry.

What was in her name? One’s fate no one knows.

For Carla and Marcel Bruch Salavert

28


Lalomanu

A long golden strip

Edged by coconut palm trees:

Here’s Lalomanu.

3130


Tsunami (1)

The water roaring,

A huge monster from the deep:

A ravenous beast.

33

The tremor

For a whole minute

The world was shaking ‘round them:

It brought them the beast.

32


Panic

No air in his lungs,

He’s swallowing the water:

He is all panic.

35

Tsunami (2)

On the horizon

A white-rimmed water mountain:

Harbinger of death.

34


The silence

They’re yelling her name

In vain over the water:

Around them, silence.

37

The clutch

The boy clutches on

With all the might and life he has:

The clutch of terror.

36


Survival

Bugs climb to safety.

In the darkest of waters,

His head is the isle.

39

Wading

He wades through water

He’s looking for pink submerged:

The silence is death.

38


January 1, 2010

A new year begins

The same unbearable pain

Remains in his heart.

41

The aftermath

Far from the seashore

Lies a dead-eyed blue reef fish:

Innocent victim.

40


Desideratum

Such a foolish world:

There’s only pain, sorrow, grief.

Bring on the comet!

43

Grief

The heart is broken.

This emptiness is endless:

Death could be welcome.

42


La sirenita

She loved the water.

The sea rushed inland, drowned her.

Our little mermaid.

45

Promise

The future lies far:

Hope is a word fraught with fear

Death can kill promise.

44


III. The Homecoming

47

Unmanageable

His grief is the plague.

Pain is too raw to handle.

Silence prevails.

46


The homecoming

A black Commonwealth car leaves them at the driveway.

Almost three weeks ago five of them departed,

But only four are returning home.

Insides crumble when they open the door,

And every step inside brings a stab.

The luggage is lighter, their hearts are heavier.

The silence sounds as dreadful as the roaring water they still cannot remember.

Her photograph stares at their tears.

4948


Sonnet #2

Every new day prolongs the painful torture.

Life was never meant to become so cruel,

Being deprived of the most beautiful jewel

Of a child, the sweetest fruit of their orchard.

Stolen by the sea on a distant beach,

The monster tried to kill all of his kin,

He can’t recall the deadly water’s din,

All he knows is, the hill was beyond reach.

His morning may begin well before dawn;

The silence terrifies him, yet he’ll walk

Out into the darkness, across the lawn.

The heart weighs him down, heavy as a rock:

Caught in the hands of fate a feeble pawn,

Hardly the man to whom you’d wish to talk.

For Trudie

51

A different sadness

There is a different sadness

In realising that the $30 Family Pack from Fortune Box

Has suddenly become too large for them:

Dim sims and spring rolls travel round the table

(they could be like Rossi and Lorenzo at Phillip Island)

Endlessly this pain comes back for more

Eyes strain in this blinding darkness of grief.

Morning brings the cruel curse of memory

The nightmarish silence that followed their shouts

The emptiness, the unbearable emptiness of this purple bedroom

A doll’s house no one has played with for more than two months

A calendar from Samoa forever stuck in September

The books, the sweetly painted plates and cups, the joyless window

Looking out to red and pink roses that will be cut on a Sunday

Only to travel down the road and be placed in a jar

that used to hold Spanish black olives

but now holds a faint tribute to beauty

There can be no solace, no comfort, no consolation:

The shadows fall across dawn and bring back the grisly grief – lying awake with

eyes shut

For Omar Salavert

50


Re:

You write, tell me something

And I have so much to tell,

To tell you her absence is a never-ending tearing

That silence crushes me at 4:30 am

That I cannot recall the roar of the water that took her away

That whoever wrote this story is cruelly laughing at me

That the future has lost its glow

That I feel I have been robbed

That eating has become a reflex unexciting act

That this gin and tonic tastes like lemonade

Tanto que contar, ya lo creo

That her brothers won’t go out to the backyard without her

Or that it’s getting hot – 40ºC in Adelaide –

That I founder every time I see her smile, on every wall of this house, her home

That the empty room shatters my soul on waking up

That a big chunk of my life is gone

Without notice, for no apparent reason

I have so much to tell

So much that I might scream or howl

So much sadness that I choke when I cannot voice it

So much to tell or keep silent about

Don’t even know what to start with.

53

Re:

Me dices que te cuente algo,

Y tengo tanto que contar

Contarte que su ausencia es un desgarro eterno

Que el silencio me sobrecoge a las cuatro y media de la mañana

Que no consigo recordar el rugido del agua que se la llevó

Que quien esta historia escribió se ha burlado cruel

Que el mañana ha perdido su fulgor

Que me siento robado

Que el comer se ha convertido en acto reflejo y sin goce alguno

Que este gintonic me sabe a agua gaseosa

So much to tell, indeed

Que sus hermanos no quieren salir al jardín sin ella

O que ya va haciendo calor – 40ºC en Adelaida –

Que zozobro cada vez que veo su sonrisa, en cada pared de esta casa, su casa

Que la habitación vacía me rompe el alma al despertar

Que me han quitado un pedazo de mi vida

Sin previo aviso, sin motivo alguno

Tengo tanto que contar

Tanto, que podría gritar o aullar

Tanta tristeza que me ahogo al no poder darle salida

Tanto que contar o que callar

No sé ni siquiera con qué empezar.

For Miguel Teruel

52


Sand in your ears

Many weeks later, after September,

At your local medical centre,

Thousands of miles away

From the beach the sea razed that day,

Your GP discovers you still have it:

All these fine, microscopic bits,

Minute traces of the deadly water.

Death left a note while it was taking your daughter.

And so you’re told that inside your ears

There‘s some Samoan coral, some unwanted souvenirs

You didn’t declare to the quarantine officials.

Luckily the matter will not become judicial.

The white sands of Lalomanu are now part of you:

It shows what a narrow escape it was for your boys and yourself, too.

The killing water pushed it in there for you not to forget

The day the sea spun you about like a puppet.

For Trudie

55

Seven candles

It is the saddest day:

Mamá has made cup cakes with pink icing,

Just like last year,

Sprinkled with the fantasy of the hundreds and the thousands.

At breakfast Papá has made torrijas, and played the old joke upon your brothers,

Who have in unison exclaimed “¡Son para todos!”.

We’re going to the movies today:

We’ll see one of those princess-meets-prince stories, your favourite ones.

We have some flowers too,

Popcorn, pretzels, chips and lemonade.

The evening will bring some darkness and we will light sparkles,

Your name will be drawn with fire.

Everything’s ready for your birthday, mi vida,

Yet you will not be here to blow

The seven candles you deserved.

For María Soledad Pinedo

54


Afraid of grief

The telephone sits quietly by the table where she would draw and paint.

Gone are the days when her squeals and giggles filled the place.

Many are the children picture books nobody opens these days:

Els Tres Porquets, Cenicienta, Sleeping Beauty, many others just as quaint.

After dark, he walks around, stopping to listen as if he were a thief.

Yet the phone won’t ring; it stays silent – no one dares to make the call.

Some sort of hope lies by the takeaway menu on which she used to scrawl.

The minutes, the hours tick by until it’s bedtime: are they afraid of his grief?

For Carolyn Green

57

Growing

Everyday I see your two brothers growing, growing:

Their bodies grow into bodies of future men

Their minds grow into minds of inquisitive boys

Their love grows into the kind of love I long for

Their games grow into the games sons play

Their eyes look into my eyes and probe my soul

They grow curious about this and other worlds

Their needs expand further, but not beyond what’s standard.

Everyday I cry for all the growing you will not do:

Everyday I cry for all this love of yours we lost

Everyday I look in the mirror and I see a man forlorn,

Ageing, broken, not knowing what to do.

56


A curse

Let all those who imbibed in her backyard

And laughed and joked or were simply merry

Be cursed. Some care or warmth? It was too hard!

Just minutes after having her buried,

A few of her own mother’s so-called friends

Stood around, full wineglasses in their hands,

While they were then struggling to comprehend

Their sad loss: her death in a foreign land.

Harrowed eyes met by cowardly silence,

Hearts subtly ignored: the too hard basket.

A mark of these people’s self-indulgence.

‘The question’s too dreadful, do not ask it’.

Some soon forgot why they came to their house:

Mused over their latest toy, their new car,

Unwilling to sense grief, they would not pause

To feel their pain or see their ghastly scars.

59

Up and down MacDonald Street

Up and down MacDonald Street or along windswept Waroo Road,

He would carry her on a backpack, happily chatting or singing to her,

Or simply inhaling the crisp clean air of Ngunnawal country.

She would squeeze his ears and squeal with sheer delight

At his faked groans of put-on pain.

Two tender years with lots and lots of love.

She giggled and babbled and gurgled and prattled

The sweet incoherence of an as yet undefined language

Words possessing an uncanny adoration, the sort of idolisation

A daughter has for her father.

On such days he would imagine her making a proud journey,

Lovingly holding a casket with his ashes,

To be scattered perhaps at the top of Penyagolosa or someplace

Perhaps a little less ambitious,

The ultimate homage to her dead father,

To take him back to his place of birth.

Who’d have said they would make the flight back home from Samoa,

A coffin inside the guts of a crowded Pacific Blue airliner.

It is him who had to bury her

In this dry, parched Ngunnawal land,

The place where she was born and bred.

58


Broken

Nothing anyone might utter

Shall alleviate the enormity

Of his pain. He does not seek to live:

He fell into a peace-less chasm,

And speaks in a barren tongue.

He swims across the waters of grief,

And feels frail when facing destiny,

Like a vulnerable, wilted leaf.

He elevates his weeping to the skies,

Not in search of the evening’s response.

He knows there will be never comfort,

That it is pain that sets him the pace.

Every word brings him but silence:

He senses he writes just to kill time.

He pays the penalty in every new line,

A debt of shattered love for his daughter.

61

Roto

Nada que nadie pueda decir

Podrá paliar la inmensidad

De su dolor. No busca vivir:

Se desplomó en un pozo sin paz,

Y declama en una lengua estéril.

Nada en las aguas de la congoja,

Se siente ante el destino muy débil,

Cual desguarnecida y marchita hoja.

Eleva sus sollozos al cielo,

Sin buscar respuesta del ocaso.

Sabe que nunca va a haber consuelo,

Que es el dolor quien le marca el paso.

Las palabras, todas traen silencio:

Cree que escribe por pasar el rato.

Paga el precio en cada nuevo verso,

Deuda de amor a su hija, truncado.

60


When winter comes

My darling, winter will come very soon,

Even though my heart has been

Frozen for almost five months.

The long shadows of autumn will fall

On my disconsolate soul,

And will eat away my minutes and my hours;

They will rob me of the lettering of imagined names,

They will hide away from me the words of the poems

I wish I could write for you, where I cannot find them,

They will erase the truths from the letters

I’ve written to you confessing myself at five in the morning.

And when winter comes, in June and July, when the cold

And the frost cover the world being acted outside,

I shall be the one who hides away, fleeing from the fear friends

Have of me; and I will build a lair for the two of us,

With those same words from the poems,

From the letters kept away, with the lettering of those imaginary names.

63

Quan arribe l’hivern

Filla, molt aviat arribarà l’hivern,

Encara que el meu cor porta

Gairebé cinc mesos gelat.

Les llargues ombres de la tardor cauran

Damunt la meva trista ànima,

I em mossegaran els minuts i les hores,

Em furtaran les lletres de noms imaginats,

M’amagaran les paraules dels poemes

Que jo voldria escriure’t on no puga trobar-les,

Esborraran les veritats de les cartes

Que t’he escrit confessant-me a les cinc de la matinada.

I quan arribe l’hivern, als mesos de juny i juliol, quan el fred

I el gebre cobrisquen el món que es representa afora,

Seré jo qui s’amague, fugint de la por que les amistats

Em tenen; i construiré un niu, per tu i per mi

Amb les mateixes paraules dels poemes,

De les cartes amagades, i amb les lletres dels noms imaginaris.

62


First day of schooling

They weaved in and around the noisy crowd,

Their backpacks were still quite empty.

Parents, teachers and senior students

Looked at them and said their end-of-holidays hellos,

Conveyed their words of welcome and encouragement.

Curious yet scared, these were the new recruits,

The new kindergarten superheroes.

Later we all sat at the Assembly Hall,

A ritualistic experience for most

Was today a rite of passage: the principal’s welcome,

The same old warnings to parents about the car park chaos,

Which some would ignore just about the next day.

These two looked around and seemed to wonder.

Yet it was his mind that wandered.

He lowered his head,

And tried to hide his tears from inquisitive gazes.

The absence of her giggle was distinctly felt

On her brothers’ first day of schooling.

65

Miles and months away

My dear Pol, el meu nou nebot, this you must know:

You’ll never get to know your cousin Clea.

You will only see her in photographs, forever a six-year-old schoolgirl.

She would have loved to hold you in her arms

And sing sweet silly things into your ears.

She would one day have held the bottle for you to drink your milk,

She would one day have helped to change your nappy,

Might have even exclaimed: yuk, ¡Qué asco!

She would have looked into your eyes with her own hazel eyes

And searched for this something undefinable.

A two-week old boy can never understand

That somewhere in the Pacific Ocean there was this huge submarine rumble,

That a mountain of water loomed high above the reef line and rushed

Deadly towards the shore.

That the water took her away from you, you who were thousands of miles

And a few months away.

For Pol Guaita Salavert

64


When my time comes

When my time, my fleeting instant, comes,

And your light, my darling daughter, illumines me...

When the flowers that for so many years –

All the long years of this life that, despite everything, I must live –

When those flowers, I’m telling you all, which I mean to plant and cut

with the delicateness

Of a father bathing his baby, bloom in the sky, in the clouds or in the sea,

Where you – perhaps – may be awaiting me – maybe – dressed up,

I shall stop crying and hiding beneath the shadows of time,

I shall stop my singing of a broken, sorrowful man,

I shall walk with my head high, and I shall look women and men in the eye.

I shall quieten the silence dragged by the years I shall be living

Without you.

When that time comes, when the stars

And the night air that is always hushed

Stop toying with me, a sad puppet of destiny,

I shall close my eyes so I can see your burning light,

I shall breathe for the last time the joy of your giggling,

And with an embrace, holding hands we shall dance

As we did a few years ago, to honour your mother.

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Quan arribe el meu moment

Quan arribe el meu moment, el meu instant fugaç,

I la teva llum, filla meva, m’il•lumine...

Quan les flors que durant tants anys –

Tots els llargs anys d’aquesta vida que, malgrat tot, he de viure –

Quan eixes flors, us dic, que pense plantar i tallar amb delicadesa

De pare que banya el seu nadó, florisquen al cel, als núvols o a la mar,

On tu – potser – estigues esperant-me – potser – amb una disfressa,

Deixaré de plorar i d’amagar-me’n sota del temps les ombres,

Cessaré el meu càntic d’home trencat i afligit,

Passejaré amb el cap alt, i miraré als ulls les dones i els homes.

Faré callar el silenci que arrosseguen els anys que estic vivint

Sense tu.

Quan arribe eixe moment, quan les estrelles

I l’aire de les nits que sempre callen

Deixen de jugar amb mi, del destí un trist titella,

Tancaré els ulls per veure la teva llum ardent,

Respiraré per darrera vegada l’alegria de les teves rialles,

I amb una abraçada, agafats de les mans ballarem

Com fa uns anys, en honor de la teva mare.

For Juli Capilla i Fuentes, with infinite gratitude

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Smash silence into pieces

Night after night he sits all alone

In his studio of silence and fear.

He wishes he could leave his grief

In the paper he writes on, or that his sorrow

Took flight,

Far away from this place,

Far from his sadness,

Beyond the ocean that snatched away

His dreams of heartfelt happiness.

He wishes he could make his tears into words,

And in his own hands gather his cries,

The cries his soul releases with every daybreak.

He feels the wish to open up his body with a knife of sky

And shadows, and to rip out the deep unending pain,

To smash into pieces this silence that never lets up.

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Fer xixines el silenci

Nit després de nit s’asseu tot sol

Al seu estudi de silenci i temor.

Ell voldria poder deixar el seu dolor

al paper en què escriu, o que la seva pena

emprengués el vol,

lluny d’aquest lloc,

lluny de la seva tristesa,

més enllà de l’oceà que li va arrabassar

els seus somnis de goig al cor.

Ell voldria poder fer de les seves llàgrimes paraules,

i arreplegar amb les mans els sanglots

que deixa caure la seva ànima cada matinada.

Sent el desig d’obrir-se el cos amb un ganivet de cel

i d’ombra, i treure’s el dolor profund i etern,

de fer xixines aquest silenci que mai descansa.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder

He has cried a lot, he still cries and has long to cry yet.

His present is forever anchored in the past,

and today, as he grabs the plates and washes them up,

he has looked up and seen how evening falls,

and darkness has broken into his heart through the window.

His gaze gets lost, and travels

far, very far away from this home

and from these moments full of daily affairs

without much significance.

Beyond the window he thinks he can see

once again the arc of the water.

It is yet another flashback of horror,

and panic takes control of him for some tenths of a second.

He could right now drop the glasses and plates

and make off into a run, fleeing from fear,

escaping yet again from the memory,

running away from the pain

his life has become.

However, there are days when he sits down and waits

for a phone call that never comes,

for a gaze that does hide within silence,

for someone who may listen to his crying

other than his own wife.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder

Ha plorat molt, plora i encara li queda per plorar.

El seu present està sempre ancorat al passat,

i avui, mentre agafa els plats i els neteja,

alça els ulls i mira cóm cau la tarda,

i la foscor es clava dins el seu cor per la finestra.

La seva mirada s’extravia, i viatja

lluny, molt lluny d’aquesta llar

i d’aquestos moments plens d’afers quotidians

i sense gaire transcendència.

Més enllà de la finestra creu veure

una vegada més l’arc de l’aigua.

És un altre flashback d’horror,

i el pànic s’apodera d’ell durant dècimes de segon.

Ara mateix podria deixar caure els gots o els plats

i tirar a córrer, fugint de la por,

escapant un altre cop del record,

escapolint-se d’aquest dolor

en què s’ha convertit la seva vida.

I tanmateix, hi ha dies quan s’asseu esperant

una trucada que mai arriba,

una mirada que no s’amague al silenci,

algú que li escolte plorar

que no siga la seva dona.

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However, he asks himself if it might be true

that he is too difficult for them to listen to,

if his pain might be so raw that it burns them,

if months may go by without him feeling

the support of known voices

or the sighs of the moon and the sun.

However, he would like to know when the shadows of terror

will stop hounding him, when the memories

of the water’s fangs will melt

into the golden sands of Lalomanu.

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I tanmateix, es pregunta si pot ser la veritat

que ell els siga tan difícil d’escoltar,

si el seu dolor pot ser tan cru que els creme,

si pot ser que passen els messos sense sentir

el recolzament de veus conegudes,

o els sospirs de la lluna i el sol.

I tanmateix, vol saber quan les ombres del terror

deixaran de perseguir-lo, quan els records

dels ullals de l’aigua es fondran

a les sorres daurades de Lalomanu.

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Epilogue

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Epilogue

One day, not too distant in time,

We’ll be returning to this beach.

We will be holding our hands tight,

We’ll all walk down the shore to reach

The place where we last heard your voice.

The two of us, and the two boys,

We might just gaze at the ocean,

Strangely arched that day of September.

And somehow I have this notion:

You’ll be skipping in our hearts, Clea,

Giggling off our terror, our pain.

And Earth, which took your life away,

Might become a place that doesn’t scare,

Might again be beautiful, fair.

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AcknowledgementsThank you to Juli Capilla for his suggestions and inspiration.

My gratitude to John Byron for his support and for encouraging me to

write while I was supposed to be at work!

Thank you to Anthea Wykes and Carolyn Green for the photographs.

Thank you to María Vidal for the cover design and her assistance in

producing this book.

And to Trudie, for all the love and understanding.

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Lalomanu

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Transcript of Lalomanu