forgive me no more (poetry workshop: week 1)

I am grateful to Petit Poussin for putting the idea of an online poetry workshop out there into the Twitter-verse. Her thinking around the vision and purpose of the workshop was/is that, “writing and creating do not happen in a vacuum, and a workshop should take this into account and respond consciously. if we support each other’s work we are supporting our own work and creativity.”

I decided to participate to help with my goal of writing every day and to develop my skills and confidence with poetry. Below is my first poem as part of this workshop. Feedback is encouraged and appreciated. I’m excited to read what the other poets–Kevin Andre, Noemi Martinez, Maegan la Mamita Mala Ortiz and Phyrecracker–come up with.

Okay, so, here it goes:

Forgive me if I remove
these chartreuse-colored glasses.
The way they highlight and blunt,
distort and abstract—
I prefer to see things as they are:
The seagull breaking open a mussel,
dropping it on the cement path below,
swooping to get it;
heaps of sand piled by a tractor combing the surf;
fish guts caked on the pier’s cleaning stations.
Forgive me my over-analysis of process and grit,
my contemplation of the color of water,
the shades of the sky when overcast, sunny.
These details are my burden, my joy.
Same too with living in this body:
freckle to freckle, hair to hair.
The smile that escapes.
The words,
“Forgive me, I do not apologize for myself anymore.”

–
The prompt was an untitled poem by Pablo Neruda.

English translation:
Forgive me if my eyes see
no more clearly than sea foam,
please forgive that my form
grows outward without license
and never stops:
monotonous is my song,
my word is a shadow bird,
fauna of stone and sea, the grief
of a winter planet, incorruptible.
Forgive me this sequence of water,
of rock, of foam, of the tide’s
delirium: this is my loneliness:
salt in sudden leaps against the walls
of my secret being, in such a way
that I am a part
of winter,
of the same flat expanse that repeats
from bell to bell, in wave after wave,
and from a silence like a woman’s hair,
a silence of seaweed, a sunken song.

En español:
Perdón si por mis ojos no llegó
más claridad que la espuma maririai
perdòn porque mi espado
se extiende sin amparo
y no termina:
monótono es mi caneo,
mi palabra es un pájaro sombrío,
fauna de piedra y mar, el desconsuelo
de un plañera invernal, incorruptible.
Perdòn por esta sucesión del agua,
de la roca, la espuma, el desvarío
de la marea: así es mi soledad:
bruscos saltos de sal contra los muros
de mi secreto ser, de tal manera
que yo soy una parte
del invierno,
de la misma extensión que se repite
de campana en campana en tantas olas
y de un silencio como cabellera,
silencio de alga, canto sumergido.

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