Ana Luísa Amaral
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
My country
is this room opening onto the balcony,
it is also the balcony with its flowers
that come and go over the months, and that seem to me
luminous even when they turn the color
of a sad wind

My country
is the white cloth covering me, the dishes placed on me
each day, the arms that lean on me,
even the water in which I nearly drowned,
spilled absentmindedly by the hand that poured it
over my body, a clumsy,
thoughtless hand

I came to know it early on,
my country that is,
when it was still the perfumed landscape
of various timbers, my sisters all, of the sawmill,
its air filled with tiny filaments and sweetly
scented dust, the fingers that then chose me,
a broad piece of wood, and stroked and caressed me
with planes, varnish, polish

that was already my country: a prairie of insects,
white winds, the living sap that ran
in my veins, the water I drank to survive,
and that protected me

May the hand that rests on me
here, now,
remember this our shared condition:
we came from the same realm, and to that same realm
we will go, she and me:

the atoms that shaped and made me
could so easily have been hers


A mesa

A minha pátria
é esta sala que dá para a varanda,
e é também a varanda com as suas flores
que vão e vêm meses fora, e eu vejo luminosas
mesmo quando se tornam cor
de vento triste

A minha pátria
é a toalha branca que me cobre, são os pratos
que sustento todos os dias, os braços
que se encostam a mim,
até a água onde quase me afoguei,
por culpa distraída da mão que no meu corpo
a colocou, mão insensata
esquecida de cuidar

Comecei cedo a conhecê-la,
à minha pátria.
Quando era ainda a paisagem perfumada
das madeiras, irmãs de nascimento, a serração,
o ar coberto de minúsculos fios e pó
tão bem cheiroso, os dedos que depois me tomaram,
tábua larga, me afagaram
com plainas, o verniz, o brilho

tudo isso foi já a minha pátria: pradaria de insectos,
ventos brancos, a seiva viva que corria
nos meus veios, a água que eu bebia para sobreviver,
e que me protegia

Que a mão que agora aqui e sobre mim
se estende
se lembre desta inteira condição comum:
de reino igual viemos, para igual reino
vamos, ela e eu

os átomos que me formam e fizeram
podem ter sido os seus
from the book WORLD / New Directions
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This poem is classic Ana Luísa Amaral really in its empathy with all things animate and inanimate, and in the delightful imaginative leap it takes. Tables, too, it seems, have a sense of belonging, a sense of the past and of their mortality. For me, the last few lines have taken on an added poignancy, because, alas for us, Ana Luísa did go into that same realm on 5 August 2022, but, fortunately for us, she has left us this table and so much much more.

Margaret Jull Costa on "The table"
Cover of Vivek Narayanan's most recent book, After, a modern return to the epic, Ramayana
"Poem Without Beginning or End"

"I think you should read Vivek Narayanan’s After, which is an erudite, funny, chaotic, absorbing book of poems that talks with, alongside, and back to the Ramayana of Valmiki. But you might not be sure. You might be saying, 'What if I don’t know anything about the Ramayana, or India?' or 'What if I never studied Sanskrit?' or 'Who is this Valmiki guy?' or 'It’s a large book. Will I be able to fit it in my bag?' If portability is your issue, please go get a bigger bag."

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Cover of the issue of the journal Epiphany, in which "Rat" first appeared
What Sparks Poetry:
Karen Leona Anderson on "Rat"

"To write vermin is to ask then who makes them faceless and liquid, seething, scheming, malicious, too much, over and over; who feeds them and then turns away, repulsed. (Was it me? Of course.) It’s to ask who is at home, inside; who is outside. Why vermin are women’s fault and their shadow, their shame and their labor, how making vermin is so much work to do and undo and who that work is for."
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