Never

Written by Teresa d’Arenys

Translated from the Catalan by Kristine Doll

Narrated by Kristine Doll

I do not know now, nor shall I ever know

if there were some small hand measuring the hours

in a paralyzed time.  A half an hour to never.

And upon opening my eyes, lost in the realm

 

between being and sleep, just a voice

saying “I have added time to your clock,

Madame – alas, life has a price,

and a certain capacity the space that hosts us.”

 

So, I shall never know which moment

erased fire, water, earth, air.

A half an hour to nowhere, and I feel like a tenant

of a small dwelling that does not belong to me

but I go on, inch by inch, examining…

Body of my body, that attracts me sweetly.

 

 

Teresa d’Arenys (M. Teresa Bertran Rossell:  Arenys de Mar, Catalonia, Spain) is the author of several books of poetry:  Aor (winner of the Amadeu Oller Prize 1976), Onada (1980), Murmuris (1986), Hores (2007) and Versos de vi novell (2009).  Her translations include Cants d’amor i de guerra de l’Ahaggar (1999) and Rèquiems by R. M. Rilke (2012).  She is also the author of the novel El quadern d’Agnès Solà (2000) and the memoir Epístola a un amic mort (2013).  http://www.escriptors.cat/autors/bertrant

Kristine Doll is a poet and translator whose work has been published internationally. “My Friends” from her first collection Speak to Me Again was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry. Doll’s translations include poetry and memoir in Catalan, English and Spanish.  She is professor of World Languages and Cultures at Salem State University, Salem MA USA.