This Language of Mine

Written by Vilma Tapia Anaya

Translated from the Spanish by the Poet

Narrated by Kristine Doll

Bolivia

This Language of Mine

                                        To Rubén Darío in Granada

 The volcano levitates between clouds     ferns

bromeliads     Signs

they emit a diaphanous intangibility

 

In the convent garden

invoking themselves

day to day     the palm trees

have grown tall

 

Saint Francis and the wolf

still look at each other

 

Being small girls my sisters and I

heard my father read

the poem

countless times

 

Lily whiteness

the morning

and so weird blood

the howl from the outside

 

Uncertain I went out

to walk all the roads

back and forth to the burrow

 

But a footprint     the love

brought me to the hospitable fronds

of this language

 

Vilma Tapia Anaya is a Bolivian poet and writer. She lives in Cochabamba, and she is a professor at the Universidad Católica Boliviana in the Faculty of Theology. These poems belong to Lentitud, a recently published book.

Kristine Doll is a poet and translator (English/Spanish/Catalan).  She teaches at Salem State University in Salem MA.  Her work has been published domestically and internationally in such venues as Asymptote, The Seventh Quarry, Cross-Cultural Communications Art & Poetry Broadside Series, The Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Loch Raven Review, and Immagine & poesia.  Her most recent translation from English into Spanish is the book of aphorisms written by Carolyn Kleefeld, Soul Seeds/Semillas del alma (Cross-Cultural Communications and Edicions Saldonar, 2021).