secession by Chus Pato with insecession by Erín Moure secession by Chus Pato the Erín Moure translation

with insecession by Erín Moure her Chus Pato echolation

A Sample from the text

BookThug · 2014 !"#$% &'"%"() Secesión by Chus Pato © *++, by Chus Pato and Edicións Galaxia, Vigo, Spain Secession English Translation © *+-. Erín Moure Insecession © *+-. Erín Moure

/00 #"12%$ #&$&' Secession / Insecession No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

4e production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

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Pato, Chus, -,==– [Secesión. English] Secession by Chus Pato : the Erín Moure translation. With, Insecession by Erín Moure, her Chus Pato echolation.

Translation of Chus Pato’s Secesión with Erín Moure’s Insecession on opposite pages. Issued in print and electronic formats. >?@A ,BC---BB-DD-+E.-- (6(;)').–>?@A ,BC---BB-DD-+E,-D (F'!)

I. Mouré, Erin, -,==-, author, translator II. Mouré, Erin, -,==- . Insecession. III. Title. IV. Title: Secesión. English.

F#")%&' ") 9/)/'/ INSECESSION SECESSION

Erín Moure Chus Pato INSECESSION SECESSION

An echolation-homage and biopoetics by Erín Moure, Montreal poet A biopoetics by Chus Pato, Galician poet from Ourense, Galicia born the same year as Chus Pato, in the green Atlantic climate of the northwest of Spain, Europe. in a city traversed by two rivers, just east of the Canadian Rockies. Translated from the Galician Each text in Canadian English responds to a Pato text, into Canadian English with one added Chinook wind. in Montreal and Kelowna by Erín Moure

Erín Moure thanks Chus Pato and Jay MillAr

! | "#$%& F/%( | B A readerly text is one I cannot re-produce (today I cannot write like A readerly text is one I cannot rewrite (can I write today like Balzac?); Atwood); a writerly text is one I can read only if I utterly transform a writerly text is one I read with diJculty, unless I completely trans- my reading regime. I now recognize a third text alongside the readerly form my reading regime. I now conceive that there may be a third text: and the writerly: let’s call it the intranslatable. The intranslatable is the alongside the readerly and the writerly, there would be something like unreaderly text which catches fire, burns in the mouth, an instance the receivable. 4e receivable is the unreaderly text which catches hold, continuously outside any likelihood, whose function – ardently assumed the red-hot text, a product continuously outside any likelihood, whose by its scripter – is to contest the mercantile constraints on what is function – visibly assumed by its scripter – would be to contest the mer- written. This text, guided, armed by a notion of material, prompts me cantile constraint of what is written; this text, guided, armed by a notion to redact the following words: Dear Chus, I can neither read nor write of the unpublishable, would elicit the following response: I can neither what you produce, but I can intranslate it, like a conflagration, a drug, an read nor write what you produce, but I receive it, like a Kre, a drug, an insecession, an e(ri)nigmatic disorganization. enigmatic disorganization.

Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes Richard Howard translation, Richard Howard translation altered by Ruin E. Rome

' | "#$%& F/%( | , We recognize altitude as we ascend, we call the ocean that unfolds below: We recognize altitude from elevation, we call the most extensive prairie: Canadian Rockies Ocean

Translation pivots on the word – as painting does on paint – this word that Literature is based on the word – as the visual arts are on the gaze – is not ours makes us feel, infects us… a translator’s gaze, a painter’s, are this word that is not ours makes us feel, commits us… a painter’s authentic mutations, and thus their works can cross the gap between word eyes, a !lmmaker’s, are authentic mutations, and thus their works and meaning, paint and gaze ring true translation, to sustain Literature, does not disdain or push away what rejects it the word that sustains Literature does not disdain or push away what and never disguises silence, it touches our interior, the machine of our organs, rejects it and must not be confused with silence, it touches animality magnetizes the black holes of the language, potentates meaning and machines, magnetizes the stars of the language, polarizes meaning because of this, the deer lie in a space of light and murmurs because of this, lovers lie in the hugest of intervals

—the deer are in the aspens? —the lovers are in the circle? —circles mark the grass amid the aspens where they have lain —the circle marks where they had lain —did they die? —they died? —no, they awoke to glean —of course —when you translate Chus Pato, where are you? —when you make love, where are you? —in the startling air, in the no-event: on Air Galicia, for example —in the unexpected, in what will never occur: being a trapeze artist, for —and when you write your own poems? example —in the continual fold of the event —and when you write? —in what occurs, in what continually takes place where words are ecstatic figures and unjudgeable, marred and irretrievable, which is to say, amid the aspens so, words are free to be extreme !gures and unjudgeable, irreparable

() | "#$%& F/%( | -- ASPENS IRREPARABLE I I

THE BRAGG CREEK ICE CAVE (* WHERE THE CAVERNS SING -B Riel (' Carral -, River Park ++ Central Galleries *E Snows +! Deserts *B Altadore +! Egypt *B Glenmore ,) HaLa E- Quoth the Magpie ,! Nevermore EB Litany from Cassandra -+ Letter from Tangiers .E Northeast of the Carpathians .! 4e Distant Carpathians =B

FACE AND MOUNTAINS !! FACE AND MOUNTAINS DB Benito !' Felix D, Ottawa *) Almorfe B- Equation *+ Equation BE Amygdala *! Amygdala BB Hide *' Jekyll B, Afternoon, Swallows '+ 4is I, Mountain CE Penthesilea '- Penthesilea C= Achilleía '! Achilles CB Yard /) Garden ,- Walnuts /+ DaLodils ,E Emotion /- Emotion ,=

PIRATES /! GHOSTS ,B Lgiht’s End /' Finisterra ,, Fascination of an ABC ()) Fragments of an ABC -+- The House Which is Not Extension but Dispositio Itself ()- 4e House, Which is Not Extension but the Body Itself -+= This Dead Woman is Not Much Quieter ()' 4is Dead Woman Who Can’t Stop Talking -+,

II II

WHILE THERE’S STILL INK ((! WHILE I’M WRITING --B

THOUGHTS, MIND YOUR MANNERS! (,- THOUGHTS, BEHAVE YOURSELVES! -E= This I is Not a Murderer (,! 4is I is not a Murderer -EB The I That Writes is… I Forget (,' 4e I 4at Writes is Not 4e I 4at Remembers -E, This I is Hardly Death (-+ 4is I is Not Death -.E This Fold Dreams and Undreams Until a Last... (-- 4is I Folds and Unfolds Until a Last Fold Which Is a Dream -.= Consciousness May Ponder but Does Not Mistake... (.' 4e I 4at Ponders is Not Consciousness -=,

RUIN E. ROME (!- RUINS -D=

~ 48, OR 49 (*) ABOUT THIS BOOK -BE

ON THIS BOOK (*+ I I

THE BRAGG CREEK ICE CAVE WHERE THE CAVERNS SING RIEL CARRAL

I knew nothing more beautiful and I had no word for beauty. Standing For a long time, I didn’t know what the word meant but I still kept at the stucco wall of the house, greeting with my arms the blooms that reading the pages where the philosopher repeated, always in English, were my height and bore my name: Erin! Erin! Delicately veined purple da"odils; I realized from the context that for Rancière da"odils was flowers. They grew after the snow, when sun had warmed the stucco emblematic of the poet’s writing; in the same way he used hummingbird wall that in turn warmed the soil beneath. I did not discern the di0erence for Mandelstam, he used daLodils for the author of the Prelude. between my name and theirs until that day. In my youth, in my childhood, there were no daLodils; at least I My mother squatted and her height went small beside me and she don’t remember them, not in the village nor in the Mower shops. In the told me in her language: you are Erin; those are Irises. I remember her painter’s city, in the author’s city, I did visit one of those shops on the size and movement and one word, my name, becoming two words in the cobblers’ street with my mother; it was an enigmatic site, as if it hadn’t mouth of my mother. always been a Morist’s but was an old-fashioned shop that had once So language comes clear in soft skulls. It is (/.!. The anterior needed many shelves, for shirts, to keep merchandise where people fontanelle gradually ossifies, the last fontanelle to close. could see it, but obviously there were never Mowers there. I had never heard of a flower shop. The enigmatic site for me was T. Fog, this is what the shelves behind the counter held, an L-shaped Eaton’s, the national department store where my mother led me on a counter, dark, of chestnut wood. harness lined with green felt (I don’t remember how we traversed the 4ere were ghosts, I breathed ghosts, they were very warm. space between the wall and downtown, perhaps by bus), and I waited 4ere were two salesladies, surely the owners of the shop and related beneath a circular low rack of women’s clothes while she spoke with the in some way, particularly beautiful, with taut faces, very pale and even sales clerks who were her height. Women only went out then wearing back then they seemed from another era. Perhaps two sisters, two hats and white gloves. sisters-in-law, possibly widows, or not, maybe they were friends struck Dief the Chief led our Nation’s Parliament. The Canadian Bill of by misfortune, the death of some family member or beloved friend in Rights was passed, the law over all laws. First Nations peoples were the repression or at the front, perhaps… but there were places like this “given” the vote. My mother had showed me how to read the news- all over the city of Auria when I was a child, full of solitude and fog; paper that year; it held Facts and was delivered to the porch, folded in Olga’s hat store, near the Lycée, the beauty salon of the two sisters – like a on itself. One day, agitated, she pointed at the ink and admonished: “You nightingale and a swallow (they didn’t sing). All these women were slow, are never ever to say the words “Drunken Indian.” Thus the newspaper somnolent, pleasant, very pleasant or at least they were with me. On the spoke not only truth but lies I was forbidden to utter. corner of the counter, refuting any baleful destiny, were roses in a zinc When you keep moving, you gain strength. Words and world pot / hundreds / blood-red, green-leafed and with stems like yews. coalesce, thanks to this strength. 4ere were no daLodils, not under the village trees nor in the There was a creek in the space behind the house (gurgle of waters marshes. Only aNer the death of the dictator did they appear in the I was too short to see, fenced with chicken wire) and one day the creek Morists’, the Krst blooms to appear as the days lengthened aNer Valentine’s was filled in. The wire fence vanished. Yellow vehicles moved every Day, when small birds marry in the open cages of the chestnuts, of earth. From this a flatland emerged, a plain of gravel and silence. And no poplars stripped bare by winter; they grow beside the water, near birches, more water running. Infill houses were soon built on the new flats. willows, beside rivers. 4ey are a kind of optical band for the thundering

(' | "#$%& F/%( | -, Each summer, the Calgary Stampede gathered festive crowds at the Carnival Kgures – Peliqueiros, Devils, Cigarróns, Felos and other Stampede Corral to honour ranchers who had fenced the prairies upon masks – that let the animal burst from the human, and together with the vanishing of the bu0alo. A small space by the wall held the Indian the incessant cheeping of the birds, they conKgure, in the pounding of Village. feet and the sound of cowbells, the algebra of the temperate zones of the Here there had been no springtime of peoples. Just dry leaves, oil planet. barons, railway and settlers, my mother’s family from Western Ukraine who settled where the Dane-zaa had been pushed north and west by We welcome the pulsation of the Mowers, the force of the wild beings the Cree, for the Cree had also been pushed west by settlement. In the of the mountains, who awaken Persephone so that she will return and south, others had signed Treaty *, then starved. realize that, through her, we cry out for fecundity and spring, and to see It was only as an adult that I knew of Riel and the repressed the youth of April appear across the Earth. rebellions against the theft of land, and Riel’s voice gone wild and liquid 4e Spring of Peoples: daLodils, murmuring pines, hummingbirds, as grass breathes in the white spring of we’ll soon receive news of the revolution

…prairie rivers. and then… Carral.*

* On April -=, -C.D, the Kingdom of Galicia declared itself independent from Spain. Eight days later, on April *E, this revolution against centralist Spanish dictatorship in Galicia was put down by forces from Madrid, and its leaders shot, three days later, aNer a summary trial at the town of Carral.

+) | "#$%& F/%( | *- RIVER PARK CENTRAL GALLERIES

(…) she wades nearly to her knees in the river. The current presses (…) in fact, these galleries, through which I now take shortcuts to the gum boots against her legs and the girl slides one foot forward on reach distant points quickly, serve nicely to illustrate what I wish to the rocks, which are round and slippery. At times the water reaches the expound. Unveiled in my city as part of plans for development, they top of the boots and only surface tension keeps her feet dry. This future were, along with the Tower, a symbol of the comforts that the Regime translator hopes the river won’t get deeper for she’s already halfway and oLered to the urban middle classes. What I liked was how, aNer a short doesn’t want to step back (or she’ll slip and fall) or turn around (or she’ll and spacious corridor, your steps could bifurcate toward the second Moor break the surface tension and flood the boots). Above her a wind nudges or, descending wide staircases with white marble steps, arrive in a central her downstream, behind her are cli0s she is forbidden to descend, and courtyard of aquatic columns; this eLect of water cascading from roof to before her on the shore are the leafy trees in the yards of the rich, Moor came from the emerald green tessera that coated them like vegetal whose properties extend to the water. They come out to yell sometimes bark. It also pleased me that streets so diLerent were connected by an but she knows the riverbed is Crown Land and anyone can walk there as inside passage that completely altered the urban landscape. people have always walked. We walked there when it rained, on winter aNernoons: the passages To cut through River Park or play by the Elbow River was a return were interminable. Under artiKcial light and the dull darkness of the to the rurality that was mysteriously the translator’s first home. Muskeg skies outside, we loitered, incomprehensible teenagers, rootless and in one corner, a spring where small runnels seeped through a sponge non-technological, like shades in the circles of the Comedy, somewhere of trees until their trickles formed one stream that flowed beneath two between the living and the dead. None of the articles displayed in shop wooden bridges and down a small canyon worn by children’s feet into windows fascinated us in the least. Once in awhile I’d venture up to the the Elbow River right where storm sewers released fetid water. A large second Moor; the nothingness was even more explicit there. In the nausea pool there held old tires, boots, a tipped-over grocery cart with three of those sessions, we learned inertia, submission and guilt. Childhood wheels, all covered in the fur of some dark plant that could thrive in such hell was, among other apprenticeships, those Sunday aNernoons, fascist garbage water. She never walked in that water, only in the fresh current as only Sunday aNernoons can be fascist under the government of a that lay further out. capitalist coup d’état and civil war. At times older children played and smoked in the sand caves eroded Today completely abandoned, more than three thousand square high in the cli0s above the sewer outlet, and she had to watch out to see metres, mostly behind glass – nightmares of the Regime, the them from far o0 and run before they reached her. dismembered bodies, as if by inexplicable chance our infant bodies had burst and been subjected to the most horrendous deformations in the If they reached her, they’d rough her up. Tomboy. Push her down and narrow space inside these display windows, and they look at us as we tear o0 her gum boots, cast them into the quicksand alongside the path, pass with all their liquids and internal humours broken into minuscule so she couldn’t retrieve them from the suck and had to tread the long coagulates that pass through the glass and darken the worn clay Moor road home in socks to bow her head to parental disappointment or rage. tiles in their planetary proliferation – they testify, as I said, to the failure Trout and whitefish lay in other pools but she was compelled by the of the dictatorship, to its degradation and downfall rush of river and the leafy yards beyond. She played with her brothers, (…) and thus, dictatorships in their modiKcations abandon public

++ | "#$%& F/%( | *E ignoring the lawn parties for dolls conducted by the neighbour girls. And and private areas that then dismantle themselves. 4ese zones are true yes, she did know why girls never went to the river. historical voids and coincide with long periods of my personal existence.

4ey should stay in the head, where we know and want to know nothing. Asphodels cover the most sheltered places, the narcissi are in Mower but, alas! – news of the revolution does not arrive.

+- | "#$%& F/%( | *= COLOPHON

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