-Brian
Mendonça
La noche de agosto,
Panjim
y los passos de otros
soles girando
entre las sábanas del
día
la escama de la sola luz
de tu cuerpo quieto
To
listen to the poems of Clara Astarloa is to enter the magical world of the mandala. As the poet explains, ‘Every poem is a mandala.
. . . A poem, as well as a mandala . . . serves the creative purpose of giving
expression and form to something that does not yet exist, something that still
pursues a new way to be called.’
The
trilingual edition of poems written in Spanish is translated by the poet into
English and by Alka Jaspal into Hindi. These are worlds within worlds. ‘Entre labios y labios hay ciudades.’ / [Between lips and lips there are cities. ] wrote the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
Though
hailing from Buenos Aires in Argentina, Clara Astarloa has written a
significant amount of her poems in Spain. Goa is particularly close to her, as
is evident in this poem featured in this article, first in Spanish, then in
English and transliterated into Hindi.
The night in August,
Panjim
and the paths of the
other suns spinning
between the daytime
sheets
the flake of the only light
of your resting body.
Argentine
poetry is not easy to grasp at first reading. But it reaches toward the light.
As Roberto Juarroz writes:
Every word is a doubt
every silence another doubt
However,
the intertwining of both
lets us breathe.
Mandalay is
a compilation of 34 poems. As the poet writes, it is ‘structured in three parts
that conform a cycle, the second part being the deepest, or abyssal haul.’ Each part is prefaced by a verse from a poet.
I – Juan Gelman II – Roberto Bolano III-
Leopoldo Panero.
Darkness
and absence are important tropes in her work. They stand for the infinite and
the inchoate. Writing is seen as stages
on a journey ‘counting the number of nights we are given.’ After all:
The night builds the river
the night tears down desires
cuts them stacks them
by the colour of their shadow
Astarloa
is unweighed by punctuation, preferring to omit it for the most part. Her craft
is distilled. Her poems come through as haikus.
Wherever
she travels she is reminded of her home. She inserts the national tree of
Argentina – the ceibo tree leaf – in her poem.
Writing
as a woman, Astarloa’s poems provide a balance between the male principle and
the female principle. Their coming together is born out of yearning. It is a
game of waiting and desire.
One
draws comfort from the lines of Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges:
Let no one fear in the bewildering
night
that I will lose my way among the
borders
of dusky flowers that weave a cloth of
symbols
appropriate to old nostalgic loves.
Agust ki raat, Panjim
Kitne suraj apni roshni
bikharte hue
Subah ki en chadro mein
Noor ka ek katra
Tumhara jism.
----------------------------------------------------------Dr. Brian Mendonca in conversation with Argentinian poet Clara Astarloa at the Goa Arts and Literature Festival 2019, at the International Centre, Donapaula, Goa on 7th December 2019. The occasion marked the book release of Astarloa's trilingual edition of poems titled Mandalay - originally written in Spanish and translated by the poet into English and into Hindi by Alka Jaspal.
This article was published in Gomantak Times Weekender, Panjim, Goa on Sunday 15th December 2019.
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