PRATIK'S UPCOMING WINTER ISSUE HIGHLIGHT : BASQUE POET LEIRE BILBAO's Two Poems

 LEIRE BILBAO

Two Basque Poems

 

Terra Nova

Very early in my life, it got too late

                                          Marguerite Duras

 

You were a late arrival

my mother would say to me.

 

I was two weeks over my time

for fear of the world.

I was a red fish in my mother’s womb

two extra weeks in the spawning.

 

Three point six kilos

she reported by radiophone to my father.

 

A birth-slap and

I bawled for my father.

 

My daughter!

My daughter!

echoed at the bow.

Fishing is fine

over and out.

 

Drinks for the crew that night

were all on my father.

My father slept well that night.

 

Six months passed before he could meet the shrimp

hanging from my mother’s hook.

 

When he took me in his arms

I swam for the first time in the sea.

 

Now I realise that it was not only my tears

in all that briny ocean.

 

Translated from the Basque by Paddy Bushe

 

 

I don’t want that

I don’t want a mother country that will bury me,

that will put what we yearned to be in my mouth.

 

I don’t want a love that will exhaust me,

that will rise to my neck, only to take revenge.

 

I don’t want a mother to protect me

if I’m not going to have her at my side when time passes.

 

If I have no mother country, no love, no mother,

whither shall I return?

 

Translated from the Basque by Sarah J. Turtle & Iñaki Mendiguren

 

Winner of the Euskadi  and Kirico Prize, Leire Bilbao is a celebrated Basque language poet. After a successful career in the world of oral improvisation, she made a leap to literature with her poetry collection, Ezkatak.  Several of his poems have been sung by different Basque artists. And she has translated the work of Nijole Miliauskaite into Basque, as well as other poems by contemporary poets. She has published about 20 children's literature books.