BEFORE
I used to run through the streets
and sing in the morning
and scream in the evening
and commit my sabotage at night.
No this wasn’t a routine
it was one of the many ways
I showed my opposition to pain
it was how I drew close to my dead
and our love of peace
a love we weave day by day
with the pain of so many.
HOPE
I drill the earth for patience
and search it for a sea
my breath can then flow into.
Because ever since our blood began
to course through these streets
I’ve had no sea left in me.
A hurricane comes up
with its cold eye.
I’m sick with my people
but even so I fly to the coffee farms
to forge from the silence
a scripture for you, my people.
DICTIONARY
You’re right to set me a hundred words
that evoke the speech of my people,
but I ask you to see how
these leaves know nothing
of sacraments or race,
and these paths—all they know is
sacrifice and misery. For this
you don’t need proper spelling.
What you need is a hand
to take its message to the people,
what you need are two feet to coax them
toward an adnegated peace.
I keep saying that adnegation
must be written with the d of our duress.
ABSENCE
For José and so many others:
EPITAPH
When I die
I will not be gone completely
I will remain in your longing and ideals
I will remain in words
I once wrote down in hatred
I will burst into a thousand dawns or more
and I will keep arising
in the sharpened will of us all.
ANTES
Solía correr por las calles
cantar en las mañanas
gritar por la tarde
y sabotear por la noche.
No, no era una rutina
era más bien una de las tantas formas
de expresar mi oposición al dolor
mi acercamiento a mis muertos
y nuestro amor a la paz
que tejemos día a día
con el dolor de muchos de nosotros.
ESPERANZA
Abro paciencia de la tierra,
busco en ella un mar
donde desembocar mi aliento
porque desde que la sangre
corre por las calles
he perdido el mío.
Nace un huracán
de mirada fría.
Padezco de pueblo
y aún así, vuelo a cafetales
para construirte desde el silencio
una Biblia, Pueblo.
DICCIONARIO
Tenés razón al ponerme cien palabras
que me recuerden la dicción de mi tierra
pero te pido comprendas
que las hojas no entienden
de sacramento ni raza,
que estos caminos lo único que saben
es de sacrificio y miseria
y eso no necesita ortografía.
Eso necesita de la mano que dicta
una consigna al pueblo,
eso necesita dos pies que lo moldean
hacia la paz adnegada.
Sigo insistiendo que la adnegación
se escribe con d de dureza.
AUSENCIA
A José y tantos más:
EPITAFIO
Cuando me muera
no me iré del todo
quedaré en tus anhelos e ideales
quedaré en las letras que un día
escribí en el odio
estallaré en mil y mas auroras
y seguiré amaneciendo
en la conciencia afilada de todos.
Amada Libertad is the literary pseudonym of Salvadoran guerrillera Leyla Patricia Quintana Marxelly (1970-1991). Born in Santa Tecla, El Salvador, she died in combat in 1991 under a solar eclipse during a confrontation with the military at the San Salvador Volcano. As a high school student, she recited her first poems and participated in student social movements against the backdrop of the Salvadoran civil war. In 1988, she paused her journalism studies at the University of El Salvador to move to Nicaragua, where she completed her first collection of poems, Ausencia. She later became a member of the National Resistance in El Salvador. Her poetry has been translated into English, French and Italian, and was honored in 1991 (along with co-combatant poet Kenny Rodriguez) with the first Dra. Matlide Elena López award by the Organización de Mujeres Salvadoreñas. On September 28, 2000, La Asociación de Mujeres por la Dignidad y la Vida (LAS-DIGNAS) awarded her a posthumous Diploma of Recognition as an outstanding woman of the 20th century.. Thanks to the dedication and love of her mother, Argelia Marxcelly, her collections Larga trenza de amor, Las burlas de la vida, Pueblo, and Libertad va cercando were published via slips of paper that Libertad sent via clandestine mail. She is buried in the cemetery of the city of Quezaltepeque, in fulfillment of words told to her mother: "When everything passes, I am going to buy you a house in Quezaltepeque.” Her legacy is honored annually at the Festival Internacional de Poesía Amada Libertad in San Salvador.
Yvette Siegert was born in Los Angeles to parents from Colombia and El Salvador. She holds degrees from Columbia University and the Université de Genève. She is currently completing a doctorate in medieval and modern languages at the University of Oxford. Siegert is the author of Atmospheric Ghost Lights, selected by Monica Youn for the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship Award. Siegert’s debut collection, Late Antiquity (Bloodaxe Books, forthcoming), traces the civil war in El Salvador. It was the winner of the James Berry Prize. She is a translator from French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Her translations have been shortlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and the John Dryden International Prize. Siegert’s volume of Pizarnik’s poetry, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962–1972 (New Directions, 2016), won the Best Translated Book Award.A CantoMundo Fellow and Ledbury Poetry Critic, Siegert is the recipient of fellowships and support from Bread Loaf, the Jan Michalski Foundation, Hedgebrook, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation/Pro Helvetia, Macondo, PEN/Heim, Arts Council England, the National Centre for Writing, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Siegert lives in the United Kingdom.
