Marta López-Luaces

Nomad

(versión en español)

I come from a people who are condemned
to wander through strange lands.
Three days they walked
       in the shadow of Babel
       lost among the fog of its speech.
       I inherit from their time
       the stuttering of their attempts.
Of my race
I still possess the trait of the absence that gives me away.
You ask me therefore to declare myself
       beyond my blood
but,
before the storm,
before the floods,
before your gaze,
before my orphanhood,
before the fires,
before the shadows that preceded those fires,
there was a before
that my memory asks a ransom for,
but,
my accent cannot
return to its song.
I have arrived late
the rains have passed,
the rivers have returned to their source,
the cities have raised themselves up on the horizon,
and the entrance is forbidden to me
Here, at its doors
       I wait for
       the resurrection of my memory
       of an I that I was
And therefore you ask me
       to renounce
my names
my blood
my heritage
and to disguise myself with your voice
and declare myself beyond it all
in this language
foreign to my heart
my race continues in search of the tongue
lost
     before infancy.

Translated by Alexandra van de Kamp