Verónica Volkow

Verónica Volkow was born in Mexico City in 1955. She is a poet, essayist, translator, and a Doctor of Letters. She is currently a Professor and researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She holds a master's degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University, a master’s degree in Art History from UNAM, and a doctorate in Comparative Literature from UNAM. She received the Carlos Pellicer National Poetry Prize in 2004 for her poetry book Oro del viento, and the José Revueltas National Essay award in 2005 for her novel El Retrato de Jorge Cuesta.

She has published several collections of poetry, as well as the prose volume Sudafrica: Diario de un Viaje, a report on daily life in South Africa under apartheid. She has translated the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Leon Trotsky, Victor Serge, Henry Michaux, and Michael Hamburger.

FREEDOM

I like freedom,
to journey encompassed by the horizon,
in the great circle without walls 
  to walk almost flying,

and from the heart spring up
that in itself is now a mute and invisible flight,
a solitary impulse,
I don’t know if outside the real
or actually inside,
Or where it won’t matter because I’m not a wall
and I abandoned my weight on every shore.

We are a bird inside,
                a flight, 
and I -am not on the earth
or iron -I am a dream,
a multiple wing, an internal fire.

And I like solitude
and the sea and the horizon 
and that letting one be
like a stalking of birds
or flower or star scattering
and I like love
that resembles freedom, yes,
which is the creation of things 
and with gentle, inexplicable
reason it illuminates me. 

    — Translated by Luis Ingelmo and Michael Smith

LIBERTAD

A mí me gusta la libertad,
viajar rodeada de horizonte,
en el gran círculo sin muros
              andar casi volando,

y desde el corazón nacerme
que en sí ya es mudo e invisible vuelo,
solitario impulso,
no sé si afuera de lo real
o en realidad adentro,
o donde ya no importa porque no soy muro
y fui abandonando mi peso en cada orilla.

Somos ave por dentro,
           vuelo,
y soy -no en la tierra
o el fierro- soy un sueño,
una múltiple ala, fuego interno.

Y me gusta la soledad
y el mar y el horizonte
y ese dejarse ser
como una apuesta de pájaros
o flor o estrella en desbandada
y el amor me gusta
que a la libertad, como el de Dios, se parece.
Amo la libertad, sí,
que es la creación de las cosas
y de leves, inexplicables
razones me ilumina

    — Verónica Volkow