Harriak eta herriak

Stones and lands
By Joseba Sarrionandia. Original title: Harriak eta herriak

There is a corner in the world (We did not
                                         choose it when we were born)
which we believe it is our land. And the whole world is ours
                                    if our land is ours.
But we introduced wet stones
                            into our holed pockets.

Everything we did was not always
                                             what we had to do,
deads and distances started to
                                         proliferate,
and six thousands of our people in
                              a world like this, sharpened by milestones.

On the frontiers, after customs officer Henri Rousseau asked us
                                        where we are from and were we go to
we show him our wet stones
                                        since we have got stones:
"You see this stone, this reef,
                                      our house was like this..."

Land surveyors of nowhere, cartographers of a
                                     land which does not exist, that's who we are.
Our days are filled by yesterdays, we are
                                              looking for our feet.
Do you remember that ancient birthplace
                                               we lost?

We have got stones but not land.
                        We have got stones
in our holed pockets, but we will not build
                         a definitive house anywhere.
Are stones more beautiful
                              inside a wall?



                           
                       

Sustraiak han dituenak

Someone having roots there

By Joseba Sarrionandia. Original title: Sustraiak han dituenak

It is hard to leave the birthplace

for someone having roots there.

The tree hardly leaves earth

unless tired and made boards.

The pupil does not leave the eye

unless in the beak of a crow.

The salpeter does not leave the sea

neither does the sand leave the desert.

The lily does not leave the spring

neither does the snow leave the whiteness.

It is hard to leave the birthplace

for someone having roots there.

Un poema de Joseba Sarrionandia, en català

Tornar a casa
De Joseba Sarrionandia. Títol original: Etxera itzuli

Amb els mapes dels tresors sota el braç,

deixant casa meva, em vas sortir

a la recerca dels cants de les sirenes,

a través dels amagatalls de les pors.

Durant el meu camí, no et vaig trobar sinó

petits pedrenyals grisencs

i nius de merla que es podreixen

als racons dels boscos negres.

Quan –esgotat el camí pel temps—

em vas tornar a casa,

t’era nova la fusta de la porta

i també el pany.

A poem about torture

Days of torture
By Joseba Sarrionandia. Original title: "Tortura egunak"

Spanish policemen in the Basque Country
are imprisoning even pieces of fog
to jail them inside the eleventh circle of hell.
The boy who has been catched with anything
remembers the narration by a tortured friend,
another does not even know why he has been detained,
and nobody can, while being brought in across the doors,
make a proper calculation of the suffering that has just arrived.
What is the pain that crushes me against the wall?
the boy will ask himself.
What is this gap made of stone? And the answer
will be a treaty on the metaphisics of the purple colour,
in a dead speech, in the floggers' shadows.
Thus, approximately: blood will erase your face,
blind birds will surround you, your meat
will leave you and the dwarf butchers
will build a cathedral of ash using bricks made of your body,
and your life will be your fiction
on each day that is an aspect of eternity.
In the classics of Dialectical Materialism it was not revealed
that, in torture, in the most individual way,
the man becomes a self-epilogue.

Lainoa nahinora doa, baina gu, gu herrira goaz

The fog goes anywhere but we, we go to our land
By Joseba Sarrionandia. Original title: "Lainoa nahinora doa, baina gu, gu herrira goaz"

Swimming, flying, on foot...
Step by step, we go.
The fog goes anywhere.
But we,
We go to our land.

Fishes escape the net,
Birds are free;
Anyone of us is
looking for freedom.

War and tragedy
Are not indispensable;
Freedom is necessary,
for everyone, a real one.

There are doors at walls
and the step is the border.
An obstacle will not be
A hindrance for us.

They want to build a prison
To drown nations.
We will build a nation
Without prisons.