Interpretation of Eve

I

No place is safer than your side
But from your rib
I embarked on a long journey.

II

I am all women and I survive them all.
They have lived in me forever.
Weaving their likenesses together.
They mold the round shapes that define me:
    moon of my breasts
    half circle of my thighs
    fruit that falls and aches.
Endlessly they cross the sands of subjugation.
In one hand the sword of vengeance.
In the other a gourd of milk
    for the children.
How long shall I be wounded by their wounds?
How long must I fight the dogs of doubt
they set loose in my soul?
They are all the women I am
those who dig with their nails into the heart of the onion
without finding their fate
Madwomen pierced by a thousand phalluses
Who writhed in the flames but kept the secret
    of potions and spells.
Children espoused in solemn rites of merchants.
Motherlovers daughtersisters
Against the boards and their mourning.

III

She who lit the first fire and did not learn her name
    lies on a leopard skin.
Tough are the hands that mold the stone
    and gut the fish.
Tough are the legs from her multitude of paths.
The chip-chip of the hatchet makes the blood run cold
and her amulet of shells will not save her
    from either man nor beast.
Only wind and rain to carry her to the vastness
    she does not understand.
Only within herself
In that other vastness called dream
does she say no to the tribe
and drift away
amid dark ancestral flowers.

IV

I left the wooden house of my childhood. The patio ringed
with gold and coral blossoms where one St. John's Eve I buried a
coin
so a money tree could grow. I never looked back. The past
is just a cheat. That night the boys from town discovered
my nakedness while I buried my shame in their used coins. This
happened so
long ago. Since then I have served countless merchants, poets,
sailors. Not one of them found out how many nights I waited for
that tree
in the patio of my childhood.

V

They chant Mystic Rose
and you leap from the sheets to the feather duster
attacking dust, furniture and windows.

Ivory tower
somewhere
in a far corner of your kingdom.

Chest of gold
the broom has begun its work
of sweeping away remains of love
scraps of dream
life and its crumbs.

Cups of wisdom
your talent in the inferno of the kitchen
skilled is the knife
skilled are your hands
in the soft heart of garlic
and in the docility of lettuce.

Morning star
alchemist's flame of flesh and tears
sparkle of the glassware on the table
spoons and boredom
broken bits of you
of the dawn that once was you
left now with neither pretty nails nor thoughts.

VI

She has arrived, the lady with long hands.
For days I've heard her prowl around outside
Dissolving without a hint of haste, insatiable
Merciless rousing the asps of fear.
It is she who summons ghosts and sets
the wheel of thought spinning in reverse?
Perhaps only the mysterious seems real
And she is nothing but her form
    emerging like Sargasso
in the water of the mind
The only vision I discern on the flaming peak
for myself and what I expect.
Priestess without a Tarot crown
Mutation of the tiger in the house of the moon
Sky a raw abrasion
Bed a brittle bramble I ascend
So my hand can trace the impossible sign
So my mouth can utter its word of farewell
Last word I shall write
    in her shadow
In the codex of madness.

Translated by JoAnne Engelbert

Soledad Álvarez is one of her generation's most highly regarded poets, as well as a reputed scholar. Her 1994 collection of poems, Vuelo posible, is regarded as one of her best. She has also published literary scholarship, including La magna patria de...