Ritos
A avoa preguntaba mentres lle cortaba o pelo
se a choraría cando morrese.
Na televisión, un coro discordante
de mozas choronas agrupábase
ao redor dunha saba branca e
materna.
Ela non cre no máis aló,
só os ritos apropiados.
A nai pensa que naceremos de novo.
Ela non desexa quedar
en cerimonias, a tumba.
Ela di que nos volveremos a atopar..
Pero Yama, recibindo almas dos mortos
na súa sala de xuízo,
di que debemos esquecer
as nosas vidas pasadas.
El mide
o castigo que nos corresponde:
vinte, corenta, talvez
cen anos
de pranto
son necesarios antes de que podamos ser
incoloros e novos.
A avoa sae da ducha.
Por agora as mozas acougáronse. Un home
está a vender tesoiras.
A seco coa toalla. Primeiro o seu cabelo
gris con febras de cor branca.
O seu pescozo, os seus ombreiros e os seus
parches diabéticos marróns. A súa columna vertebral,
a súa curva amarela leitosa e, na base,
un lunar púrpura descolorido.
Levanta un peito e logo o outro
para que a seque. Estendéronse ao longo dos anos
ata o seu estómago, a pel máis delgada
que o papel de arroz.
As veas longas
en cada seo
son azuis,
unha superficie azul
tan clara que levará máis
de cen anos esquecer.
Grandma wondered as I cut her hair
if I would mourn her when she died.
On the television, a discordant chorus
of weeping girls
crowded around a white,
maternal sheet.
She doesn’t believe in the afterlife,
only the proper rites.
Mother thinks we will be born again.
She does not wish to linger
in ceremonies, the grave.
She says that we will
meet again.
But Yama, receiving souls of the dead
in his judgment hall,
says we must forget
our past lives.
He measures out
the punishment that is our due:
twenty, forty, maybe
a hundred years
of weeping
is needed before we can be
colorless and new.
Grandma emerges from the shower.
By now the girls have quieted. A man
is selling scissors.
I dry her with the towel. First her hair,
dove grey with strands of white.
Her neck, her shoulders and their brown
diabetic patches. Her spine,
its milky yellow curve and, at the base,
one faded purple mole.
She lifts one breast and then the other
for me to dry. They have stretched over the years
to her stomach, the skin thinner
than rice paper.
Wendy Chen
Pinturas de ® Curth Georg Becker
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