Today’s poem concerns a house, any house – though this one happens to be in Mexico – in which someone is born, but no longer lives. We all have a house to which we return in dreams. We may be living in it now, and not get out much. We may, like the speaker in Alicia García Bergua’s delicate exercise in poetic metaphysics, dream of the house we lived in when we were somebody else.

Zoological Metaphysics

Like the sheep who returns, to give birth
on the farm where she was born,
some nights I dream that I’m still in the house
where the person lived who went out one day
to be who I am now.

(Translated by Richard Gwyn)

Metafísica zoológica

Como la oveja que regresó a parir
a la granja donde había nacido,
algunas noches sueño que aún estoy en la casa
donde vivió la persona que salió un día
a ser quien soy ahora.

From Ser y seguir siendo, 2013, and appearing in The Other Tiger: Recent Poetry from Latin America.

Alicia García Bergua was born in Mexico City in September, 1954. She is a poet, essayist and translator. Bergua is editor of texts on popular science for the magazine ¿Cómo ves? She has published numerous poetry collections and a book of essays. She is a member of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores.