Forked Tongues

This is a poem by Marra PL Lanot, a Filipina poet. In her book Witch's Dance, which includes poems in three languages (English, Tagalog, and Spanish), she employs a sort of non-translation strategy for the Spanish poems by providing short prose summaries in English.

The Spanish language has been slowly dying out in the Philippines for nearly a century (ever since they left, obviously), and at this point is restricted to a few members of upper-class families. Writing a poem in Spanish guarantees that only a microscopic fraction of the population will be able to read it. And yet, Lanot has deliberately chosen to write poems in Spanish, and is unwilling to let the reader simply bypass the Spanish poem by providing a full translation in English or Tagalog. Instead, she provides short prose summaries that give an idea of the poem's meaning, while ensuring that the readers have to go to the original Spanish for form and--if they can puzzle it out--for the full meaning.
(note: Lanot herself learned Spanish by taking an M.A. in it at the University of the Philippines, not by speaking it at home.)

España

España, como no te conozco
quiero conocer tus sierras,
tus montañas, tus colinas.
Quiero saber las raíces de los árboles
que rezan en las cumbres.
Quiero conocer el otro país
de nuestros heroes como Rizal y Luna,
la Mamá del pasado,
la Reina de Filipinas
que nunca nos abandonó.
Quiero entender los gritos de alegría
sobre la sangre de los pobrecitos toros.
Quiero oír las canciones de los gitanos,
comprender el fuego del flamenco.
Quiero ver las olas que abrazan las piedras
y escuchar el silencio de las estrellas.
Quiero saber el sello en el escudo
de los siglos después del perdido
de las armadas
Quiero comprender porqué los colonizados
sueñan viajar a tu tierra
a pesar de la espada y de la cruz,
a pesar de todo.

España
Because I do not know you, Spain, I want to know your mountains, your trees, your Mother. I want to understand the cries of joy at bullfights, the gypsy songs, etc. I want to know why the colonized dream of seeing Spain.


( however, to satisfy the curious, I've provided a full (extremely literal) translation of the Spanish... )