By Kirmen Uribe.
BIRTH
At thirteen, you were born before my eyes.
Just like that, all at once.
It was a weird birth, since you were born
as we were having a pizza for supper.
There’d been no pregnancy,
no walking the floor, no changing diapers.
I never took you to school
holding your hand on the first day.
I didn’t teach you hopscotch
or hide-and-seek, either.
I didn’t go down to the beach with you
to see that ailing dolphin.
I swear I’d long to have done all that,
I feel the absence of it every single day.
But you were born at age thirteen,
just like that, all at once, and over pizza.
I know for sure that you were truly born
in the cold spring of Denmark
and there was ground-frost on your birthday.
I know for sure that you do have a father,
you have people all around you who love you,
friends, aunts, grandparents
and obviously, a mother.
Of course, no one at all is only anyone’s.
We have to learn to share the ones we love.
And I’m another, last to get in line.
Just to say,
I feel like a child myself when I am with you
and with you I buckle down and learn,
as if I knew nothing of hopscotch,
as if I were seeing dolphins for the first time.
Just to say,
your birth is real for me;
despite your being born at thirteen,
just like that, all at once, and over pizza.
BIRDS IN WINTER
Saving the birds was our mission that winter.
Saving the birds imprisoned in the snow.
All along the beach most of them were hidden,
nestled in the shade of the black sea.
The birds were black, too.
From the coverts we’d take them and carry them home
in our coat pockets.
The tiniest birds, barely contained
in even our child-sized hands.
Later, we’d lay them beside the warm stove.
But the birds never lasted long.
In two or three hours they died.
We didn’t see why,
didn’t understand their bad luck.
After all, we’d given them
breadcrumbs moistened in milk,
held to their mouths, to eat,
and furnished a nest for each
with our most colorful winter scarves.
but it was useless, they kept on dying.
Furious, our parents told us
not to bring home any more birds,
they were dying of too much heat.
And that nature is wise,
spring would come with its own birds.
We sat and considered their statements,
then momentarily doubted,
it could be that they would be right.
Still and all, the very next day
we would flock off back to the beach
to save the birds,
though we knew
it was fruitless as snow in the sea.
And our birds kept dying, these birds taking life.
Translated from the Basque by Elizabeth Macklin.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The work of Kirmen Uribe (born in Ondarroa in 1970) has brought a “quiet revolution” to Basque literature, in the words of literary critic Jon Kortazar. In 2009, Uribe won the National Prize of Literature for his novel Bilbao-New York-Bilbao, a very original work that was received as a literary event in Spain. The critics have highlighted its capacity for finding new narrative forms within fiction without losing authenticity and communication with the reader. His book of poems Bitartean heldu eskutik (Meanwhile Take My Hand, Visor, 2003) was awarded the Critics ´ Prize and has been translated into Spanish, French, Russian, Catalan, and English. Elizabeth Macklin’s translation into English was honored by the PEN American Center. Uribe obtained a Basque philology degree in Vitoria and completed postgraduate studies of comparative literature in Trento, Italy. He is the author of several multimedia projects that combine literature with different artistic disciplines, created in collaboration with musicians and artists of audiovisual and plastic arts. He also has written essays and fiction for children and young adults.
