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Translation - Spanish-English - Pan de Gabriela MistralCurrent status Translation
This text is available in the following languages:  
| | | Source language: Spanish
Pan
de Gabriela Mistral
Dejaron un pan en la mesa,
mitad quemado, mitad blanco,
pellizcado encima y abierto
en unos migajones de ampo.
Me parece nuevo o como no visto,
y otra cosa que él no me ha alimentado,
pero volteando su miga, sonámbula,
tacto y olor se me olvidaron.
Huele a mi madre cuando dio su leche,
huele a tres valles por donde he pasado:
a Aconcagua, a Pátzcuaro, a Elqui,
y a mis entrañas cuando yo canto.
Otros olores no hay en la estancia
y por eso él asà me ha llamado;
y no hay nadie tampoco en la casa
sino este pan abierto en un plato,
que con su cuerpo me reconoce
y con el mÃo yo reconozco.
Se ha comido en todos los climas
el mismo pan en cien hermanos:
pan de Coquimbo, pan de Oaxaca,
pan de Santa Ana y de Santiago.
En mis infancias yo le sabÃa
forma de sol, de pez o de halo,
y sabÃa mi mano su miga
y el calor de pichón emplumado...
Después le olvidé, hasta este dÃa
en que los dos nos encontramos,
yo con mi cuerpo de Sara vieja
y él con el suyo de cinco años.
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| Bread by Gabriela Mistral | | Target language: English
Bread
by Gabriela Mistral
They left a loaf of bread on the table,
white inside, brown crust,
its top broken into a scatter
of big snowy crumbs.
It seems new, a thing I've never seen,
yet it's all I've ever eaten,
but half-asleep, playing with its crumbs,
touch and smell are forgotten.
It smells like my mother suckling me.
It smells like my three valleys,
Aconcagua, Pa'tzcuaro, Elqui.
It smells like I feel when I'm singing.
There are no other smells in the farmhouse
and that's how it could call me.
Nobody else around the house,
only this loaf broken open on a plate
that knows me with its body
as I know it with mine.
Everywhere in the world its been eaten,
this same bread, its hundred brothers,
bread of Coquimbo, bread of Oaxaca,
bread of Santa Ana and Santiago.
When I was little, I knew it,
in the shape of a sun, a fish, a ring,
and my hand knew its inner warmth
like a plumy pigeon.
Then I forgot it till today,
when we two meet,
I with my body of an aged Sara,
it with the body of a five-year-old. | Remarks about the translation | The poetess is a Nobel Prize winner and this is a very beautiful poem. This translation is attributed to Ursula Le Guin and posted by Mary Agner on this web page:
https://lists.usm.maine.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0310&L=wom-po&P=24348 |
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Validated by kafetzou - 24 April 2007 02:40
Last messages | | | | |
22 April 2007 20:02 | | | To make the target match the source, please change
"Gabriela Mistral (tr. Ursula Le Guin)
For Teresa and Enrique Diez-Canedo"
to
"by Gabriela Mistral"
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23 April 2007 13:49 | | | Here is the rest of the translation that Una Smith posted - I cut it off because it was cut off in the original:
May dead friends with whom I ate it
in other valleys smell the sweetness
of bread milled in September,
harvested in Castile in August.
It's not the same and is the same
we ate in the lands they lie in.
I break the crust and offer them its warmth,
turn it, sending them its breath.
My hand is full of it,
and I'm looking at it in my hand.
I heave a sigh of regret
for the forgetfulness of years.
My face grows old, or young again,
with this discovery.
Since the house is empty,
we two rejoined can be together,
at this table without meat or fruit,
the two of us in this human silence
until once more we're one,
and our day has ended. | | |
23 April 2007 17:28 | | | Thanks. I didn't notice that the source text was not the complete poem. I got the message about source and target being different lengths, but I assumed it was due to the extra attributions at the top. | | |
24 April 2007 02:41 | | | I changed it as you requested - I didn't see the request until now. |
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