100 Refutations | Dominican Republic | Poetry | Spanish
April, 2018Eyes without light, and an anxious mind
Breath runs short inside the chest,
In rude agitations, life passes by…
Lost in vague penumbra
I watch, strewn about, the little clothes of a holy home
my children, in candid abandonment
never knowing how precariously luck hangs, suspended just above them
and above you, standing there, beneath an immense pain
pupils fogged up
from weeping
Salomé Ureña (1850-1897) was born in Santo Domingo. She was the daughter of lawyer and writer Nicolás Ureña de Mendoza and Gregoria Díaz de León. She was exposed to great literature from a very early age, as her father taught her the classics of both French and Spanish literary traditions. This was crucial in shaping Ureña’s own aesthetics and stylistic choices later in life. From adolescence onward, she could recite full passages of literature in Spanish, French, English, and Latin. She began writing verses at the age of fifteen and published her first works at the age of seventeen. Her later work was marked by nostalgia and patriotism. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 46 and was buried in the church of Nuestra Señora las Mercedes.
Lina M. Ferreira C.-V. (100 Refutations translator and editor) earned MFAs in creative nonfiction writing and literary translation from The University of Iowa. She is the author of Drown Sever Sing from Anomalous Press and Don’t Come Back from Mad River Books, as well as editor, with Sarah Viren, of the forthcoming anthology Essaying the Americas. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation work has been featured in journals including Bellingham Review, Chicago Review, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Poets & Writers, and The Sunday Rumpus, among others. She won Best of the Net and Iron Horse Review’s Discovered Voices Award, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and is a Rona Jaffe fellow. She moved from Colombia to China to Columbus, Ohio to Richmond, Virginia, where she works as an assistant professor for Virginia Commonwealth University. Visit www.linawritesessays.com.
English translation copyright (c) Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., 2018.