100 Refutations: Day 47

Behind My Voice

Behind my voice
—listen, listen—
another voice sings.

It comes from behind, from far.
It comes from the buried
mouths and it sings.

They say they are not dead
—listen to them, listen to them—
while the voice rises
remembers them and sings.

Listen, listen:
another voice sings.

They say they live now
in your eyes,
sustain them with your eyes,
with your words.

So that they are not lost.
So that they do not fall.

They are not only memory,
they are open to life
open wide.

Listen, listen:
another voice sings.

Bios

Circe Maia

Circe Maia is a Uruguayan poet, translator, essayist, and longtime philosophy teacher. She has published over a dozen collections of poetry, as well as several books of prose and translations.

Jesse Lee Kercheval

Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of 14 books of poetry and fiction, and a translator specializing in Uruguayan poetry. Recent books include The Invisible Bridge: Selected Poems of Circe Maia; Fable of an Inconsolable Man by Javier Etchevarren; and América Invertida: An Anthology of Emerging Uruguayan Poets. She is the Zona Gale Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin.

Copyright (c) Circe Maia. English translation copyright (c) Jesse Lee Kercheval, 2018.