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WINTER 2022-23

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COSTA RICAN POETRY IN TRANSLATION
Ronald Bonilla

YOU HAVE TO BE BORN, BE BORN…

You have to be born again
to pick the sky of its fruit,
or your thirst button
or your nipple thread.
You have to be born,
you have to be born
to know of the intangible
substance of love.
You have to push the matrix
to be born into the wind.
And maybe you dreamed
painfully of forgetfulness,
floating between the verses
of an impossible October.
But I didn’t have those parks,
nor the jungles of frightened lianas,
nor the table served,
nor the snail returning
in the morning
from his nocturnal
hustle and bustle.
I’ve had nothing but nothingness
turning corners
no moons among the orphanages.
I look at your footprints in the grass
a powder of lights, until they touch the water,
and this river of angels
becomes a whirlwind background
where all the parks are already ours.

Ronald Bonilla (b. 1951), Costa Rican poet was a founder of the transcendentalist movement. Son of a classical violinist, he was recruited at the age of fourteen to participate in the literary workshops of the Círculo de Poetas Costarricenses, was a participant in leftist student politics in the 70, and more recently was one of the main founders of the Poiesis Literary Group and President of the Poiesis Publishing House founded in 2015 together with Lucía Alfaro.