Fogarty & Garrido: A Bilingual Conversation between 4 Poems

By and | 1 November 2012
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La Llave de Mi Casa – Juan Garrido-Salgado


Para miles de palestinos

la casa ya no existe.

¡Por qué!

Casa y llave tienen igual recuerdos

Usted puede entrar y permanecer allí

Comer, hablar y reír

Dormir con sus hijos y su familia

No en Palestina.

¿Por qué?

La llave abre no sólo la puerta

Es el lugar donde vives y donde están provenían sus raíces

La Llave no es sólo un pedazo de metal, la llave es una vida abierta

de amor y felicidad

La llave no es solo un símbolo, es parte de tu vida

La llave es dada a ti por la confianza y para cuidarte

Entonces, ¿por qué me quitan mi casa y solo me dejan la llave?

Abro mis recuerdos, mi corazón y través de mis ojos

Las lágrimas caen como terremoto o bombas en mi alma.

No sé qué hacer

Sin tierra, sin casa sólo esta llave es la evidencia de lo que soy.

Soy palestino, crecí y vivo aquí en esta tierra sagrada.




The Key of My House


For thousands of Palestinian people

Home doesn’t exist anymore.

Why!

Home and this key have equals memories

You can go in and stay there

Eating, talking and laughing

Sleeping with your children and family

Not in Palestine.

Why?

The key opens not only the door

It is where you live and where your roots came from

The key is not only a piece metal, key is an opened life

Love and happiness

The key is not a symbol it is part of your life

The key is given to you by trust and care for

So why take away my home and leave me the key?

I open my memories, my heart and through my eyes

Tears fall like earthquakes or bombs in my soul

I don’t know what to do

Without a land, without a home only this key is evidence

I am Palestinian and I grew up and live here in this holy land.
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Lionel Fogarty was born in 1958 at Barambah, now known as Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve, in the South Burnett region of southern Queensland. Since the 1970s he has been active in many of the political struggles of the Aboriginal people, from the Land Rights movement, to setting up Aboriginal health and legal services, to the issue of black deaths in custody. His first collection of poetry, Kargun, was published in 1980, and he has gone on to publish eight further collections, as well as a children’s book, Booyooburra, a traditional Wakka Wakka story. Fogarty has also travelled widely in the United States and Europe, reading from his work and participating in conferences of Indigenous peoples. An unabashedly political poet, Fogarty’s poetry employs Aboriginal English in innovative ways, challenging readers to reconfigure cultural assumptions.

More by Lionel Fogarty on Cordite Poetry Review →
Juan Garrido Salgado was born in Chile and was a political prisoner under the Pinochet regime. He now lives in Adelaide. He has published three books of poetry, and his poems have been published in Chile, Colombia, Spain, El Salvador, Brazil, Europe, New Zealand and Australia. He has also translated into Spanish works from John Kinsella, Mike Ladd, Judith Beveridge, Dorothy Porter and MTC Cronin, including Talking to Neruda’s Questions. He has translated five Aboriginal poets for Espejo de Tierra/Earth Mirror Poetry Anthology. With Steve Brock and Sergio Holas, Garrido-Salgado also translated into English the trilingual Mapuche Poetry Anthology, and has translated many of Lionel Fogorty’s poems into Spanish. He is currently working on the Spanish translation of a selection of Jumoke Verissimo’s poems, to be read at the Granada International Poetry Festival in Nicaragua.

More by Juan Garrido Salgado on Cordite Poetry Review →

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