In Cynthia Steele’s translation of Rocío González’s “Evolución,” a solitary goose is at once a visual anchor and a means of withdrawing from human vision. The physical traits of its species are absent from the poem, while its iconic V-formation is withheld until the poem’s end. Instead, the goose becomes “a blind eye,” a receptivity moving through space, “unfazed” by its unlikely obstacles, probing the edge of possibilities where survival and necessity meet. For another species, those places might be “shores or rivers,” but this unsettling creature (“a tidy scandal”) refuses the rest and stasis that might turn those liquid bodies into habitats. The relationship between figure and ground, creature and its environment, is thus continually and gently modulated. Steele’s careful tracking of the shifts in the poem’s textures and registers makes “Evolution” a pleasure to read, and a thoughtful exploration of an identity that emerges from a sensibility, a social configuration necessitated from without. –The Editors and the Poetry Staff
Evolution
A goose is a blind eye
in summer, a tidy scandal,
an offering to devastation.
Without shores or rivers, she seeks the edge
of survival, moving forward, destitute
and proud, until the end of her days.
Unfazed by the lemon tree or the rock
or the vast plateau of the possible,
she moves forward, condemned,
no turning back,
toward the high clouds,
where perfection
is a symmetrical flight
with others of her species.
Evolución
Una oca es un ojo ciego
en el estío, un escándalo pulcro,
una ofrenda a la devastación.
Sin ribera y sin río busca los límites
de la sobrevivencia. Avanza, indigente
y altiva, hasta el último de sus días.
Un limonero no la turba, ni la roca
ni el vasto altiplano de lo posible.
Avanza, condenado, sin retorno,
hacia las altas nubes,
donde la perfección
es un vuelo simétrico
con otros de su misma especie.
March 2020