Like many writers, I feel centered when I write, or it might be better to say, when I don’t write, when I can’t write for whatever reason, I feel, frankly, de-stabilized. It’s dangerous for me not to write.
Sigrid Nunez
Hope Sandrow, Palm Sunday, Century City I L.A., 1983, silver print. Courtesy of Oggi Domani, New York.
During the mornings
I hear the song of the zenzontles,
zanates, guises and gorriones;
the waters of a riverbed flow near a Ceiba.
There the birds fly upward
and then dive for a sip of water.
During the war
this ceiba
remained leafless, alone and without birds
and its trunk gored by bullets
Poetry Workshop of Barrio La Primavera
Translated from the Spanish by Zoë Anglesey.
From Poesia Libre, #7, July 1982 and The Dalmo’ma Anthology, Empty Bowl Press, 1984.
Originally published in
Nicolas Echevarria, Pam Yates, art by James Nares and Tom Otterness, writing by Daisy Zamora, Kathy Acker, Glenn O’Brien, and more.
Like many writers, I feel centered when I write, or it might be better to say, when I don’t write, when I can’t write for whatever reason, I feel, frankly, de-stabilized. It’s dangerous for me not to write.
Sigrid Nunez