There was a canon within his gaze and memory that other gazes and memories had failed to alter, and in the early days of his return, he felt not only that peace of the Plain, which fed the nostalgia of those departing, but also that criterion of the adobe scattered with a whimsical freedom that made houses shelters for each one’s solitude, ramparts of respect or indifference. But when he returned from his second emigration, the internal canon of his gaze and memory had been erased in the long years of absence, and to this had contributed the conviction that Celama represented nothing else, beyond nostalgia and abandonment, than a misty past full of uncertainties and suffering. The peace of the Plain was more precisely the peace of poverty, and in the tired observation of the defeated returning migrant, it was disorder that structured those towns forsaken by God, grown in the shipwreck of the archipelago, with adobe clutching their existence like a scorched leprosy.
“The Kingdom of Celama” by Luis Mateo Diez
Translated from Spanish
Luis Mateo Diez surprises me with his magnificent prose. There is poetry in every description, in every sensation experienced by embattled humans who tried to make it in those towns ‘forsaken by God.” It is an excellent gift to all of us readers, especially now on Christmas, “But when he returned from his second emigration, the internal canon of his gaze and memory had been erased in the long years of absence, and to this had contributed the conviction that Celama represented nothing else, beyond nostalgia and abandonment, than a misty past full of uncertainties and suffering.”
Original:
Existía un canon en el interior de su mirada y su memoria que otras miradas y recuerdos no habían logrado alterar, y en los primeros días del regreso sintió no sólo esa paz de la Llanura, que tanto alimentaba las nostalgias de los que se iban, sino ese criterio del adobe desparramado con una libertad caprichosa que hacía de las casas refugios de la soledad de cada uno, parapetos del respeto o la indiferencia. Pero cuando volvió de su segunda emigración, el canon interior de su mirada y memoria se había borrado en los largos años de ausencia, y a ello había contribuido la convicción de que Celama no representaba otra cosa, más allá de las nostalgias y el desamparo, que un brumoso pasado lleno de incertidumbres y sufrimiento. La paz de la Llanura era más exactamente la de la pobreza, y en la cansada observación del emigrante enfermo que volvía derrotado, era el desorden lo que estructuraba aquellos pueblos dejados de la mano de Dios, crecidos en el naufragio del archipiélago, con el adobe que aferraba su existencia como una lepra calcinada.
