Manuel Forcano

Manuel Forcano Poems

Manuel Forcano Biography

Manuel Forcano was born in Barcelona in 1968. He has a PhD in Semitic Languages from the University of Barcelona. Forcano has lectured Hebrew and Aramaic at the University of Barcelona. He has translated from Hebrew to Catalan the work of various modern Israeli poets such as Pinkhas Sadé, Roni Someck and Yehuda Amichai, as well as the novel El mateix mar (The Same Sea, 2002) by Amos Oz. He has also translated Els viatges d’Ibn Battuta (Ibn Battuta’s Voyages, 2005) from Arabic to Catalan, in conjunction with Margarida Castells. Furthermore, Forcano has published a book of historical and literary essays: A fil d’espasa: Les croades vistes pels jueus (The Sword’s Edge: The Crusades Through Jewish Eyes, 2007).)

The Best Poem Of Manuel Forcano

Here

You could make the jungle sprout
in your office. Imagine that Plaça Universitat
is in the savannah, and Tibidabo
is tall and white as Kenya's Kilimanjaro.
You could transform the Lady with the Umbrella,
turn her into the mighty Colossus of Rhodes
astride the mouth of the island's ancient port.
You could believe the supermarket
is Aleppo's grand bazaar,
Vallcarca viaduct
a bridge over the Seine,
and Putxet park the sacred grove at Delphi.
You could tell yourself you're at Sounion when each evening
you watch the sun disappear behind roofs covered in aerials,
that the house cat is a Bengal tiger
and the dark passage between your room and the kitchen
is the mysterious interior of a pyramid.
You could believe your bedside light
is the immense sun that lights up the sea bed
and the rugged shores of Guinea.
You could. But you'd still be
here.

Translated by Lucie Maguire

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