When All At Once Poem by Marta Pessarrodona

Undeniably, my luck was now running out
and my salad days were withering.

Had my writing been a failure?
Had it all been an illusion?

The god had forsaken Antony, that's for sure;
and, on the rebound, a mythical Cleopatra of the mind.

From the Hôtel Métropole I could see the sea,
just as Morgan and his friend the clerk had seen it.

Over there, irrigation, as in the Buenos Aires poultry inspectorate.
Is it always like this, the everyday of the great poets?

I contemplated the orphanhood of the absent lighthouse,
the non-existent footprints of the eternal foreigner,

and, deep inside, where a road comes to an end,
I wept and, in particular, remembered.

From the Greek Club I conversed with myself
in my own tongue, with my Catalan-Limousin-Occitan.

The others, the barbarians, talked among themselves in Aramaic,
while I said farewell to a bookish Alexandria.

The blood running in my veins was by no means cold,
nor the memory of these absences less poignant.

Obediently, courageously, already well-prepared,
I say goodbye today to the Alexandria I am losing.

I pay no heed to the moans of the faint-hearted,
for they never gave me any city at all.

Today, in full flight, I survey
the Alexandria which, safe and secure, is in my grasp.

Translated into English by Anna Crowe