Rosalía Day – ‘The Poet Out of Time & Place’

To celebrate Rosalía Day, the Irish poet Michael Smith, who edited and translated Rosalía de Castro’s Selected Poems for Shearsman Books in 2007, has written the following poem, which we are honoured to publish on this blog:

THE POET OUT OF TIME & PLACE

in memoriam Rosalía de Castro (1837-1885)

Born out of time and place

as most of us think we are,

her sadness was not hers alone

but her people’s, too, inbred in her.

‘A village moaner,’ Unamuno said.

But his own moans – his mortality –

were longer and larger than hers

which she bore with as great courage.

A lost, loved child. Sickness.

Wanderings in a Castile not quite hers,

a heart-rending desire to return,

to die by the sea amid her own.

Their lost poetry her persistent love.

Her scattered folk never forgotten.

Michael Smith