Our translation of Gabriel Ferrater’s penetrating Catalan poem

TIMES PAST 
Gabriel Ferrater

Translation from Catalan of “Temps enrera” by Brett Hetherington and Antoni Cardona.


Let me escape from here and go back to your time
Let’s meet again in the same place as always
I look up to the white sky, the thin black iron footbridge,
the humble herb in an earth of coal
and I hear the express train’s whistle

That enormous vibration is running past us
And we have to shout to speak
We give up talking and I laugh at the way you laugh 
and how I can’t hear you.

I see the grey sky of your blouse, aqua blue
short loose skirt and long red scarf you put around your neck.
The flag of your country 
I said that to you

Everything is like that day. The words we said are coming back. And now, you
see, that moment has come back. For no reason we stop talking
Your hand is suffering, and doing
like it did in the past: a hesitating flight,
giving up, the game played with the sad sound
of a bicycle bell 

Luckily, unlike this day when iron steps are catching us, the
over-the-top song of the green men encircles us and an imperious cry (like the
malignant gold of a snake rearing in front of us unexpectedly) forces us from
fear to hide our heads, until they are gone

Now we have forgotten ourselves
We are happy again because they have gone
This movement without memory brings us together,
and we are happy to be here, the two of us, and it doesn’t matter
that we’ve stopped talking
We can kiss each other
We are young
We don’t feel any sorrow for the silences of the past
We are afraid of the others that are distracting us from our fears

We’re going down the avenue, and every tree
covers us in heavy shade. We are cold,
going from cold to cold, unthinkingly.


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For more on this poem, see an article by Maria Àngels Cabré here: https://www.gabrielferrater.cat/2022/03/temps-enrera-maria-angels-carbre/