Things That Begin With Y Poem by Yolanda Castaño

That nostalgia, the violets,
a rubric so alien to our languages,
being on a trip, Armenia, foreign signs,
the fleshy layer that covers my sensation.
A country that doesn't exist, the seventieth rare earth element,
the smallest copula in broad regions.
All that is male within me,
sometimes you, and others I,
I don't have a nine-letter word.
Victim and executioner embraced in a single language,
horizons to launch ourselves toward: to the sea, to Portugal, to Spain.
The impracticable path of the Tao, winged jails in the seventies,
the red of display screens, some silvery metals.
The point of your life at which you don't know what decision to take,
three equal lines dreaming a pact,
the dark memory of the terrible nation.
The violation of my name, the last thing I write to you.
Youth, running between our fingers in different directions.
When we open the door to poetry's bathroom
and find our father turned into a rock.
The mere idea that that south could be a yoke,
yo-lan-da-cas-ta-ño repeated until it doesn't mean anything.
According to some codes, my inevitable number,
the current generation from an island that begs,
the tailor's torment, debris from the Middle Ages.
The respected whim of the national patriarchs,
the sleepless isolation in a Swedish village,
the blessed taste of the grapes of Corinth,
mercy from your lips at a future time
and, between my legs, my sex
which also begins
with Y.

Translation: Lawrence Schimel