Yolanda Castaño

Yolanda Castaño Poems

Yolanda Castaño Biography

Yolanda Castaño Pereira (Santiago de Compostela, 1977) is a Galician painter, literacy critic and poet. Since 1990, she has lived in Corunna, where she studied Spanish Philology at the University of A Coruña. She translated her poems to Spanish and has been the General Secretary at the Association of Galician-language Writers (Spanish: Asociación de Escritores en Lingua Galega) and at Letras de Cal. She has also collaborated in several publications, such as Festa da palabra silenciada, Dorna, O Correo Galego (El Correo Gallego), A nosa terra and El Mundo.)

The Best Poem Of Yolanda Castaño

Apples From Tolstoy's Garden

I,
who traced by car the banks of the Neretva,
who exhausted on bicycle the steaming streets of Cophehnague.
I who measured with my own arms the holes of Sarajevo,
who crossed, in the driver's seat, the border of Slovenia
and overflew in a biplane the Ria of Betanzos.
I who set off in a ferry which docked on the coasts of Ireland,
and at the island of Ometepe in Lake Cocibolca;
I who will never forget that shop in Budapest,
nor the fields of cotton in the province of Tesalia,
nor a night when I was 17 in a hotel in Nice.
My memory wets its feet at Jurmala beach in Latvia
and on 6th Avenue feels at home.
I,
who could have died once taking in a taxi in Lima,
who crossed the yellow of the brilliant fields of Pakruojis
and crossed that same street as Margaret Mitchell in Atlanta.
My steps walked the pink sands of Elafonisi,
they crossed a corner in Brooklyn, the Charles Bridge, Lavalle street.
I who traversed desert to go to Essaouira,
who slid on a zip wire from the heights of Mombacho,
who won't forget the night I slept on the street itself in Amsterdam,
nor the Monastery of Ostrog, nor the stones of Meteora.
I who said a name aloud in the middle of a plaza in Gante,
who once cut through the Bosphorus dressed in promises,
who was never the same after that afternoon in Auschwitz.
I,
who drove east until near Podgorica,
who covered in a snowmobile the Vatnajókull glacier,
I who never felt as alone as in the rue de Sant Denis,
who will never taste grapes like the grapes of Corinto.
I, who one day plucked
apples from Tolstoy's garden,
I want to go back home:
the refuge
that I love most
of A Coruña

precisely in you.

Translation by Lawrence Schimel

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