By the Grace of God, It’s Official

^{translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush}

By the grace of God, it’s official:
I’ve drunk from the spring of the Spanish tongue
from the first lines of epic songs.
But my roots cling daily more deeply
to this difficult land of ours.
I sink my roots slowly in fertile valleys,
into gentle slopes of old olive trees,
into earth claimed inch by inch
from steep, sheer stone.
I sink my roots, impotent and raging,
while I seek other springs geographically closer.
I take a chisel and carve,
I polish daily stubborn and hard
words and syntax
that should spurt effortlessly,
as water surges from a spring.
I seek carefully other classics
to wipe the dust from everyday dusty words.
That’s why I say I angrily bite the earth,
I work words that have turned into granite,
the language in which I speak to my children,
in which at least I dream,
and that by the grace of God, it’s official,
I’ve found so hard to polish,
to make supple, to free of dust.