Cinco poemas de A lentitude, o libro que María do Cebreiro publicou en Chan da Pólvora Editora no ano 2018, acaban de aparecer no xornal literario americano Waxwing [waswingmag.org], traducidos por Jacob Roberts. Os poemas reflecten, segundo Roberts, esa inclinación que caracteriza á poeta galega de mesturar as “reflexións esotéricas e filosóficas cunha brevidade case aforística e unha linguaje engaiolante e mística”. En todo o conxunto de A lentitude, engade o tradutor, a poeta invoca a natureza, os elementos, os corpos, as nocións humanas ou as construcións humanas como un espello no que contemplarnos nós mesmos. Os poemas traducidos son O lume, O xeo, Unha cantiga, O Futuro e O Chan.
Así é O lume [páxina 9 da edición de Chan da Pólvora] na tradución ao inglés:
I threw the ring into the river. Some things
are a dead weight. We make
metal objects because we lack faith
in the duration of bonds. I had faith in
water. I thought it would carry away the ring
and guide it to death, darker
and more consistent than life.
The river couldn’t clean away a thing.
There’s no being born again for the newborn,
just as there’s no rebirth for the resurrected.
I sat down on the bank. One side
said: “A river that shifts plants is
a river that drowns them.” The other side
said: “Life has spines but one day,
out of the blue, a flower will bloom.”
What you need is a baptism by fire.
Life, scorched earth. I want to be
like flame, I want to watch the fire burn.
