issue 33: winter 2026

CHUS PATO

The Happiness of Volcanoes / A ledicia dos volcáns

Translated from the Galician by Erín Moure

In these new  poems by Chus Pato, the word is no mere instrument: it is animal, mosquito, serpent that rears up, a city and star ablaze. It defies colonialism, power and the law. Loyal to the lava of language, for Pato, the poem resists, as fierce life, the patriarchal and ecodestructive orders of the world.

The poems are the opening sequence of a long poem entitled “The Happiness of Volcanoes,” which is part of a work-in-progress entitled S. It beckons volcanoes, serpents, and rhythm (metrics) itself. In homage to Mexico City and its history of Indigenous resistance, the poem is an anticolonial, antipatriarchal plea.

Erín Moure
25 June 2026

Esta é a posición das serpes:
hibernan en si
-este o tempo no que lle medra a plumaxe-
incuban un poema
non caen
adoran un astro en chamas

son nativas
asubíanche
para que en ti persistan as bocas da noite

deixan atrás
a segura procesión do que razoas
destrúen
adoran un corazón en chamas

The serpents are poised:
they hibernate coiled into themselves
–it’s the time when they grow their plumage–
they incubate a poem
they don’t fall
they adore a blazing star

they are native
they hissed at you
so that the mouths of night would persist in you

they discard
the safe procession of whatever you’re thinking
they destroy
they adore a heart in flames    

Era unha cidade o que se estendía baixo o ceo
non estaba rodeada de montañas
a unha altitude as serpes non lle chaman unha montaña
Era noite
pero a min non me preocupaba o asalto
As luces eran da cor dos cabelos da idade
Non nevaba
Era unha cidade metro
a medida de todas as cousas

Extended beneath the skies lay a city
no mountains surrounded it
at this height the serpents don’t call it mountain
It was night
but the assault did not perturb me
The lights were the colour of hair gone old
It wasn’t snowing
It was a metrical city
the beat of all things

Eulalia vivía no oco que se forma cando as serpes se enrodelan
concentrábase
Persisten na noite
O corpo de Eulalia posuía as bocas da noite
a do pracer
e a que é a dona dos pneumas

Eulalia era a columna vertebral das serpes  

Eulalia lived in the hollow where serpents lie coiled
she was concentrating
They persist in the night
Eulalia’s body possessed the mouths of the night
those of pleasure
and those which rule the pneumas 

Eulalia was the serpents’ vertebral column

Aquí
onde rotundamente vestida de verde 

piedade para a menta

piedade para as lombas que descoñecen a lei
e resisten

piedade para as gasas que sosteñen o cerebro

para o volcán
que descoñece e resiste

madre linguaxe madre lingua madre voz
cando limpas o cráter

para a morte

Here
where all is clothed utterly in green

mercy for the mint

mercy for the hills that know not the law
and resist

mercy for the gauzes that keep the brain intact

for the volcano
that knows not and resists

mother language mother tongue mother voice
when you cleanse the crater

for death

O hime é elástico
impúlsate contra o límite
pero non é un mar
camiñas a pedra negra
a lastra de poro aberto
case imperceptible esa levitación,
nas xuntas
onde a paixón ardeu
cinza
un ton menor que o brillo na obsidiana
Levas o anel da nai
o anel do parto

non coñecías o perigo
non sabías
o sexo da noite
os pneumas

The hymen is supple
it impels you to the edge
but is not a sea
you walk on black stone
on open-pored slabs
it’s almost imperceptible, that levitation,
at the seams
where passion blazed
ash
one shade lighter than the gleam of obsidian
You wear your mother’s ring
ring of childbirth

you were oblivious to danger
you knew not
the genitals of the night
the pneumas

Se estableces a nai do lume
e a órbita dun astro
se estableces un metro
-o metro é a cidade
víchela canda baixabas, ías nun tráiler
se cadra desde o porto de Bagdad 
a cidade é unha imaxe gravada en placa de platino e iridio
o metro é unha imaxe
unha cidade inalterable-
Se estableces a elipse
se fundas a cidade,
que é o que lle arde na boca á nai do lume?
que, aquilo secreto que ía canda ti nos tráileres
que roda sen tregua
e establece un metro invariable?
Estableces o biface de sílex
estableces a améndoa de obsidiana
-a mao que talla as lascas da amendoa é a mesma que afía o gume do sílex-
Ti
aceptas no ventre a pelota de plumas
os cascabeis no rostro
Ti elixes a diagonal
trázala desde a palabra verdade ata o cranio e o corazón
porque os atopa porque os corta
arde

If you establish the mother of fire  
and the orbit of a star
if you establish metre, a beat
–this metre is the city
did you see it as you rode down, shut in a truck trailer
perhaps from the port of Baghdad
the city is an image etched on a plate of platinum and iridium
metre is an image
an inalterable city–
If you establish the ellipse
if you found the city,
what is it that blazes in the mouth of the mother of fire?
and what is the secret that came with you in the trailer
that rolls on
and establishes a steady beat?
You establish the dual face of silex
you establish the almond of obsidian 
–the hand that chips flakes from the almond also hones the silex blade–
You
accept the balled feathers inside your belly
the rattles in your face
You select the diagonal slash
trace it from the word truth out to the skull and heart
and because it finds them because it cuts them
it blazes

Chus Pato is a celebrated Galician poet. Seven of her twelve books of poetry are translated into English, including Sonora (Veliz Books, 2026, recipient in original Galician of the Spanish National Poetry Prize in 2024) and The Face of the Quartzes (Veliz Books, 2021). Her books have also been translated into Spanish, Catalan, Dutch, Portuguese and Bulgarian, with individual works in many other languages. She has performed throughout Europe and South America, Canada, USA, Mexico, Cuba, as well as in India and north Africa. She lives and writes in central Galicia in the northwest of Spain.

Erín Moure is a Canadian poet and translator. Often hybrid in form, her books explore the possibility of queer citizenship as well as the potentialities of language/s. She has published 19 books of poetry and translations of more than 25 books of poetry by others from Galician, Spanish, French, and Portuguese (including Nicole Brossard, Andrés Ajens, Chantal Neveu, Rosalia de Castro, Chus Pato, Fernando Pessoa). Her most recent book is Theophylline: a poetic migration via the modernisms of Rukeyser, Bishop, Grimké (Anansi, 2023), and her most recent translation is of Galician poet Chus Pato’s Sonora (Veliz Books, 2026).