The Farewell Light

“I dedicate these poems of compound times / to all the people who have been a part of me. // I didn’t mean to publish them,” writes Venezuelan poet Nidia Hernández in The Farewell Light, translated into English by Rowena Hill. Nostalgia permeates this collection; in “The Following Sky,” we read:

already nothing is the same

beauty touches rock bottom

what nostalgia

sadness is a boat

butterflies
change place too

The speaker recalls formative memories that convey the sense of displacement that took hold when she was separated from her loved ones:

today I found out you were going to die

is there something to know?
about the fear
the thoughts of the rain
sadness?

Rather than focus on specific details, most of the poems consider key moments and figures from the speaker’s life—a missed celebration or occasion, her mother’s death, spending time with her sister, her dog Loba—while examining the emotional toll of living far from those she loves, without the possibility of return: “Today is your birthday / I won’t be able to hug you.”

Hill executes an incredible rendering of these poems, remaining faithful to the structure and line length in most poems while allowing the author’s choices to guide her translations:

Hernández’s evocative language and lyricism beautifully capture the emotional tension of the exile who recalls painful memories as she adjusts to a new country and learns a new language: “I’m stumbling in a different language / counting and discounting words.” In a world where time often seems to be measured in goodbyes, it is the light of the sun that keeps the speaker anchored in the present, reminding her of what remains:

outside everything was saying goodbye
except the sun that promised
to come back every day