![[light study]](https://i0.wp.com/lightstudy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/light-study-logos-1-2.png?fit=1745%2C260&ssl=1)
Translated by Dana Delibovi
The Breath
I don’t know where
the wind that carries me
arises. Or the
sigh that consoles me,
or the air
that steadily lifts my breast
and holds aloft
my invisible flight.
I am just a stem
shuddering in the breeze,
the acquiescent
tool,
the graceful flute
resonating with a puff.
El aliento
No se de donde viene
el viento que me lleva,
el suspiro que me consuela,
el aire que acompasadamente
mueve mi pecho
y alienta
mi invisible vuelo.
Yo soy apenas
la planta que se estremece
por la brisa,
el sumiso instrumento,
la grácil flauta
que resuena
por un soplo de viento.
Translator’s Note
“El aliento” was originally published in 1970 by Alaíde Foppa in her illustrated chapbook, Elogio de mi cuerpo, which I like to translate as Honor My Body. The poems in the volume are short and, as the poem here attests, simple and direct. Foppa loves a strong verb and a specific adjective, giving her poems great energy in small packages. She remains one of my favorite Latin American poets of the last century.
Alaíde Foppa was a poet and translator born in 1914 in Barcelona. In the 1940s, Foppa immigrated to Guatemala, where she married and had five children. Following a CIA- backed coup in 1954, Foppa and her family fled Guatemala for México. There, she taught at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Foppa published four volumes of poetry in her lifetime, including an illustrated version Elogio de mi cuerpo (1970). In 1980, she disappeared and was presumed assassinated in Guatemala.
Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. She has published a collection of translations and critical essays, Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila (Monkfish, 2024); she is also the translator of the forthcoming bilingual edition of Rocío Cerón’s Áurica Speculari (El Martillo). Delibovi’s work has appeared in After the Art, Apple Valley Review, Asymptote, Ballast, Ekstasis, Noon, Salamander, and many other journals. She is consulting poetry editor at the e-zine Cable Street.