Patti Smith + Maria Mercè Marçal

The poetry of Maria Mercè Marçal read by Patti Smith for the Baryshnikov Arts Center

Motto Translation by D. Sam Abrams

I am grateful to fate for three gifts: to have been born a woman, from the working class and an oppressed nation.

And the turbid azure of being three times a rebel.

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Two Teeth Translation by D. Sam Abrams

Two teeth have left

a trace of pomegranate

on my breast, when you still have none to sink

into what is melting away.

---

Like the Murderer Returning to the Scene of the Crime Translation by Christopher Whyte

Like the murderer returning to the scene of the crime,

having lost the memory and forgotten its loss,

who finds at the door the one he had thought dead

and, not knowing why, enslaved to him,

becomes the dog that guards his home

from death, the absent thief

that can steal the ransom,

that is how I returned to the love scene