Sara Estela Ramirez
translated by
Alicia Mireles Christoff
2 Poems
Only to the Stars
For Celvia’s album
Oh beauty, don’t tell anyone your secrets
No one on this earth;
Not to souls, which are nests of love,
Not to waves, which are nurseries for pearls.
Guard jealously, from everyone, your secrets:
From crossing winds,
From the light, from the arpeggio, from the roses
– your twin sisters –
Because all those bitches . . . roses and souls . . .
In colloquies of love, they are indiscreet.
Don’t tell anyone your secrets
No one on this earth . . .
Your jewelry box of daydreams and lovers:
Only to the stars!
You know why? Because stars do not profane
Sublime confidences of love.
They guard, secret and mysterious
In their brilliant light, those poems –
Birthed from the kiss of souls,
Forever dying at the mouths of absent lovers.
Oh beauty, don’t tell anyone your secrets
No one of this earth:
Your jewelry box of daydreams and lovers,
No one but the stars:
Those celestial girls up there, yes they can measure your loves,
Yes they can measure your losses,
Yes they can sound your hopes,
Yes they can sound your dreams.
Only up there, in the light of their star-slung pupils,
Will no one profane your confidence.
Laredo, Texas
May 2, 1908
Surge!
To woman
Surge! Rise up, with fists! Into life, into activity, into the beauty of actually living: surge – like sap
into tree the tips, like electricity in a storm – gorgeous with energy, resplendent with virtue, strong as
hell.
You, sitting all queenly, universally adored, a sovereign attended by her vassals: don’t lock yourself up
like that, all triumphant in your holy temple or your courtesan’s chamber.
That’s not worthy of you. Don’t be a Queen or a Goddess: be a mother, be a woman! (You think
you need men for your worship? Ha!)
A woman, a true woman, is more than a god or a queen. Don’t get drunk on the incense at your altar
or the applause at the footlights. (Fuck that noise!) There are greater and nobler things than all of
that.
Gods are thrown out of their temples; rulers are kicked off their thrones. Woman is always woman.
Gods live only so long as their believers wish it. Rulers live only so long as they are not dethroned.
But woman lives forever, and the secret of her bliss? Living.
Only action is life; and the feeling of coming to life – pins and needles in your fingertips – is the
most beautiful sensation.
Surge, then – like a wave, like a crowd – toward the gorgeousness in life. Rise up like this:
resplendent, strong, revolutionary.
Laredo, Texas
April 9, 1910
Bios
Alicia Mireles Christoff is a Mexican American poet and literary critic. She is Associate Professor of English at Amherst College, where she teaches courses on literature and critical theory. Her scholarly work includes articles in journals like PMLA and her book Novel Relations: Victorian Fiction and British Psychoanalysis (Princeton University Press, 2019), winner of the Sonya Rudikoff Prize for best first book in Victorian studies and the Courage to Dream Prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association. Her poems and reviews of contemporary Latinx literature have appeared in the LA Review of Books, Public Books, The Common, Guernica, Yale Review, Boston Review (where she was named a semifinalist in the 2020 poetry contest), and Peach Mag (where her poem 'Desert Change' won the 2020 Silver in Poetry Prize).
From Alicia Mireles Christoff: “Sara Estela Ramírez (1881-1910) was a transborder poet, journalist, teacher, trade union organizer, human rights advocate, important spokesperson of the PLM (the Mexican Liberal Party), and member of the Hijas de Cuauhtemoc. The only other published translations of these poems of which I am aware are by Chicana scholar and poet Inés Hernandez (later Inés Hernandez Tovar) in an academic article published in the journal Legacy in 1989.”