Words by María Baranda
Photographs by Laurence Ellis
The cloud forests of Veracruz, Mexico are otherworldly in their beauty and lifegiving in their nature. As climate change and industrialization close in on these disappearing landscapes, Mexican poet María Baranda contemplates the multitudes they contain—the forest beyond the trees.
El mar mira al bosque.
El bosque no tiene mar.
El bosque es simple. Es rojo es un corazón de tigre que ruge y es luz
con tres rayas blancas y grita. No grita.
El bosque sale a la luz y apuñala a nubes y a pájaros. Es un alma que se pierde.
Es inocente como un gusano que nace y canta. No canta. Dice en la noche.
El bosque silba de noche y aparece en el ojo del ojo de las culebras muertas.
Se retuerce. Es un lecho de raíces terráqueas hinchándose a solas.
El bosque está a solas.
Es una luna helada que contempla el paso de una niña.
El bosque mira, ve y es el llanto de esa niña. Es fiebre y cruje y es la huella
que dejó esa niña. Y es la niña y todo lo que fue. Es su paso.
Y así.
El bosque es un salto de admiración en las noticias. Arde y quema y duele.
Se come a sí mismo. Nace nacido y no. No nace. Está y se redime en cada cabeza.
Se mueve gira se desvanece y se forma. Fulgura. El bosque fulgura.
Se ilumina siempre siempre siempre.
Es el no regresar y el regreso es la hoja que cae lenta y se pudre y es disímil
y se desquita.
El bosque entierra un pensamiento y luego una verdad y luego una confesión.
El bosque es una multitud de sueños inaccesibles o tal vez solo sea lo inaccesible.
El bosque parece que es.
Y es.
Y cae y vuelve a caer. Y luego ya no.
Es polvo y sitio de palabras que hablan y ríen como piedras de la boca.
Tu boca.
El bosque es tu boca.
El bosque es una forma del ridículo.
El bosque es un lugar y un tiempo y una guerra. Dos guerras. Cien. O más como en el amor que entra y destruye todo y luego ya no. El bosque ama y ahí se aman. Aman
los que aman. Los que buscan una satisfacción. El bosque no. Es impávido y fuerte
y se encuentra a sí mismo como un poema que es.
El bosque es verde lunar, verde Veracruz, verde de verso verde.
A veces es blanco.
Y duele.
El bosque es blanco si duele.
El bosque es el día final de un año.
El bosque es incierto. No se dice. No se sabe. El bosque arde si lo ves.
No lo veas.
No lo digas. No digas de él.
El bosque es un vacío.
Es bosque.
El bosque es pensado y sentido y transformado en él. Es la ignorancia de ser él.
El bosque es como es. El bosque es la realidad.
En el bosque hay letreros de perros perdidos de niños muertos y también perdidos.
El bosque guarda su centro. Es apogeo, torre, atalaya. Es la almena de un castillo que mira al bosque y se ve en él.
El bosque no mira al mar.
El mar.
The Forest
The sea looks at the forest.
The forest has no sea.
The forest is simple. It’s red, it’s a roaring tiger heart, and it’s light
with three white stripes and screams. It does not scream.
The forest comes to light and stabs clouds and birds. It is a soul that gets lost.
It is innocent like a worm that is born and sings. It does not sing. At night it speaks.
The forest whistles at night and appears in the eye of the dead snake’s eye.
It twists. It is a bed of earthly roots swelling alone.
The forest is alone.
It is an icy moon that contemplates the passage of a girl.
The forest looks, sees and is the cry of that girl. It is fever and it creaks and it is the footprint the girl left behind. And it is the girl and everything that was. It is her footstep.
And so.
The forest is a leap of admiration in the news. It burns and burns, and it hurts.
It eats itself. It is born, born and not. It is not born. It is and is redeemed in each head.
It moves, turns, fades, and forms. Flare. The forest glows.
It lights up always, always, always.
It is not to return, and the return is the leaf that falls slowly and rots and is dissimilar
and gets even.
The forest buries a thought and then a truth and then a confession.
The forest is a multitude of inaccessible dreams or maybe it is just the inaccessible.
The forest looks like it is.
And it is.
And it falls and falls again. And then not anymore.
It is dust and the site of words that speak and laugh like stones in the mouth.
Your mouth.
The forest is your mouth.
The forest is a form of the ridiculous.
The forest is a place and a time and a war. Two wars. One hundred. Or more like the love that enters and destroys everything and then is no longer. The forest loves, and there they love each other. Love those who love. Those who seek satisfaction. Not the forest. It is fearless and strong, and it finds itself like the poem that it is.
The forest is lunar green, Veracruz green, verses of green.
Sometimes it is white.
And hurts.
The forest is white if it hurts.
The forest is the final day of a year.
The forest is uncertain. Do not say it. It’s not known. The forest burns if you see it.
Do not see it.
Do not say it. Don’t speak about it.
The forest is a void.
It is forest.
The forest is thought and felt and transformed into it. It’s the ignorance of being it.
The forest is what it is. The forest is the reality.
In the forest there are signs of lost dogs of the dead and lost children.
The forest guards its center. It’s apogee, tower, watchtower. The battlement of a castle that looks at the forest and is seen in it.
The forest does not look at the sea.
The sea.
After a year of global upheaval, one question is on all our minds: What lies beyond the horizon? We know we need a new future, but what does it hold? What exists on the other side of disaster capitalism and colonization? What wisdom awaits beyond binary thinking and Western views of time and space? What does the cosmos contain beyond life on our planet? For Volume 06: Beyond we are imagining a world free from the constructs that have confined our planet and its people for too long.
