Arizona Poets is a series featuring 20 poets from Arizona in honor of our 60th Anniversary. These poets have all visited the Poetry Center and recordings of those visits are available in our audiovisual archive, Voca. Click here to learn more about our anniversary and here to see the rest of this series. 

Alberto Ríos has served as Arizona’s inaugural Poet Laureate since 2013. Born in Nogales, Ríos is a Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. His most recent book of poetry is Not Go Away Is My Name.

See more of Ríos's work on Voca.

 

Líneas fronterizas / Border Lines

Un peso cargado por dos

No pesa más que la mitad. 

 

El mundo en un mapa parece el dibujo de una vaca

En la carnicería, todas esas líneas mostrando

Dónde cortar. 

 

Ese dibujo de la vaca es también un rompecabezas,

Mostrando cómo caben muy bien juntas

Todas las piezas extrañas. 

 

La manera en que miramos el dibujo

Nos hace ver la diferencia.

 

Parecemos vivir en un mundo de mapas:

Pero en verdad vivimos en un mundo hecho

No de papel ni de tinta sino de gente.

Esas líneas son nuestras vidas. Juntos,

 

Demos vuelta al mapa hasta que veamos claramente:

La frontera es lo que nos une,

No lo que nos separa. 

*****

A weight carried by two

Weighs only half as much.

 

The world on a map looks like the drawing of a cow

In a butcher's shop, all those lines showing

Where to cut. 

 

That drawing of a cow is also a jigsaw puzzle, 

Showing just as much how very well

All the strange parts fit together.

 

Which way we look at the drawing

Makes all the difference.

 

We seem to live in a world of maps:

But in truth we live in a world made

Not of paper and ink but of people. 

These lines are our lives. Together,

 

Let us turn the map until we see clearly:

The border is what joins us,

Not what separates us. 

 

Reproduced by permission of the author.