domingo, 31 de agosto de 2014

Músicas

Narciso tenía hambre, miró
las aguas para ver si hay peces
y se encontró con él. 
Este accidente de la historia
cuesta mundos a los pobres mortales. 
Tienen hambre de sí mismos, pero en verdad
nunca se miran a sí mismos, son mirados y de ahí 
viene la costumbre de
devorarnos bajo
un sí mismo sostenido mayor.

Juan Gelman

miércoles, 27 de agosto de 2014

Her


Wanting to die

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life. 
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue!-
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.

Anne Sexton

When man enters woman

When man,
enters woman,
like the surf biting the shore,
again and again,
and the woman opens her mouth with pleasure
and her teeth gleam
like the alphabet,
Logos appears milking a star,
and the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate
and the woman
climbs into a flower
and swallows its stem
and Logos appears
and unleashes their rivers.

This man,
this woman
with their double hunger,
have tried to reach through
the curtain of God
and briefly they have,
though God
in His perversity
unties the knot.

Anne Sexton

The big boots of pain

There can be certain potions 
needled in the clock 
for the body’s fall from grace, 
to untorture and to plead for. 
These I have known 
and would sell all my furniture 
and books and assorted goods 
to avoid, and more, more. 

But the other pain
I would sell my life to avoid 
the pain that begins in the crib 
with its bars or perhaps 
with your first breath 
when the planets drill 
your future into you 
for better of worse 
as you marry life 
and the love that gets doled out 
or doesn’t. 

I find now, swallowing one teaspoon 
of pain, that it drops downward 
to the past where it mixes 
with last year’s cupful 
and downward into a decade’s quart 
and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. 
I alternate treading water 
and deadman’s float. 

The teaspoon ought to be hearable 
if it didn’t mix into the reruns 
and thus enlarge into what it is not, 
a sea pest’s sting turning promptly 
into the shark’s neat biting off 
of a leg because the soul 
wears a magnifying glass. 
Kicking the heart 
with pain’s big boots running up and down 
the intestines like a motorcycle racer. 

Yet one does get out of bed 
and start over, plunge into the day 
and put on a hopeful look 
and does not allow fear to build a wall 
between you and an old friend 
or a new friend and reach out your hand, 
shutting down the thought that 
an axe may cut it off unexpectedly. 
One learns not to blab about all this 
except to yourself or the typewriter keys 
who tell no one until they get brave 
and crawl off onto the printed page. 

I’m getting bored with it, 
I tell the typewriter, 
this constantly walking around 
in wet shoes and then, surprise! 
Somehow DECEASED keeps getting 
stamped in red over the word HOPE. 
And I who keep falling thankfully 
into each new pillow of belief, 
finding my Mercy Street, 
kissing it and tenderly gift-wrapping my love, 
am beginning to wonder just what 
the planets had in mind on November 9th, 1928. 
The pillows are ripped away, 
the hand guillotined, 
dog shit thrown into the middle of a laugh, 
a hornets’ nest building into the hi-fi speaker 
and leaving me in silence, 
where, without music, 
I become a cracked orphan. 

Well, 
one gets out of bed 
and the planets don’t always hiss 
or muck up the day, each day. 
As for the pain and its multiplying teaspoon, 
perhaps it is a medicine 
that will cure the soul 
of its greed for love 
next Thursday.

Anne Sexton

Despair

Who is he? 
A railroad track toward hell? 
Breaking like a stick of furniture? 
The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool? 
The love that goes down the drain like spit? 
The love that said forever, forever
and then runs you over like a truck? 
Are you a prayer that floats into a radio advertisement? 
Despair, 
I don't like you very well.
You don't suit my clothes or my cigarettes.
Why do you locate here
as large as a tank, 
aiming at one half of a lifetime? 
Couldn't you just go float into a tree
instead of locating here at my roots, 
forcing me out of the life I've led
when it's been my belly so long? 

All right! 
I'll take you along on the trip
where for so many years
my arms have been speechles.

Anne Sexton

Doctors

They work with herbs
and penicillin
They work with gentleness
and the scalpel.
They dig out the cancer,
close an incision
and say a prayer
to the poverty of the skin.
They are not Gods
though they would like to be;
they are only a human
trying to fix up a human.
Many humans die.
They die like the tender,
palpitating berries
in November.
But all along the doctors remember:
First do no harm.
They would kiss if it would heal.
It would not heal.

If the doctors cure
then the sun sees it.
If the doctors kill
then the earth hides it.
The doctors should fear arrogance
more than cardiac arrest.
If they are too proud,
and some are,
then they leave home on horseback
but God returns them on foot. 

viernes, 22 de agosto de 2014

Diamante
















Me han regalado un diamante
y no se qué hacer con tanta luz;
abro mi mano un instante
y brilla hasta el cielo limpiando el azul.

Es sobre todas las cosas
mi piedra preciosa invisible en su faz
y en el envés transparente
su forma latente se vuelve real.

Quién sabe por qué misterio
elige mi pecho para anidar;
de qué incendiado silencio vendrá,
de qué punto del mapa estelar.

Me agujereó la camisa
marcándome adentro su cronicidad,
su pulsar de lejanía
con relojería de puro cristal.

Ahora voy ya sin aliento
planeando en el viento llevándolo al mar.
Voy a arrojarlo a la espuma
entre el agua y la duna y a verlo brillar.

No puedo llevar conmigo
este brillo cautivo, esta piedra lunar;
en mi campo oscurecido
su luz de infinito no puede durar.

Y él fulgura, fulgura,
y me ciega su precioso don;
fulgura, criatura,
libre de la noche de mi corazón.

A veces llega del cielo
un presente que nunca nadie previó;
pero existe uno tan bello
del que no quisiera tomar posesión.

Vino su luz del vacío
y me duele ponerlo de nuevo a viajar;
este regalo tardío
no puede ser mío sino del azar.

Ahora voy ya sin aliento…

Jorge Fandermole

domingo, 17 de agosto de 2014

Equipaje










Voy hurgando pa' ver que llevo
sin olvidar destino y pasaje,
origen y documentos.

Me voy a un horizonte
tan difuso
y tan incierto
que mejor me llevo el norte
en una brújula que me invento.
La palabra con el acento,
calma en el paso y ansia de abrazo
y la arenga del ser querido
que me despide y que me acompaña:
"metéle chango,
metéle fuerza y maña".
Mañanitas de sol de enero,
luna y lucero
canto y mirada,
y llanto con su silencio.
El mate y la palmada amiga y franca,
la guitarra y el asado
llevo un lastre de cariño por todos lados
y el dolor del error pasado,
el daño que he hecho viaja en el
pecho.
Pa' tratar de matar los miedos
me llevo encima un poco 'e prudencia
y para sobrellevar la ausencia
la paciencia y nada más.
Cotidianos que pierdo el paso,
y desgarrándome en pedazos
me voy entero.
Y ya te estaré encontrando,
no se dónde y no sé cuándo
y mientras tanto largo esta copla
para que agite un poco el vacío
y que te abrace en el nombre mío
si no estoy más.

Juan Quintero

El matecito de las siete


















Aspiro el aire de tu paso, tan sólo eso...

y emprendo, ciego, un leve abrazo: olor a viejo.


Si no pasaras esta tarde, tan sólo eso...

seguramente moriría tras tu silencio.



Donde alza vuelo tu figura, vuela mi pecho.

si en cada uno de tus pasos ya no hay consuelo.



Las tardecitas en la puerta me tienen preso,

y el mate amargo de las siete guarda el secreto. 

Coqui Ortiz

viernes, 15 de agosto de 2014

Lifeful

Welcome Morning

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

Ann Sexton, from The Awful Rowing Toward God, 1975

martes, 12 de agosto de 2014

Me gusta


Conmigo




Te llevaría, te llevaría 
como el viento hacia a la hoja 
que desprende del parral 
como el zorzal lleva al canto mañanero 
perfumes cambiando el tiempo 
los colores y estaciones 
como verano invierno 
de contrastas pasiones. 

Te llevaría y cuidaría 
que las espinas se aparten 
cuando al verte caminar 
si te saluda el rosal o 
te refresca la fuente 
la paz aflore a tu mente 
o alguien te quiera dañar. 

Te mentiría, te mentiría 
si digo que no me importa 
que por tí no rezaría 
que ningún verso armonioso 
de mi garganta saldría 
o cuando tuvieses frío 
mi abrigo no te daría 
sola aparece de noche 
luna encandila de día. 

Conseguiría y te traería 
los aljibes manantiales, costas, oro y estrellas 
silos, campos y litoral 
como a tus pies el sendero 
también luz primaveral 
la que en tu mirada brilla 
y así yo te llevaría 
hasta el río de la orilla. 

Me moriría de amor me moriría 
moriría de dolor si no pudiera ayudarte 
y no tenerte en mi mano cuando necesites darme 
esto nunca pasaría 
como si un día parece 
el calor de tu mirada 
ese día, ese día 
moriría.


Hugo Fattoruso

viernes, 8 de agosto de 2014

Words

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.

Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.

Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.

But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

Anne Sexton

Viento divino

Viento divino

miércoles, 6 de agosto de 2014

This is love


Una

tragedia:
perder
la
inocencia,
injusticia:
rechazar
a
alguien
sin
merecerlo,
calamidad:
no
estar
construyendo.

Three hours














Three hours from sundown
Jeremy flies
Hoping to keep
The sun from his eyes
East from the city
And down to the cave
In search of a master
In search of a slave

Three hours from London
Jacomo’s free
Taking his woes 
Down to the sea
In search of a lifetime
To tell when he’s home
In search of a story
That’s never been known

Three hours from speaking
Everyone’s flown
Not wanting to be 
Seen on their own
Three hours is needed
To leave from them all
Three hours to wonder
And three hours to fall

Three hours from sundown
Jeremy flies
Hoping to keep 
The sun from his eyes
East from the city
And down to the cave
In search of a master 
In search of a slave