Anne Sexton

(1928 - 1975)

 

INDEX:

 

An Obsessive Combination Of Ontological Inscape, Trickery And Love

December 1st

December 4th

December 9th

December 15th

For my lover, returning to his wife

FOR THE YEAR OF THE INSANE

For the Year of the Insane

Frenzy

Her kind

Her kind

Her kind

Hog

Housewife

HOW WE DANCED

Imitations of Drowning

In Celebration of My Uterus

IN THE DEEP MUSEUM

Kind Sir: These Woods

Live

Love Song

Menstruation at Forty

Mr. Mine

MUSIC SWIMS BACK TO ME

My Friend, my Friend

Protestant Easter

Self in 1958

SMALL WIRE

SONG FOR A RED NIGHTGOWN

Suicide Note

Sylvia’s death

The addict

THE ASSASSIN

The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator

The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator

The Black Art

THE DOUBLE IMAGE

THE EARTH

The Firebombers

THE FISH THAT WALKED

The fury of sunsets

The Kiss

The Kiss

The nude swim

The Starry Night

The Starry Night

The Sun

The truth the death know

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Unknown Girl In A Maternity Ward

Wanting to die

When Man Enters Woman

Young

Young

 

 

 

 

1 Dicembre

4 Dicembre

9 Dicembre

15 Dicembre

Al mio amante, che torna da sua moglie

Per l’anno della demenza

Per l’anno dei folli

 

Tipo essa

De ésas

Una come lei

Cerdo

Casalinga

Come ballavamo

 

En celebración de mi útero

Nel profondo museo

Amable señor, este bosque

 

Canzone d'amore

 

Il Signor Mine

La música vuelve a mí

 

Pasqua protestante

 

Filo sottile

Versi per una camicia da notte rossa

Bilhete suicida

 

A viciada

El asesino

La ballata della masturbatrice solitária

La balada de la masturbadora solitária

Magia nera

La doppia imagine

La terra

Los bombarderos

Il pesce che camminava

La folie des soleils couchants

Il bacio

El beso

Natanti nudi

Notte stellata

Noche estrellada

O Sol

La verdad que los muertos conocen

Las doce princesas danzarinas

Ragazza ignota in reparto maternità

Deseando morir

Quando l’uomo entra nella donna

Giovane

Joven

 

 

 

 

LINKS:

 

Biographies                                                   

Modern American Poetry

Sites with many poems                                                    

Seis poemas eróticos

"18 days without you" (poemas)

John Mitchell Site - 14 poemas

Poemas musicados

Anne Sexton lendo os seus poemas                                 

 

Protestant Easter

eight years old

 

When he was a little boy
Jesus was good all the time.
No wonder that he grew up to be such a big shot
who could forgive people so much.
When he died everyone was mean.
Later on he rose when no one else was looking.
Either he was hiding or else
he went up.
Maybe he was only hiding?
Maybe he could fly?

Yesterday I found a purple crocus
blowing its way out of the snow.
It was all alone.
It was getting its work done.
Maybe Jesus was only getting his work done
and letting God blow him off the Cross
and maybe he was afraid for a minute
so he hid under the big stones.
He was smart to go to sleep up there
even though his mother got so sad
and let them put him in a cave.
I sat in a tunnel when I was five.
That tunnel, my mother said,
went straight into the big river
and so I never went again.
Maybe Jesus knew my tunnel
and crawled right through to the river
so he could wash all the blood off.
Maybe he only meant to get clean
and then come back again?
Don't tell me that he went up in smoke
like Daddy's cigar!
He didn't blow out like a match!

It is special
being here at Easter
with the Cross they built like a capital T.
The ceiling is an upside-down rowboat.
I usually count its ribs.
Maybe he was drowning?
Or maybe we are all upside down?
I can see the face of a mouse inside
of all that stained-glass window.
Well, it could be a mouse!
Once I thought the Bunny Rabbit was special
and I hunted for eggs.
That's when I was seven.
I'm grownup now. Now it's really Jesus.
I just have to get Him straight.
And right now.

Who are we anyhow?
What do we belong to?
Are we a we?
I think that he rose
but I'm not quite sure
and they don't really say
singing their Alleluia
in the churchy way.
Jesus was on that Cross.
After that they pounded nails into his hands.
After that, well, after that,
everyone wore hats
and then there was a big stone rolled away
and then almost everyone -
the ones who sit up straight -
looked at the ceiling.

Alleluia they sing.
They don't know.
They don't care if he was hiding or flying.
Well, it doesn't matter how he got there.
It matters where he was going.
The important thing for me
is that I'm wearing white gloves.
I always sit straight.
I keep on looking at the ceiling.
And about Jesus,
they couldn't be sure of it,
not so sure of it anyhow,
so they decided to become Protestants.
Those are the people that sing
when they aren't quite
sure.

 

 

 

PASQUA PROTESTANTE

a otto anni

Quando era piccolo
Gesù faceva sempre il bravo.
Non c'è nulla di strano che da grande diventò un pezzo grosso
che riusciva a perdonare la gente così tanto.
Quando morì tutti erano cattivi.
Dopo è risorto mentre nessuno guardava.
O si nascondeva o
andò su.
Forse si era solo nascosto?
Forse sapeva volare?

Ieri ho trovato un croco viola
che bucava la neve alando.
Era tutto solo.
Stava facendo i compiti.
Forse Gesù stava solo facendo i compiti
quando ha fatto che Dio alasse la sua Croce
e forse ha avuto un minutino di paura
e si è nascosto sotto le pietre grosse.
Era stato furbo a andare a dormire lassù
anche se la sua mamma era diventata tristissima,
e ha fatto che loro lo misero dentro una grotta.
Mi sono seduta in un tunnel a cinque anni.
Quel tunnel, ha detto la mamma,
andava dritto nel fiume grosso
e allora io non ci sono andata più.
Forse Gesù conosceva il mio tunnel
e si è buttato lungo a pancia in giù fino al fiume
per lavare via bene tutto il sangue.
Forse voleva solo pulirsi
e poi ritornare giù?
Non ditemi che si è dissolto in fumo
come il sigaro di Papà!
Come un fiammifero esalato!

E' bellissimo
essere qui a Pasqua
con la Croce che hanno fatto come una T maiuscola.
Il soffitto è una barchetta all'in giù.
Di solito conto le sue costole.
Forse stava affogando?
O forse stiamo tutti a testa in giù?
Io in quella vetrata colorata
ci vedo la faccia di un topo.
Allora, sì, potrebbe essere un topo!
Una volta credevo che il Coniglio di Pasqua fosse bellissimo
e andavo a caccia delle uova.
Questo succedeva quando avevo sette anni.
Adesso sono cresciuta. Adesso è davvero Gesù.
Adesso sto dritta a pensare chi è Lui.
E sùbito.

Chi siamo insomma?
A quale mondo apparteniamo?
Noi siamo un noi?
Penso che sia risorto
ma non sono proprio sicura
e non lo dicono per davvero
quando cantano Alleluia
in quel modo chiesastico.
Gesù stava sulla Croce.
Poi gli conficcarono chiodi nelle mani.
Poi dopo, allora, poi dopo
avevano tutti il cappello
e poi c'era una pietra grossa che fecero rotolare
e poi quasi tutti
- quelli che stanno seduti dritti -
guardavano su il soffitto.

Alleluia, cantano.
Non lo sanno mica.
Non importa se si era nascosto o era volato.
Allora non importa com'è che è arrivato là.
Importa dove stava andando.
La cosa importante per me
è che ho i guanti bianchi.
Sto sempre seduta dritta.
Guardo il soffitto in continuazione.
E di Gesù,
non potevano essere sicuri,
comunque non sicuri del tutto,
allora hanno deciso di diventare Protestanti.
Che sono le persone che cantano
quando non sono proprio
sicure.

Primavera 1963

 

 

 

 

 

THE EARTH

 

God loafs around heaven,
without a shape
but He would like to smoke His cigar
or bite His fingernails
and so forth.
 
God owns heaven
but He craves the earth,
the earth with its little sleepy caves,
its bird resting at the kitchen window,
even its murders lined up like broken chairs,
even its writers digging into their souls
with jackhammers,
even its hucksters selling their animals
for gold,
even its babies sniffing for their music,
the farm house, white as a bone,
sitting in the lap of its corn,
even the statue holding up its widowed life,
but most of all He envies the bodies,
He who has no body.
 
The eyes, opening and shutting like keyholes
and never forgetting, recording by thousands,
the skull with its brains like eels--
the tablet of the world--
the bones and their joints
that build and break for any trick,
the genitals,
the ballast of the eternal,
and the heart, of course,
that swallows the tides
and spits them out cleansed.
 
He does not envy the soul so much.
He is all soul
but He would like to house it in a body
and come down
and give it a bath
now and then.

 

 

La terra

Senza immagine Dio vaga in paradiso
ma preferirebbe fumarsi un sigaro
o mangiarsi le unghie, e così via.


Dio è il proprietario del paradiso
ma agogna la terra, le grotticelle
assonnate della terra, l'uccellino
alla finestra di cucina, perfino
gli assassini in fila come sedie scassate,
perfino gli scrittori che si scavano
l'anima col martello pneumatico,
o gli ambulanti che vendono i loro
animaletti per soldi, anche i loro
bambini che annusano la musica
e la fattoria bianca come un osso,
seduta in braccio al suo granturco e anche
la statua che ostenta la sua vedovanza,
e perfino la scolaresca in riva all'oceano.
Ma soprattutto invidia i corpi, Lui che non l'ha.


Gli occhi apri-e-chiudi come una serratura
che registrano migliaia di ricordi,
e il cranio che include l'anguilla cervello
– tavoletta cerata del mondo -
le ossa e le giunture che si giungono
e si disgiungono - e c'è il trucco -, i genitali,
zavorra dell'eterno, e il cuore, certo,
che ingoia le maree rendendole monde.

 



Lui non invidia più di tanto l'anima.
Lui è tutto anima, ma vorrebbe accasarla
in un corpo e scendere quaggiù per farle
fare un bagno ogni tanto.

Traduzione di Rosaria Lo Russo, in Poesie su Dio

 

 

 

 

Housewife

 

Some women marry houses.
It's another kind of skin; it has a heart,
a mouth, a liver and bowel movements.
The walls are permanent and pink.
See how she sits on her knees all day,
faithfully washing herself down.
Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah
into their fleshy mothers.
A woman is her mother.
That's the main thing.

 

 

Casalinga



Certe donne sposano una casa.
Altra pelle, altro cuore
altra bocca, altro fegato
altra peristalsi.
Altre pareti:
incarnato stabilmente roseo.
Guarda come sta carponi tutto il giorno
a strofinar per fedeltà se stessa.
Gli uomini c'entrano per forza,
risucchiati come Giona
in questa madre ben in carne.
Una donna è sua madre.
Questo conta.

Traduzione di Rosaria Lo Russo, in L'estrosa abbondanza

 

 

 

 

 

The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator

 

The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

Take for instance this night, my love,
that every single couple puts together
with a joint overturning, beneath, above,
the abundant two on sponge and feather,
kneeling and pushing, head to head.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

I break out of my body this way,
an annoying miracle. Could I
put the dream market on display?
I am spread out. I crucify.
My little plum is what you said.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

Then my black-eyed rival came.
The lady of water, rising on the beach,
a piano at her fingertips, shame
on her lips and a flute's speech.
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

She took you the way a women takes
a bargain dress off the rack
and I broke the way a stone breaks.
I give back your books and fishing tack.
Today's paper says that you are wed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

La ballata della masturbatrice solitaria

 

La fine della tresca è sempre morte.

Lei è la mia bottega. Viscido occhio,

sfuggito alla tribù di me stessa

l’ansimo non ti ritrova. Fo orrore

a chi mi sta a guardare. Che banchetto!

Di notte, da sola, mi sposo col letto.

 

Dito dopo dito, eccola, è mia.

E’ lei il mio rendez-vu. Non è lontana.

La batacchio come una campana. Mi chino

Nel boudoir dove eri solito montarla.

M’hai preso a nolo sul fiorito copriletto.

Di notte, da sola, mi sposo col letto.

 

Metti ad esempio, stanotte, amor mio,

che ogni coppia s’accoppia

rivoltolandosi, di sopra, di sotto,

in ginocchio s’affronta spingendo

su spugna e piume l’abbondante duetto.

Di notte, da sola, mi sposo col letto.

 

 

Così evado dal corpo,

un miracolo irritante. Come posso

mettere in mostra il mercato dei sogni?

Son sparpagliata. Mi crocefiggo.

Mia piccola prugna è quel che m’hai detto.

Di notte, da sola, mi sposo col letto.

 

Poi venne lei, la rivale occhi neri.

Signora dell’acqua si staglia sulla spiaggia,

con un pianoforte in punta di dita,

parole flautate e pudore su labbra.

Mentre io, gambe a X, sembro lo scopetto.

Di notte, da sola, mi sposo col letto.

 

Lei ti prese come una donna prende

Un vestito a saldo dall’attaccapanni,

e io mi spezzai come si spezza un sasso.

Ti rendo i libri e la roba da pesca.

Ti sei sposato, il giornale l’ha detto.

Di notte, da sola, mi sposo col letto.

 

Ragazzi e ragazze son tutt’uno stanotte.

Sbottonan camicette, calano cerniere,

si levan le scarpe, spengono la luce.

Le creature raggianti sono piene di bugie.

Si mangiano a vicenda. Che gran banchetto!

Di notte, da sola, mi sposo col letto.

 

 

 

 

The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator

 

The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

Take for instance this night, my love,
that every single couple puts together
with a joint overturning, beneath, above,
the abundant two on sponge and feather,
kneeling and pushing, head to head.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

I break out of my body this way,
an annoying miracle. Could I
put the dream market on display?
I am spread out. I crucify.
My little plum is what you said.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

Then my black-eyed rival came.
The lady of water, rising on the beach,
a piano at her fingertips, shame
on her lips and a flute's speech.
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

She took you the way a women takes
a bargain dress off the rack
and I broke the way a stone breaks.
I give back your books and fishing tack.
Today's paper says that you are wed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

 

 

LA BALADA DE LA MASTURBADORA SOLITARIA

 

Al final del asunto siempre es la muerte.
Ella es mi taller. Ojo resbaladizo,
fuera de la tribu de mí misma mi aliento
te echa en falta. Espanto
a los que están presentes. Estoy saciada.
De noche, sola, me caso con la cama.

 

Dedo a dedo, ahora es mía.
No está tan lejos. Es mi encuentro.
La taño como a una campana. Me detengo
en la glorieta donde solías montarla.
Me hiciste tuya sobre el edredón floreado.
De noche, sola, me caso con la cama.

 

Toma, por ejemplo, esta noche, amor mío,
en la que cada pareja mezcla
con un revolcón conjunto, debajo, arriba,
el abundante par espuma y pluma,
hincándose y empujando, cabeza contra cabeza.
De noche, sola, me caso con la cama.

 

De esta forma escapo de mi cuerpo,
un milagro molesto, ¿Podría poner
en exibición el mercado de los sueños?
Me despliego. Crucifico.
Mi pequeña ciruela, la llamabas.
De noche, sola, me caso con la cama.

 

Entonces llegó mi rival de ojos oscuros.
La dama acuática, irguiéndos en la playa,
en la yema de los dedos un piano, vergüenza
en los labios y una voz de flauta.
Entretanto, yo pasé a ser la escoba usada.
De noche, sola, me caso con la cama.

 

Ella te agarró como una mujer agarra
un vestido de saldo de un estante
y yo me rompí como se rompen las piedras.
Te devuelvo tus libros y tu caña de pescar.
El periódico de hoy dice que os habéis casado.
De noche, sola, me caso con la cama.

 

Muchachos y muchachas son uno esta noche.
Se desabotonan blusas. Se bajan cremalleras.
Se quitan zapatos. Apagan la luz.
Las criaturas destellantes están llenas de mentiras.
Se comen mutuamente. Están más que saciadas.
De noche, sola, me caso con la cama.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE ASSASSIN

The correct death is written in.
I will fill the need.
My bow is stiff.
My bow is in readiness.
I am the bullet and the hook.
I am cocket and held ready.
In my sights I carve him
like a sculptor. I mold out
his last look at everyone.
I carry his eyes and his
brain bone at every position.
I know his male sex and I do
march over him with my index finger.
His mouth and his anus are one.
I am at the center of feeling.

A subway train is
traveling across my crossbow
I have a blood bolt
and I have made it mine.
With this man I take in hand
his destiny and with this gun
I take in hand the newspapers and
with my heat I will take him.
He will bend down toward me
and his veins will tumble out
like children... Give me
his flag and his eye.
Give me his hard shell and his lip.
He es my evil and my apple and
I will see him home.

 

               EL ASESINO


La muerte correcta está escrita.
Colmaré la necesidad.
Mi arco está tenso.
Mi arco está listo.
Soy la bala y el garfio.
Estoy amartillada y dispuesta.
En mi alza lo tallo
como un escultor. Moldeo
su última mirada hacia todos.
Cambio sus ojos y su cráneo
constantemente de posición.
Conozco su sexo de macho
y lo recorro con mi dedo índice.
Su boca y su ano son uno.
Estoy en el centro de la emoción.


Un tren subterráneo
viaja a través de mi ballesta.
Tengo un cerrojo de sangre
y lo he hecho mío.
Con este hombre tengo en mis manos
su destino y con este revólver
tengo en mis manos el periódico y
con mi ardor tomaré posesión de él.
Se inclinará ante mí
y sus venas saldrán en desorden
igual que niños... Dame
su bandera y sus ojos.
Dame su duro caparazón y su labio.
Él es mi mal y mi manzana y
lo acompañaré a casa.

 

 

 

THE FIREBOMBERS

 

We are America.
We are the coffin fillers.
We are the grocers of death.
We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.
The bomb opens like a shoebox.
And the child?
The child is certainly not yawning.
And the woman?
The woman is bathing her heart.
It has been torn out of her
and because it is burnt
and as a last act
she is rinsing it off in the river.
This is the death market.

America,
where are your credentials?

 

LOS BOMBARDEROS


Nosotros somos América.
Somos los que rellenan los ataúdes.
Somos los tenderos de la muerte.
Los envolvemos como si fuesen coliflores.

La bomba se abre como una caja de zapatos.
¿Y el niño?
El niño decididamente no bosteza.
¿Y la mujer?
La mujer lava su corazón.
Se lo han arrancado
y se lo han quemado
y como último acto
lo enjuaga en el río.
Este es el mercado de la muerte.

¿Dónde están tus méritos,
América?

 

 

 

 

HOG

 

Oh you brown bacon machine,
how sweet you lie,
gaining a pound and a half a day,
you rolled-up pair of socks,
you dog's nightmare,
your snout pushed in
but leaking out the ears,
your eyes as soft as eggs,
hog, big as a cannon,
how sweet you lie.

I lie in my bed at night
in the closet of my mind
and count hogs in a pen,
brown, spotted, white, pink, black,
moving on the shuttle toward death
just as my mind moves over
for its own little death.

 

                      CERDO


Oh tú máquina de beicon marrón,
cuán dulcemente yaces,
engordando una libra y media por día,
tú, par de calcetines enrollados,
tú, pesadilla de perro,
tú, con el morro aplastado
pero las orejas extendidas,
tus ojos blandos como huevos,
cerdo, grande como un cañón,
cuán dulcemente yaces.

Por la noche estoy tendida en mi cama
en el armario de mi mente
y cuento cerdos en un corral,
marrones , moteados, blancos, rosados, negros,
avanzan por la lanzadera hacia la muerte
del mismo modo que mi mente avanza
buscando su propia pequeña muerte.

 

 

 

SONG FOR A RED NIGHTGOWN

 

No. Not really red,

but the color of a rose when it bleeds.

It's a lost flamingo,

called somewhere Schiaparelli Pink

but not meaning pink, but blood and

those candy store cinnamon hearts.

It moves like capes in the unflawed

villages in Spain. Meaning a fire

layer and underneath, like a petal,

a sheath of pink, clea as a stone.

 

So I mean a nightgown of two colors

and of two layers that float from

the shoulders across every zone.

For years the moth has longed for them

but these colors are bounded by silence

and animals, half hidden but browsing.

One could think of feathers and

not know it at all. One could

think of whores and not imagine

the way of a swan. One could

imagine the cloth of a bee and

touch its hair and come close.

 

The bed is ravaged by such

sweet sights. The girl is.

The girl drifts up out of

her nightgown and its color.

Her wings are fastened onto

her shoulders like bandages.

The butterfly owns her now.

It covers her and her wounds.

She is not terrified of

begonias or telegrams but

surely this nightgown girl,

this awesome flyer, has not seen

how the moon floats through her

and in between.

 

 

VERSI PER UNA CAMICIA DA NOTTE ROSSA

 

No, non proprio rossa,

ma del colore di una rosa che sanguina.

E' un fenicottero sperduto,

da qualche parte detto Rosa Schiaparelli

e non direi rosa, ma color sangue

caramella cuoricini di cannella.

Ondeggia come mantelli negli impeccabili

villaggi di Spagna. Direi una falda

di fuoco e disotto, come un petalo,

una guaina rosa, tersa come pietra.

 

Direi una camicia da notte di due colori

e di due falde che fluttuano dalle

spalle le membra fasciando.

Per anni la tarma li ha bramati

ma questi colori sono cinti da silenzio

e animali larvati ma brucanti.

Si potrebbe immaginare piume e

non averne cognizione. Si potrebbe

pensare alle puttane e non figurarsi

le movenze di un cigno. Si potrebbe

immaginare il tessuto di un'ape,

toccarne i peluzzi e avvicinarsi all'idea.

 

Il letto è devastato da tali

dolci visioni. La ragazza è.

La ragazza spicca aleggiando

dalla camicia da notte e dal suo colore.

Ha le ali legate sulle

spalle come bendaggi.

Adesso la farfalla la possiede,

copre lei e le sue ferite.

Non l'atterriscono

begonie o telegrammi ma

certo questa camicia da notte ragazza,

questa mirabile creatura alata, non si avvede

di come la luna l'attraversi

fra due falde galleggiando.

 

Traduzione di Rosaria Lo Russo, in Poesie d’amore.

 

 

 

 

 

HOW WE DANCED

 

 

The night of my cousin's wedding

I wore blue.

I was nineteen

and we danced, Father, we orbited.

We moved like angels washing themselves.

We moved like two birds on fire.

Then we moved like the sea in a jar,

slower and slower.

The orchestra played

"Oh how we danced on the night we were wed."

And you waltzed me like a lazy Susan

and we were dear,

very dear.

Now that you are laid out,

useless as a blind dog,

now that you no longer lurk,

the song rings in my head.

Pure oxygen was the champagne we drank

and clicked our glasses, one to one.

The champagne breathed like a skin diver

and the glasses were crystal and the bride

and groom gripped each other in sleep

like nineteen-thirty marathon dancers.

Mother was a belle and danced with twenty men.

You danced with me never saying a word.

Instead the serpent spoke as you held me close.

The serpent, that mocker, woke up and pressed against me

like a great god and we bent together

like two lonely swans.

 

 

 

COME BALLAVAMO

 

 

La sera del matrimonio di mio cugino

ero vestita di blu.

Avevo diciannov'anni

e ballammo, Padre, andammo in orbita.

Un movimento ondulato

come d'angeli in vasca da bagno

l'ondeggiamento di due uccelli infuocati

l'ondeggìo lento del mare in bottiglia,

sempre più lentamente ondulante.

L'orchestra suonava

"Come ballavamo la sera delle nostre nozze",

nelle volute del walzer mi portavi

rigirandomi come la mensola in cucina,

ed eravamo cari,

tanto cari.

Ora che sei rigido

inutile come un cane cieco,

ora che non puoi più scrutarmi,

la canzone mi risuona nella testa.

Puro ossigeno fu lo champagne che bevemmo

e il tintinnìo dei bicchieri nel nostro cin cin.

Lo champagne respirava come un sub

e i bicchieri furono cristallo e la sposa

e lo sposo avvinghiati nel sonno,

come una coppia alle vecchie maratone danzanti.

Mamma ballò con venti uomini, faceva la bellona.

Tu ballavi solo con me, senza dire una parola.

Ma il serpente parlò

quando m'hai stretta più forte.

Quel serpente, beffardo

si destò al contatto

s'eresse come un grande dio.

E noi, l'una dell'altro

i colli reclini attorcigliammo

come due cigni solitari.

 

 

Traduzione di Rosaria Lo Russo, in  L’estrosa abbondanza.

 

 

 

IN THE DEEP MUSEUM

 

 

My God, my God, what queer corner am I in?

Didn't I die, blood running down the post,

lungs gagging for air, die there for the sin

of anyone, my sour mouth giving up the ghost?

Surely my body is done? Surely I died?

And yet, I know, I'm here. What place is this?

Cold and queer, I sting with life. I lied.

Yes, I lied. Or else in some damned cowardice

my body would not give me up. I touch

fine cloth with my hands and my cheeks are cold.

If this is hell, then hell could not be much,

neither as special nor as ugly as I was told.

 

What's that I hear, snuffling and pawing its way

toward me? Its tongue knocks a pebble out of place

as it slides in, a sovereign. How can I pray?

It is panting; it is an odor with a face

like the skin of a donkey. It laps my sores.

It is hurt, I think, as I touch its little head.

It bleeds. I have forgiven murderers and whores

and now I must wait like old Jonah, not dead

nor alive, stroking a clumsy animal. A rat.

His teeth test me; he waits like a good cook,

knowing his own ground. I forgive him that,

as I forgave my Judas the money he took.

 

Now I hold his soft red sore to my lips

as his brothers crowd in, hairy angels who take

my gift. My ankles are a flute. I lose hips

and wrists. For three days, for love's sake,

I bless this other death. Oh, not in air -

in dirt. Under the rotting veins of its roots,

under the markets, under the sheep bed where

the hill is food, under the slippery fruits

of the vineyard, I go. Unto the bellies and jaws

of rats I commit my prophecy and fear.

Far below The Cross, I correct its flaws.

We have kept the miracle. I will not be here.

 

 

NEL PROFONDO MUSEO

 

 

Dio, Dio mio, in che angolo strano mi sono cacciata?

Sono morta o no? Il sangue che scorre dal palo,

i polmoni in affanno, morta per le peccata

di tutti, dalla bocca amara l'anima mia esalo?

Sicuro, sono morta? Veramente il corpo è andato?

Eppure, lo so, ci sono. Ma dove sono qua?

Freddo e strano, sono infernetichita. Ho simulato.

Sì, simulato, o per stramaledetta viltà

il mio corpo non mi ha renduta. Allora tocco

fra le mani l'abitino e le guance infreddolite.

Se questo è l'inferno, l'inferno mi par poco,

né così tipico né così brutto come dite.

 

Cos'è quella cosa che mi sento grufando raspare

vicino? La lingua che scosta un sassolino e lo boccia

mentre scivola dentro sovrana. Come faccio a pregare?

Sta ansimando, è un odore con una faccia

che sembra pelle d'asino. Mi slappa le ferute.

Mentre tocco la sua testolina: è ferito, deduco.

Sanguina. Ho perdonato assassini e prostitute

e ora aspetto come il vecchio Giona non già deceduto

né vivo, carezzando una bestia maldestra. Un ratto.

Mi assaggia coi denti, con la pazienza di una cuoca

che sa a mente la ricetta. Gli perdòno ciò che ha fatto

come perdonassi il mio Giuda per i soldi che cucca.

 

Ora porto alle labbra le sue rosse tenere piaghe.

Ai suoi fratelli, turba di angeli pelosi, mi sacrifico.

Ho caviglie scanalate, perdo fianchi anche

e polsi. Per tre giorni un'altra morte santifico,

per amor dell'amore. Oh, non in aere,

in polvere. Sotto le vene marce delle sue radici,

sotto i mercati, sotto un letto di pecore

dove collina è cibo, sotto i frutti fradici

della vigna, io scendo. Dentro mascelle e panze

di ratti rimetto la mia profezia e l'orrore.

Molto sotto la Croce, correggo le sue deficienze.

Abbiamo mantenuto il miracolo. Per ancora poche ore.

 

Traduzione di Rosaria Lo Russo, in Poesie su Dio.

 

 

 

 

 

FOR THE YEAR OF THE INSANE

 

a prayer

 

 

O Mary, fragile mother,

hear me, hear me now

although I do not know your words.

The black rosary with its silver Christ

lies unblessed in my hand

for I am the unbeliever.

Each bead is round and hard between my fingers,

a small black angel.

O Mary, permit me this grace,

this crossing over,

although I am ugly,

submerged in my own past

and my own madness.

Although there are chairs

I lie on the floor.

Only my hands are alive,

touching beads.

Word for word, I stumble.

A beginner, I feel your mouth touch mine.

 

I count beads as waves,

hammering in upon me.

I am ill at their numbers,

sick, sick in the summer heat

and the window above me

is my only listener, my awkward being.

She is a large taker, a soother.

The giver of breath

she murmurs,

exhaling her wide lung like an enormous fish.

 

 

Closer and closer

comes the hour of my death

as I rearrange my face, grow back,

grow undeveloped and straight-haired.

All this is death.

In the mind there is a thin alley called death

and I move through it as

through water.

My body is useless.

It lies, curled like a dog on the carpet.

It has given up.

There are no words here except the half-learned,

the Hail Mary and the full of grace.

Now I have entered the year without words.

I note the queer entrance and the exact voltage.

Without words they exist.

Without words one may touch bread

and be handed bread

and make no sound.

 

O Mary, tender physician,

come with powders and herbs

for I am in the center.

It is very small and the air is gray

as in a steam house.

I am handed wine as a child is handed milk.

It is presented in a delicate glass

with a round bowl and a thin lip.

The wine itself is pitch-colored, musty and secret.

The glass rises on its own toward my mouth

and I notice this and understand this

only because it has happened.

I have this fear of coughing

but I do not speak,

a fear of rain, a fear of the horseman

who comes riding into my mouth.

The glass tilts in on its own

and I am on fire.

I see two thin streaks burn down my chin.

I see myself as one would see another.

I have been cut in two.

 

 

O Mary, open your eyelids.

I am in the domain of silence,

the kingdom of the crazy and the sleeper.

There is blood here

and I have eaten it.

O mother of the womb,

did I come for blood alone?

O little mother,

I am in my own mind.

I am locked in the wrong house.

 

August 1963

 

 

 

 

PER L'ANNO DELLA DEMENZA

 

preghiera

  

O Maria, fragile madre,

adesso ascoltami, ascoltami adesso

anche se non capisco le tue parole.

Un rosario nero con Cristo d'argento

si adagia fra le mie mani, si sconsacra

perché io non ci credo.

Ogni grano è rotondo e duro

fra le dita, un angioletto nero.

O Maria, concedimi la grazia

di questa conversione,

anche se sono brutta,

anche se sono sommersa

dalla pazzia, dal mio passato.

Ho anche le sedie

ma mi sdraio per terra.

Sono vive solo le mani

che toccano i grani.

Snocciolando parole

la lingua s'intreccia.

Una principiante: la mia bocca

aderisce alla tua, lo sento.

 

Come le onde mi schiaffeggiano

i grani che conto derelitta,

nella calura estiva, derelitta,

la conta mi ammorba

e la finestra che mi sovrasta

è la sola che ascolta

il mio ciocco di carne che borbotta.

E' la consolatrice e elargisce.

Come un pesce enorme

dona il respiro

e esalano i polmoni, mormorando.

 

S'avvicina, s'avvicina

l'ora della mia morte

mentre mi rifaccio il trucco

e torno come prima

come prima dello sviluppo,

quando portavo i capelli lisci.

E' così la morte.

C'è nella mente il Viuzzo Morte

ed io ci sguazzo.

Il mio corpo è inutile.

Si arrende.

Come una cagna sullo stoìno

acciambellata, inerte.

Qui non ci sono parole, tranne

l'imparaticcio avemmariapienadigrazia.

E ecco entro nell'anno senza parola.

L'entrata è assurda ed esatto il voltaggio.

Esistono senza parola.

Senza parole si può toccare

e ricevere il pane senza fare

nemmeno un suono.

 

O Maria, tenera medichessa,

portami polveri e erbe

perché sono esattamente nel cuore.

E' troppo piccolo e l'aria è grigia

come fossi in una casa a pressione.

Mi versano vino come si versa latte

a un bambino, offerto in un delicato

bicchiere dalla coppa rotonda

e dal bordo sottile, un vino impeciato

che sa di stantìo e di segreto.

Il bicchiere si solleva e

s'avvicina alla bocca da solo.

E io lo vedo e lo capisco

Solo perché è successo.

Ho paura, paura di tossire

ma non dico niente, paura

della pioggia e del cavaliere che galoppa

e s'avvicina per entrarmi in bocca.

Il bicchiere s'inclina da solo

e io prendo fuoco.

Vedo due rivoli sottili

colare bruciandomi il mento.

Vedo me stessa spezzata in due.

Un'altra e me stessa.

 

O Maria, sbatti le palpebre.

Sono nel dominio del silenzio,

nel reame dormiente dei pazzi.

Qui c'è il sangue,

e l'ho mangiato.

O madre dell'utero,

sono venuta qui solo per il sangue?

O mammina,

sono dentro della mia mente.

Sono rinchiusa nella casa sbagliata.

 

Agosto 1963

 

Traduzione di Rosaria Lo Russo, in Poesie su Dio

 

 

THE FISH THAT WALKED

 

 

Up from oysters

and the confused weeds,

out from the tears of God,

the wounding tides,

he came.

He became a hunter of roots

and breathed like a man.

He ruffled through the grasses

and became known to the sky.

I stood close and watched it all.

Beg pardon, he said

but you have skin divers,

you have hooks and nets,

so why shouldn't I

enter your element for a moment?

Though it is curious here,

unusually awkward to walk.

It is without grace.

There is no rhythm

in this country of dirt.

 

And I said to him:

From some country

that I have misplaced

I can recall a few things...

but the light of the kitchen

gets in the way.

Yet there was a dance

when I kneaded the bread

there was a song my mother

used to sing...

And the salt of God's belly

where I floated in a cup of darkness.

I long for your country, fish.

 

The fish replied:

You must be a poet,

a lady of evil luck

desiring to be what you are not,

longing to be

what you can only visit.

 

 

 

IL PESCE CHE CAMMINAVA

 

 

Da valve d’ostriche

e da scompiglio d’alghe,

dalle lacrime di Dio,

da maree che sfigurano,

egli venne.

Un cacciatore di radici divenne

e respirava come un umano.

Scarmigliato uscì dalle sterpaglie

e fu conosciuto dal cielo.

Io gli stavo appresso e lo guardavo.

Chiedo scusa, disse,

ma tra di voi ci sono i subacquei,

avete ami e reti,

allora perché io non dovrei

entrare nel vostro elemento per un momento?

Anche se camminare qui è strano

e mi sento insolitamente goffo,

e sgraziato.

Non c'è ritmo

in questo paese di polvere.

 

Ed io gli dissi:

di un certo paese

da cui fui smarrita

posso rievocare qualcosa...

ma la luce di cucina

intanto l'impedisce.

Eppure c'era una danza

quando impastavo il pane,

c'era una canzone che mia madre

soleva cantare...

E il sale della pancia di Dio

dove galleggiavo in una tazza di tenebre.

Ho nostalgia del tuo paese, pesce.

 

E il pesce replicò:

tu devi essere una poetessa,

una signora di mala fortuna,

che desidera essere quel che non è,

che si strugge per essere

soltanto una figura.

 

Traduzione di Rosaria Lo Russo, in Poesie su Dio

 
 

 

 

 

The Black Art



A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warn the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.

A man who writes knows too much,
such spells and fetishes!
As if erections and congresses and products
weren't enough; as if machines and galleons
and wars were never enough.
With used furniture he makes a tree.
A writer is essentially a crook.
Dear love, you are that man.

Never loving ourselves,
hating even our shoes and our hats,
we love each other, precious , precious .
Our hands are light blue and gentle.
Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.
But when we marry,
the children leave in disgust.
There is too much food and no one left over
to eat up all the weird abundance.

 

 

Magia nera

 

Una donna che scrive è troppo sensibile e sensuale,
quali estasi e portenti!
Come se mestrui bimbi ed isole
non fossero abbastanza, come se iettatori e pettegoli
e ortaggi non fossero abbastanza.
Crede di poter prevedere gli astri.
Nell'essenza una scrittrice è una spia.
Amore mio, così io son ragazza.


Un uomo che scrive è troppo colto e cerebrale,
quali fatture e feticci!
Come se erezioni congressi e merci
non fossero abbastanza; come se macchine galeoni
e guerre non fossero già abbastanza.
Come un mobile usato costruisce un albero.
Nell'essenza uno scrittore è un ladro.
Amore mio, tu maschio sei così.


Mai amando noi stessi,
odiando anche le nostre scarpe, i nostri cappelli,
ci amiamo preziosa, prezioso.
Le nostre mani sono azzurre e gentili,
gli occhi pieni di tremende confessioni.
Ma quando ci sposiamo
ci abbandoniamo ai figli, disgustati.
Il cibo è troppo e nessuno è restato
a mangiare l'estrosa abbondanza."

 

 

 

For the Year of the Insane

 

a prayer

O Mary, fragile mother,
hear me, hear me now
although I do not know your words.
The black rosary with its silver Christ
lies unblessed in my hand
for I am the unbeliever.
Each bead is round and hard between my fingers,
a small black angel.
O Mary, permit me this grace,
this crossing over,
although I am ugly,
submerged in my own past
and my own madness.
Although there are chairs
I lie on the floor.
Only my hands are alive,
touching beads.
Word for word, I stumble.
A beginner, I feel your mouth touch mine.


I count beads as waves,
hammering in upon me.
I am ill at their numbers,
sick, sick in the summer heat
and the window above me
is my only listener, my awkward being.
She is a large taker, a soother.
The giver of breath
she murmurs,
exhaling her wide lung like an enormous fish.

 

Closer and closer
comes the hour of my death
as I rearrange my face, grow back,
grow undeveloped and straight-haired.
All this is death.
In the mind there is a thin alley called death
and I move through it as
through water.
My body is useless.
It lies, curled like a dog on the carpet.
It has given up.
There are no words here except the half-learned,
the Hail Mary and the full of grace.
Now I have entered the year without words.
I note the queer entrance and the exact voltage.
Without words they exist.
Without words on my touch bread
and be handed bread
and make no sound.

 

O Mary, tender physician,
come with powders and herbs
for I am in the center.
It is very small and the air is gray
as in a steam house.
I am handed wine as a child is handed milk.
It is presented in a delicate glass
with a round bowl and a thin lip.
The wine itself is pitch-colored, musty and secret.
The glass rises in its own toward my mouth
and I notice this and understand this
only because it has happened.

 

I have this fear of coughing
but I do not speak,
a fear of rain, a fear of the horseman
who comes riding into my mouth.
The glass tilts in on its own
and I among fire.
I see two thin streaks burn down my chin.
I see myself as one would see another.
I have been cut into two.

 

O Mary, open your eyelids.
I am in the domain of silence,
the kingdom of the crazy and the sleeper.
There is blood here.
and I haven't eaten it.
O mother of the womb,
did I come for blood alone?
O little mother,
I am in my own mind.
I am locked in the wrong house.

 

 

PER L'ANNO DEI FOLLI
 

preghiera 

 

"O Maria, fragile madre,
ascoltami, ascoltami adesso
anche se non so le tue parole.
Ho in mano il nero rosario, con il suo Cristo d'argento,
non è prediletto da Dio
perché io sono l'infedele.
Ciascuno dei grani è tondo e duro tra le mie dita,
è un piccolo angelo nero.
O Maria, concedimi questa grazia,
concedimi di cambiare,
sebbene io sia brutta,
sommersa dal mio stesso passato,
dalla mia stessa follia.
Anche se ci sono delle sedie
io sono sdraiata sul pavimento.
Solo le mie mani sono salve
toccando i grani del rosario.
Una parola dopo l'altra, ci incespico dentro.
Una principiante, sento la tua bocca toccare la mia.

 

Conto i grani come se fossero onde
che mi martellano contro,
saperne il numero mi fa ammalare,
afflitta, afflitta nel cuore dell'estate
e la finestra sopra di me
è la sola che mi ascolta, il mio essere goffo.
Dà in abbondanza, è rilassante.
L'elargitrice del respiro
lei, mormora,
i suoi polmoni esalano come quelli di un enorme pesce.

 

 

Sempre più vicina
è l'ora della mia morte
mentre mi risistemo il volto, divento come prima,
come prima dello sviluppo, con i capelli diritti.
Tutto ciò è morte.
Nella mente vi è un esile vicolo chiamato morte
ed io mi muovo lungo di esso come
nuotando nell'acqua.
Il mio corpo è inutile.
È disteso, accucciato come un cane su un tappeto.
Si è arreso.
Qui non ci sono parole se non quelle apprese a metà,
l'Ave Maria e piena di grazia.
Ora sono entrata nell'anno senza parole.
Noto la strana entrata e l'esatto voltaggio.
Esistono senza parole.
Senza parole una può toccare il pane
e riceverlo
senza emettere alcun suono.

 

 

O Maria, tenero medico, vieni con polveri ed erbe
perché sono nel centro.
È veramente piccolo e l'aria è grigia
come in una casa a vapore.
Mi porgono del vino come a un bambino si porge del latte.
Appare in un bicchiere di delicata fattura,
con la boccia circolare e l'orlo sottile.
Il vino ha un colore denso, muffa e segreto.
Il bicchiere si solleva da solo tendendo verso la mia bocca
e me ne accorgo e lo capisco
soltanto perché è successo.

 

 

Io ho questa paura di tossire
ma non parlo,
la paura della pioggia, la paura del cavaliere
che arriva galoppando nella mia bocca.
Il bicchiere si inclina da solo
e io prendo fuoco.
Vedo due sottili righe che mi bruciano rapide giù per il mento.
Mi vedo come se mi vedesse un altro.
Sono stata tagliata in due.

 

 

O Maria, apri le tue palpebre,
io sono nel dominio del silenzio,
nel regno della pazzia e del sonno.
C'è sangue qui
ed io l'ho mangiato.
O madre del grembo,
sono venuta soltanto per il sangue?
O piccola madre
Sono dentro i miei pensieri.
Sono rinchiusa nella casa sbagliata."

 

 
 

 

 

 

SMALL WIRE

 

My faith

is a great weight

hung on a small wire,

as doth the spider

hang her baby on a thin web,

as doth the vine,

twiggy and wooden,

hold up grapes

like eyeballs,

as many angels

dance on the head of a pin.

 

God does not need

too much wire to keep Him there,

just a thin vein,

with blood pushing back and forth in it,

and some love.

As it has been said:

Love and a cough

cannot be concealed.

Even a small cough.

Even a small love.

So if you have only a thin wire,

God does not mind.

He will enter your hands

as easily as ten cents used to

bring forth a Coke.
 

 

                            Filo sottile


La mia fede
è un carico enorme
appeso a un filo sottile,
proprio come un ragno
appende i suoi piccoli a una tela fine,
proprio come dalla vite,
esile e rigida,
pendono grappoli
come occhi,
come molti angeli
danzano su una capocchia di spillo.

Dio non chiede troppo filo
per restare qui;
solo una venuzza
e sangue che vi scorra
e un po' d'amore.
Come qualcuno ha detto:
l'amore e la tosse
non si possono nascondere.
Neppure un colpetto di tosse
neppure un amore minimo.
Perciò se hai solo un filo sottile
a Dio non importa:
Lui te lo troverai tra le mani facilmente
proprio come una volta con dieci centesimi
ti potevi prendere una Coca.

 

 

 

 

FRENZY

 

I am not lazy.
I am on the amphetamine of the soul.
I am, each day,
typing out the God
my typewriter believes in.
Very quick. Very intense,
like a wolf at a live heart.
Not lazy.
When a lazy man, they say,
looks toward heaven,
the angels close the windows.

 

Oh angels,
keep the windows open
so that I may reach in
and steal each object,
objects that tell me the sea is not dying,
objects that tell me the dirt has a life-wish,
that the Christ who walked for me,
walked on true ground
and that this frenzy,
like bees stinging the heart all morning,
will keep the angels
with their windows open,
wide as an English bathtub.

 
   

 

 

 

Unknown Girl In A Maternity Ward

 

  

Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded
down starch halls with the other unnested throng
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head
moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong.
But this is an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.

 

 

 


The doctors are enamel. They want to know
the facts. They guess about the man who left me,
some pendulum soul, going the way men go
and leave you full of child. But our case history
stays blank. All I did was let you grow.
Now we are here for all the ward to see.
They thought I was strange, although
I never spoke a word. I burst empty of you,
letting you see how the air is so.
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me
and I turn my head away. I do not know.

 

 

 


Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in.
Six times a day I prize
your need, the animals of your lips, your skin
growing warm and plump. I see your eyes
lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies.
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?

  

 

 

 

Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms
fit you like a sleeve, they hold
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms
of your nerves, each muscle and fold
of your first days. Your old man's face disarms
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold
me. I speak. It is you my silence harms.
I should have known; I should have told
them something to write down. My voice alarms
my throat. "Name of father—none." I hold
you and name you bastard in my arms.

 

 

 


And now that's that. There is nothing more
that I can say or lose.
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore
rocking off you. You break from me. I choose
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose.
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.

 

 

 

Ragazza Ignota in Reparto Maternità
 

Bimbo, la corrente del respiro ha sei giorni.
Piccola nocca t'accoccoli sul letto bianco,
piccolo e forte, come una chiocciola rattratto
ti rannicchi al seno.
Le labbra sono animali, sei nutrito con amore.
All'inizio la fame non è errore.
Tentennano le cuffiette le infermiere,
su ceste a rotelle sei pascolato
con la nidiata dei senza nido,
lungo corridoi inamidati.
La tua testa al mio tocco s'inclina,
vacilla piano come una tazzina.
Senti l'appartenenza.
Ma questo è un letto istituzionale.
Non farai per molto la mia conoscenza.

I dottori sono smaltati.
Vogliono sapere i fatti.
Si chiedono dell'uomo che mi ha lasciato,
un'anima pendolo che viene e che va
e come sempre ti lascia piena di bambino.
Ma la nostra cartella clinica rimane vuota.
Ti ho lasciato crescere, non ho fatto altro.
Ora siamo qui, guardati da tutto il reparto.
Hanno pensato che fossi strana
Anche se non ho detto una parola.
Sono esplosa e svuotandomi di te
ti ho lasciato imparare cos'è l'aria.
I dottori fanno grafici d'indovinelli.
Volgo la testa altrove. Io non lo so.

È tua la sola faccia che riconosco.
Ossa da ossa mi bevi le risposte.
Sei volte al giorno soddisfo il tuo bisogno,
le tue labbra animali,
il tepore della pelle che si fa paffuta.
Vedo schiudersi le tendine degli occhi.
Sono pietre blu, il muschio va sparendo.
Sbatti le palpebre stupito,
e mi chiedo cosa vedi
strano parente che turbi il mio silenzio.
Sono un riparo di menzogne.
Dovrei di nuovo imparare a parlare,
o senza speranza di salute mentale
potrò toccare un viso che riconosco?

Nel corridoio ritornano le ceste.
Le mie braccia ti calzano a pennello,
avvolgono le lanose infiorescenze
dei tuoi salici piangenti,
l'arnia ronzante d'api dei tuoi nervi,
i muscoli e le grinze dei primi giorni.
La tua faccia da vecchino
disarma le infermiere.
I dottori mi rimproverano ancora.
Parlo allora. È a te che il mio silenzio nuoce.
Dovevo saperlo. Devo far scrivere qualcosa.
La voce s'allarma nella gola:
''Nome del padre: nessuno''.
Ti tengo fra le braccia e ti nomino bastardo.

E anche questa è fatta. Non ho più
niente da dire, niente da perdere.
Altre hanno già trafficato vita
e non potevano parlare.
Mi rattrappisco per evitare
i tuoi occhi gufigni, mio fragile ospite.
Sfioro le tue guance come fiori. Al contatto
illividisci. Ci disconosciamo. Sono
l'insenatura che t'accoglie, lo scoglio
contro cui ti frangi. Ti stacchi. Scelgo
l'unica via per te, piccolo erede,
e ti do via, squassando i noi stessi che perdiamo.
Va' bimbo che non sei nulla più d'un mio peccato.

 

 

 

 

THE DOUBLE IMAGE

1.
 
I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,
flapping in the winter rain.
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know:
all the medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never be as true as these
struck leaves letting go.
 
I, who chose two times
to kill myself, had said your nickname
the mewling mouths when you first came;
until a fever rattled
in your throat and I moved like a pantomine
above your head. Ugly angels spoke to me. The blame,
I heard them say, was mine. They tattled
like green witches in my head, letting doom
leak like a broken faucet;
as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet,
an old debt I must assume.
 
Death was simpler than I'd thought.
The day life made you well and whole
I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
I pretended I was dead
until the white men pumped the poison out,
putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole
of talking boxes and the electric bed.
I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel.
Today the yellow leaves
go queer. You ask me where they go I say today believed
in itself, or else it fell.
 
Today, my small child, Joyce,
love your self's self where it lives.
There is no special God to refer to; or if there is,
why did I let you grow
in another place. You did not know my voice
when I came back to call. All the superlatives
of tomorrow's white tree and mistletoe
will not help you know the holidays you had to miss.
The time I did not love
myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove.
There was new snow after this.
 
2.
 
They sent me letters with news
of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.
When I grew well enough to tolerate
myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said.
But I didn't leave. I had my portrait
done instead.
 
Part way back from Bedlam
I came to my mother's house in Gloucester,
Massachusetts. And this is how I came
to catch at her; and this is how I lost her.
I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said.
And she never could. She had my portrait
done instead.
 
I lived like an angry guest,
like a partly mended thing, an outgrown child.
I remember my mother did her best.
She took me to Boston and had my hair restyled.
Your smile is like your mother's, the artist said.
I didn't seem to care. I had my portrait
done instead.
 
There was a church where I grew up
with its white cupboards where they locked us up,
row by row, like puritans or shipmates
singing together. My father passed the plate.
Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said.
I wasn't exactly forgiven. They had my portrait
done instead.
 
3.
 
All that summer sprinklers arched
over the seaside grass.
We talked of drought
while the salt-parched
field grew sweet again. To help time pass
I tried to mow the lawn
and in the morning I had my portrait done,
holding my smile in place, till it grew formal.
Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit
and a postcard of Motif number one,
as if it were normal
to be a mother and be gone.
 
They hung my portrait in the chill
north light, matching
me to keep me well.
Only my mother grew ill.
She turned from me, as if death were catching,
as if death transferred,
as if my dying had eaten inside of her.
That August you were two, by I timed my days with doubt.
On the first of September she looked at me
and said I gave her cancer.
They carved her sweet hills out
and still I couldn't answer.
 
4.
 
That winter she came
part way back
from her sterile suite
of doctors, the seasick
cruise of the X-ray,
the cells' arithmetic
gone wild. Surgery incomplete,
the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard
them say.
 
During the sea blizzards
she had here
own portrait painted.
A cave of mirror
placed on the south wall;
matching smile, matching contour.
And you resembled me; unacquainted
with my face, you wore it. But you were mine
after all.
 
I wintered in Boston,
childless bride,
nothing sweet to spare
with witches at my side.
I missed your babyhood,
tried a second suicide,
tried the sealed hotel a second year.
On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed and this
was good.
 
5.
 
I checked out for the last time
on the first of May;
graduate of the mental cases,
with my analysts's okay,
my complete book of rhymes,
my typewriter and my suitcases.
 
All that summer I learned life
back into my own
seven rooms, visited the swan boats,
the market, answered the phone,
served cocktails as a wife
should, made love among my petticoats
 
and August tan. And you came each
weekend. But I lie.
You seldom came. I just pretended
you, small piglet, butterfly
girl with jelly bean cheeks,
disobedient three, my splendid
 
stranger. And I had to learn
why I would rather
die than love, how your innocence
would hurt and how I gather
guilt like a young intern
his symptons, his certain evidence.
 
That October day we went
to Gloucester the red hills
reminded me of the dry red fur fox
coat I played in as a child; stock still
like a bear or a tent,
like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox.
 
We drove past the hatchery,
the hut that sells bait,
past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall's
Hill, to the house that waits
still, on the top of the sea,
and two portraits hung on the opposite walls.
 
6.
 
In north light, my smile is held in place,
the shadow marks my bone.
What could I have been dreaming as I sat there,
all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone
of the smile, the young face,
the foxes' snare.
 
In south light, her smile is held in place,
her cheeks wilting like a dry
orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown
love, my first image. She eyes me from that face
that stony head of death
I had outgrown.
 
The artist caught us at the turning;
we smiled in our canvas home
before we chose our foreknown separate ways.
The dry redfur fox coat was made for burning.
I rot on the wall, my own
Dorian Gray.
 
And this was the cave of the mirror,
that double woman who stares
at herself, as if she were petrified
in time -- two ladies sitting in umber chairs.
You kissed your grandmother
and she cried.
 
7.
 
I could not get you back
except for weekends. You came
each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit
that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack
your things. We touch from habit.
The first visit you asked my name.
Now you will stay for good. I will forget
how we bumped away from each other like marionettes
on strings. It wasn't the same
as love, letting weekends contain
us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name,
wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying.
You can call me mother and I remember my mother again,
somewhere in greater Boston, dying.
 
I remember we named you Joyce
so we could call you Joy.
You came like an awkward guest
that first time, all wrapped and moist
and strange at my heavy breast.
I needed you. I didn't want a boy,
only a girl, a small milky mouse
of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house
of herself. We named you Joy.
I, who was never quite sure
about being a girl, needed another
life, another image to remind me.
And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure
or soothe it. I made you to find me.
 

 

 

 

La Doppia Immagine

 

1

A novembre compio trent'anni.
Sei ancora piccola, hai solo tre anni.
Guardiamo le foglie gialle, sono stremate,
turbinano nella pioggia d'inverno,
cadono e s'acquattano. Ed io ricordo
i tre autunni che non hai passato qui.
Hanno detto che mai ti avrei riavuto.
Ti dico quel che mai saprai davvero:
le congetture mediche
che spiegano il cervello non saranno mai reali
quanto queste foglie abbattute.

Io, che ho tentato due volte d'ammazzarmi,
ti avevo dato un nomignolo
appena arrivata, nei mesi del piagnucolare;
poi una febbre t'è rantolata in gola
ed io mi muovevo come una pantomima
attorno al tuo capino.
Angeli brutti mi hanno parlato. La colpa,
dicevano, era mia. Facevano gli spioni
come streghe verdi versando nella testa la rovina
come un rubinetto rotto;
come se la rovina avesse allagato la pancia e sommerso la culla,
un vecchio debito che dovevo accollarmi.

La morte era più semplice di quanto credessi.
Il giorno che la vita t'ha restituito sana e salva
Ho lasciato le streghe rapire la mia anima in colpa.
Ho finto d'esser morta
finché uomini bianchi m'hanno spompato il veleno,
m'hanno messo senza braccia e slavata
nella manfrina di scatole parlanti e letti elettrici.
Ridevo a vedermi messa ai ferri in quell'hotel.
Oggi le foglie gialle
sono stremate. Mi chiedi dove vanno.
Ti dico che l'oggi ha creduto in se stesso, altrimenti cedeva.

Oggi, piccina mia, Gioia,
ama il tuo essere dove adesso vive.
Non esiste un Dio speciale cui rivolgersi; o se c'è,
allora perché t'ho fatto crescere altrove.
Tu non riconoscevi la mia voce
quando tornavo a casa a trovarti.
Tutti i superlativi
di alberi di Natale e vischi del futuro
non ti aiuteranno a sapere le feste che hai perduto.
Nel tempo che non amai me stessa
venni in visita a te su marciapiedi spalati,
mi tenevi per un guanto.
Dopo questo fu di nuovo neve.

2.

Mi hanno spedito lettere con tue notizie
e io cucivo mocassini che non avrei mai usato.
Quando cominciai a sopportarmi
andai a stare con la mamma. Troppo tardi,
troppo tardi, dissero le streghe, per stare con la mamma.
Non me ne sono andata.
Ma un ritratto mi son fatto.

Dal manicomio nel parziale ritorno
venni alla casa di mia madre a Gloucester.
Ed ecco come venni ad abbrancarla,
ed ecco come venni a perderla.
Mia madre disse, per il suicidio io non posso dar perdono.
Non l'hai mai potuto.
Ma un ritratto lei m'ha fatto.

Ho vissuto da ospite rabbioso,
parzialmente rammendata, bimba esorbitante.
Ricordo che mia madre faceva del suo meglio.
Mi portò a Boston per farmi cambiare il taglio.
Sorridi come tua madre, disse il capocciante.
Non mi pareva interessante.
Ma un ritratto mi son fatto.

C'era una chiesa là dove sono cresciuta,
là in bianchi armadi fummo inchiavati
come coro di marinai, o puritani, irreggimentati.
Mio padre passava col piattino per la questua.
Dissero le streghe, troppo tardi per esser perdonata.
E non fui propriamente perdonata.
Ma un ritratto m'hanno fatto.

3.

Quell'estate gettiti irrigui s'inarcavano
a pioggia sull'erba rivierasca.
Parlavamo di siccità
mentre il prato corroso dal salmastro
nuovamente raddolciva.
Per passare il tempo falciavo l'erba
e la mattina mi facevo fare il ritratto,
fissando il sorriso nella formalità.
Ti ho spedito il disegnino di un coniglio,
e una cartolina col Motif number one
come se fosse normale
essere madre ed essersene andata.

Hanno appeso il ritratto nella fredda luce
del lato nord, che bene mi si addice,
per farmi stare bene.
Soltanto mia madre s'ammalò.
Mi volse le spalle, come se la morte contagiasse,
come se la morte si riflettesse,
come se il mio morire l'avesse corrosa.
Ad agosto avevi due anni, ma era dubbio il calcolo dei giorni.
Il primo settembre mi guardò in faccia
e mi disse che le avevo attaccato il cancro.
Le mozzarono le colline dolci
e ancora non avevo la risposta.

4.

Quell'inverno lei tornò
parziale ritorno
alla sterile suite
di medici, nauseante
crociera di raggi X,
l'aritmetica delle cellule impazzita.
Parziale intervento,
braccio grasso, prognosi infausta,
li ho sentiti dire.

Durante le burrasche marine
lei si fece fare il ritratto.
Caverna di uno specchio,
appeso al lato sud;
una coppia di sorrisi, una copia di lineamenti.
E tu mi assomigliavi sconosciuto
viso mio, tu lo indossavi.
Dopotutto eri mia.

Ho svernato a Boston,
sposa senza figli,
niente di dolce da spartire,
con le streghe a fianco.
Ho perduto la tua infanzia,
tentato un altro suicidio,
subito il secondo hotel dei sigilli.
M'hai fatto un Pesce d'Aprile.
Abbiamo riso insieme, fu cosa buona.

5.

Per l'ultima volta m'hanno dimesso
il primo maggio;
laureata in casi mentali,
con l'assenso dell'analista,
un libro finito di versi,
la macchina da scrivere e le borse.

Quell'estate imparai a rimettere vita
nelle mie sette stanze,
andavo su barchette a cigno, al mercato,
rispondevo al telefono,
da brava moglie offrivo da bere,
facevo l'amore fra crinoline e abbronzature d'agosto.

E tu venivi ogni weekend. No, mento.
Venivi di rado. Fingevo che c'eri
bimba farfalla, porcellina
guance di gelatina,
tre anni di disobbedienza,
ma splendida sconosciuta.

E dovevo imparare
perché volevo morire invece che amare,
perché mi faceva male la tua innocenza,
e perché accumulo le colpe
come un giovane internista
rivela i sintomi e la certa evidenza.

Quel giorno d'ottobre che andammo a Gloucester
le colline rosse mi ricordavano
la pelliccia di volpe rossa sdrucita
in cui giocavo da bambina,
immobile come un orso, una tenda,
una gran caverna che ride, pelliccia di volpe rossa.

Oltrepassammo il vivaio dei pesci,
il baracchino dove vendono l'esca,
Pigeon Cove, lo Yacht Club,
Squall Hill, verso la casa in attesa
ancora, la casa sul mare.
E due ritratti sono appesi su opposte pareti.

6.

Al lato nord il mio sorriso al suo posto è fissato,
risalta nell'ombra il mio viso ossuto.
Mentre posavo lì cosa avevo sognato
tutta me negli occhi in attesa,
il giovane viso, la zona del sorriso,
trappola per volpi.

Al lato sud il suo sorriso al suo posto è fissato,
le guance vizze come orchidee appassite;
mio specchio beffardo, mio amore spodestato,
mia immagine prima. Mi occhieggia dal ritratto
quella testa di morte impietrita
che avevo sopraffatto.

L'artista ci fissò alla svolta;
si sorrideva inquadrate nelle tele
prima di scegliere strade da prima separate.
La pelliccia di volpe rossa doveva esser bruciata.
Mi decompongo sulla parete
come Dorian Grey.

E questa fu caverna di uno specchio,
una donna sdoppiata che si fissa
come se il tempo l'avesse impietrita
- due signore in terra d'ombra assise -
Hai dato un bacio alla nonna,
e lei ha pianto.

7.

Non potevo tenerti
tranne il weekend. Ogni volta venivi
stringendo il disegnino del coniglio
che ti avevo spedito. Per l'ultima volta
disfo i tuoi bagagli. Ci tocchiamo senza un contatto.
La prima volta hai chiesto il mio nome.
Ora rimani per sempre. Dimenticherò
che sbalzavamo cozzandoci come marionette
appese a fili. Non era l'amore
ridursi al weekend.
Ti sbucci le ginocchia, impari il mio nome,
traballando sul marciapiede piangi e chiami.
Mi chiami mamma e ricordo ancora mia madre,
che altrove, nei dintorni di Boston, muore.

Ricordo che ti chiamammo Gioia
per poterti chiamare gioia.
Arrivasti come un ospite imbarazzato
allora, tutta fasciata umida meraviglia
alla mia mammella pesante.
Avevo bisogno di te. Non volevo un maschio,
solo una femmina, un topino lattoso di bimba,
da sempre amata, da sempre esuberante
nella casa di se stessa. Ti chiamammo Gioia.
Io, che non fui mai certa d'esser femmina,
avevo bisogno di un'altra vita,
di un'altra immagine per ricordarmi.
E fu questa la mia più grave colpa;
tu non potevi curarla o lenirla.
Ti ho fatta per trovarmi.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For my lover, returning to his wife

 

 

She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.

She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.

Let's face it, I have been momentary.
vA luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.

She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,

has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,

done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.

She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.

I give you back your heart.
I give you permission --

for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound --
for the burying of her small red wound alive --

for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call --

the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.

She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.

As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.

 

 

Al mio amante che torna da sua moglie

 

Lei è tutta là.
Per te con maestria fu fusa e fu colata,
per te forgiata fin dalla tua infanzia,
con le tue cento biglie predilette fu costruita.

Lei è sempre stata là, mio caro.
Infatti è deliziosa.
Fuochi d'artificio in un febbraio uggioso
e concreta come pentola di ghisa.

Diciamocelo, sono stata di passaggio.
Un lusso. Una scialuppa rosso fuoco nella cala.
Mi svolazzano i capelli dal finestrino.
Son fumo, cozze fuori stagione.

Lei è molto di più. Lei ti è dovuta,
t'incrementa le crescite usuali e tropicali.
Questo non è un esperimento. Lei è tutta armonia.
S'occupa lei dei remi e degli scalmi del canotto,

ha messo fiorellini sul davanzale a colazione,
s'è seduta a tornire stoviglie a mezzogiorno,
ha esposto tre bambini al plenilunio,
tre puttini disegnati da Michelangelo,

l'ha fatto a gambe spalancate
nei mesi faticosi alla cappella.
Se dai un'occhiata, i bambini sono lassù
sospesi alla volta come delicati palloncini.

Lei li ha anche portati a nanna dopo cena,
e loro tutt'e tre a testa bassa,
piccati sulle gambette, lamentosi e riluttanti,
e la sua faccia avvampa neniando il loro
poco sonno.

Ti restituisco il cuore.
Ti do libero accesso:

al fusibile che in lei rabbiosamente pulsa,
alla cagna che in lei tramesta nella sozzura,
e alla sua ferita sepolta
- alla sepoltura viva della sua piccola ferita rossa -

al pallido bagliore tremolante sotto le costole,
al marinaio sbronzo in aspettativa nel polso
sinistro,
alle sue ginocchia materne, alle calze,
alla giarrettiera - per il richiamo -

lo strano richiamo
quando annaspi tra braccia e poppe
e dai uno strattone al suo nastro arancione
rispondendo al richiamo, lo strano richiamo.

Lei è così nuda, è unica.
È la somma di te e dei tuoi sogni.
Montala come un monumento, gradino per gradino.
lei è solida.

Quanto a me, io sono un acquerello.
Mi dissolvo.

 

 

 

The Starry Night

 

That does not keep me from having a terrible need of -- shall I say the word -- religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.

--Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.

 

Notte stellata


 

 

 

 

 

La città non esiste
se non dove un albero dalle nere chiome scivola
come una donna annegata nel cielo caldo.
La città è silente. La notte in tumulto con undici stelle.
Oh stellata notte! E' così
che voglio morire.

Si muove. Sono vivi, tutti.
Perfino la luna si rigonfia nelle sue catene arancio
per schizzare, come un dio, bambini dal suo occhio.
Non visto il vecchio serpente s'inghiotte le stelle.
Oh stellata notte! E' così
che voglio morire:

dentro quella bestia notturna assalitrice
risucchiata da quel dragone, separata
dalla mia vita senza un affanno,
senza un gonfiore,
senza un lamento.
 


(Traduzione: L.D'Incà)

 
 

 

 

 

YOUNG

 

A thousand doors ago
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
as long as I could remember,
I lay on the lawn at night,
Clover wrinkling over me,
The wise stars bedding over me,
my mother's window a funnel
of yellow heat running out,
my father's window, half shut,
an eye where sleepers pass,
and the boards of the house
were smooth and white as wax
and probably a million leaves
sailed on their strange stalks
as the crickets ticked together
and I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman's yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.
 

Giovane

Mille porte fa,
quando ero una ragazza sola
in una grande sala con quattro garage,
una notte d'estate se ricordo bene,
ero stesa sul prato
e sotto di me, increspato il trifoglio,
e sopra, distese, le stelle,
e la finestra di papà, semichiusa,
un occhio da cui passa chi dorme,
e le assi della casa
erano bianche e lisce come cera
e milioni di foglie sbattevano,
come vele sui loro strani gambi
e i grilli ticchettavano tutti insieme
e io, nel mio corpo nuovo fiammante,
non ancora di donna,
facevo domande alle stelle
e pensavo che Dio vedesse veramente
calore luce dipinta e gomiti
ginocchia sogni buonanotte.

[da All My Pretty Ones Year, 1962] 

 

 

 

Her kind

 

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
 
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
 
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
 

Una come lei

 

In giro sono andata, strega posseduta

Ossessa ho abitato l'aria nera, padrona della notte;

sognando malefici, ho fatto il mio mestiere

passando sulle case, luce dopo luce:

solitaria e folle, con dodici dita.

Una donna così non è una donna.

Come lei io sono stata.
 

Ho trovato nei boschi tiepide caverne,

e pentole e amuleti, tavole

e armadietti, infinità di oggetti

e sete ho ammassato;

per elfi e vermi cene ho preparato:

mugolando ho sistemato le cose fuori posto.

Una donna così non è capita.

Come lei sono stata.

 

Sul tuo carro, o cocchiere, son salita,

a braccia nude ho salutato paesi che passavano,

e le ultime strade luminose, ho conosciuto,

sopravvissuta alle tue fiamme che ancora rompono le gambe

e alle tue ruote che ancora rompono le ossa.

Una donna così non ha vergogna di morire.

Come lei io sono stata.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her kind

 

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
 
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
 
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
 

 

 

 

 

                       Tipo essa

Saí, bruxa possuída,
assombrando o ar, corajosa na noite preta,
me achando má, lição aprendida,
de janela acesa em janela acesa.
Coisa só, dos doze dedos, avessa.
Mulher assim não é mulher, não que se preza.


Descobri as cavernas quentes da floresta,
enchi de prateleiras, desenhos, relevos,
armários, sedas, inumeráveis coisas;
fiz a janta pros vermes e pros elfos:
arranjando o desarrumado, chorosa.
Mulher assim é incompreendida.
Eu fui tipo essa.


Andei no seu carro, moço,
Passei pelas cidades com os braços de fora, abanando pra elas.
Aprendendo os caminhos menos espertos, colosso,
as chamas ainda me mordendo as coxas,
as costelas partindo quando giram a manivela.
Mulher assim não tem vergonha de finar-se.
Eu fui tipo essa.

 

 Com autorização da tradutora, Lavínia, reproduzo a tradução para Português encontrada aqui.

 Agradecido!

 

 

Her kind

 

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.
 
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.
 
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
 

De ésas

 

He salido al mundo, una bruja poseída,

rondando el aire negro, más valiente por ello;

soñando el mal, he sobrevolado

las casas planas, de luz en luz:

pobre solitaria, con mis 12 dedos, enajenada.

Una mujer así no es una mujer, lo sé.

Yo he sido de ésas.

 

He encontrado las cuevas tibias del bosque,

las he llenado de sartenes, tallas, estantes,

de armarios, sedas, de incontables bienes;

he preparado la cena de los gusanos y los elfos:

llorando, aullando, ordenando lo que estaba mal.

A una mujer así no se la comprende.

Yo he sido de ésas.

 

He viajado contigo, carretero, saludando

con los brazos desnudos a los pueblos que pasaban,

aprendiéndome las últimas rutas de la claridad, superviviente

allí donde tus llamas aún muerden mis muslos

y crujen mis costillas bajo la presión de tu carreta.

Una mujer así no se avergüenza de morir.

Yo he sido de ésas.

 
 

 

 

 

The addict

 

 

Sleepmonger,

deathmonger,

with capsules in my palms each night,

eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles

I make arrangements for a pint-sized journey.

I'm the queen of this condition.

I'm an expert on making the trip

and now they say I'm an addict.

Now they ask why.

WHY!

 

 

Don't they know that I promised to die!

I'm keping in practice.

I'm merely staying in shape.

The pills are a mother, but better,

every color and as good as sour balls.

I'm on a diet from death.

 

 

Yes, I admit

it has gotten to be a bit of a habit-

blows eight at a time, socked in the eye,

hauled away by the pink, the orange,

the green and the white goodnights.

I'm becoming something of a chemical

mixture.

that's it!

 

 

My supply

of tablets

has got to last for years and years.

I like them more than I like me.

It's a kind of marriage.

It's a kind of war where I plant bombs inside

of myself.

 

 

Yes

I try

to kill myself in small amounts,

an innocuous occupatin.

Actually I'm hung up on it.

But remember I don't make too much noise.

And frankly no one has to lug me out

and I don't stand there in my winding sheet.

I'm a little buttercup in my yellow nightie

eating my eight loaves in a row

and in a certain order as in

the laying on of hands

or the black sacrament.

 

 

It's a ceremony

but like any other sport

it's full of rules.

It's like a musical tennis match where

my mouth keeps catching the ball.

Then I lie on; my altar

elevated by the eight chemical kisses.

 

 

What a lay me down this is

with two pink, two orange,

two green, two white goodnights.

Fee-fi-fo-fum-

Now I'm borrowed.

Now I'm numb.

 

 

 

                     A viciada

 

Patroa da morte,
patroa do sono,
com cápsulas na mão toda noite.
Oito por vez, de doces vidros farmacêuticos.
Faço os preparativos para uma jornada de miligramas.
Sou a rainha dessa condição.
Sou uma mulher viajada.
E agora me chamam de viciada.
Agora me perguntam por quê.
Quê?


Não sabem
que eu prometi morrer!
Estou praticando.
Só mantendo a forma.
As pílulas são uma mãe, melhorada,
de todas as cores e bom como bala azedinha.
Estou fazendo a dieta da morte.


Sim, admito.
Tornou-se um certo hábito.
Oito por vez, no olho,
enlevada pelo rosa, o laranja,
o verde e o boa-noite branco.
Estou virando meio combinação
química.
É isso!


Meu estoque
de comprimidos
tem que durar anos e anos.
Gosto mais deles que de mim.
Teimosos do inferno, não me deixam.
É tipo um casamento.
Tipo uma guerra
e eu jogo bombas pra dentro
de mim.


Sim
eu tento
me matar em pequenas porções,
ocupação inócua.
Na verdade, estou amarrada nela.
Mas lembre que eu não faço barulho demais.
E, francamente, ninguém precisa me arrastar,
não fico por aí enrolada nos lençóis.
Sou um docinho na minha camisolinha amarela.
Engolindo minhas oito porções de uma vez,
e na ordem como
se postasse as mãos
ou no sacramento negro.


É uma cerimônia
mas, como em qualquer esporte,
cheia de regras.
É como um jogo de tênis com música
e a minha boca sempre pega a bola.
Depois eu jazo no meu altar
elevada pelos oito beijos químicos.


E que alívio é isso:
dois rosa, dois laranja,
dois verdes e dois boa-noites brancos.
Fuein-fuein-fuein-fuein-fuein.
Agora bateu.
Agora eu chumbei.

 

Com autorização da tradutora, Lavínia, reproduzo a tradução para Português encontrada aqui.  

Agradecido!      

 

 

SUICIDE NOTE

 

"You speak to me of narcissism but I reply that it is
a matter of my life" - Artaud
 

"At this time let me somehow bequeath all the leftovers to my daughters and their daughters" - Anonymous
 

 

Better,
despite the worms talking to
the mare's hoof in the field;
better,
despite the season of young girls
dropping their blood;
better somehow
to drop myself quickly
into an old room.
Better (someone said)
not to be born
and far better
not to be born twice
at thirteen
where the boardinghouse,
each year a bedroom,
caught fire.


Dear friend,
I will have to sink with hundreds of others
on a dumbwaiter into hell.
I will be a light thing.
I will enter death
like someone's lost optical lens.
Life is half enlarged.
The fish and owls are fierce today.
Life tilts backward and forward.
Even the wasps cannot find my eyes.


Yes,
eyes that were immediate once.
Eyes that have been truly awake,
eyes that told the whole story—
poor dumb animals.
Eyes that were pierced,
little nail heads,
light blue gunshots.


And once with
a mouth like a cup,
clay colored or blood colored,
open like the breakwater
for the lost ocean
and open like the noose
for the first head.


Once upon a time
my hunger was for Jesus.
O my hunger! My hunger!
Before he grew old
he rode calmly into Jerusalem
in search of death.


This time
I certainly
do not ask for understanding
and yet I hope everyone else
will turn their heads when an unrehearsed fish jumps
on the surface of Echo Lake;
when moonlight,
its bass note turned up loud,
hurts some building in Boston,
when the truly beautiful lie together.
I think of this, surely,
and would think of it far longer
if I were not… if I were not
at that old fire.


I could admit
that I am only a coward
crying me me me
and not mention the little gnats, the moths,
forced by circumstance
to suck on the electric bulb.
But surely you know that everyone has a death,
his own death,
waiting for him.
So I will go now
without old age or disease,
wildly but accurately,
knowing my best route,
carried by that toy donkey I rode all these years,
never asking, “Where are we going?”
We were riding (if I'd only known)
to this.


Dear friend,
please do not think
that I visualize guitars playing
or my father arching his bone.
I do not even expect my mother's mouth.
I know that I have died before—
once in November, once in June.
How strange to choose June again,
so concrete with its green breasts and bellies.
Of course guitars will not play!
The snakes will certainly not notice.
New York City will not mind.
At night the bats will beat on the trees,
knowing it all,
seeing what they sensed all day.

June 1965          

 

 

        

BILHETE SUICIDA

 

 

 

Você me fala de narcisismo, mas eu respondo que é uma questão da minha vida... Artaud

 

Nesta hora, permita-me deixar de alguma maneira as sobras para minhas filhas e suas filhas... Anónimo

 

 

 

  

É melhor,

apesar dos vermes falando

com os cascos da égua no campo;

é melhor,

apesar do período das moças

pingando seu sangue;

é melhor de algum jeito

eu me jogar rápido

num velho quarto.

É melhor (alguém disse)

não nascer

é melhor ainda

não nascer duas vezes

aos treze

onde o colégio interno,

cada ano um quarto,

pegou fogo.

 

 

Querido amigo,

Vou ter que afundar com centenas de outros

num elevador de pratos para o inferno.

Vou ser uma coisa leve.

Vou entrar na morte

como a lente de aumento perdida de alguém.

A vida está meio aumentada.

Os peixes e as corujas estão raivosos hoje.

A vida balança pra frente e pra trás.

Nem as vespas conseguem achar meus olhos.

 

 

Sim,

olhos que já foram imediatos

olhos que já foram despertos de verdade,

olhos que contavam a história toda _

pobres animais burros.

Olhos que foram vazados,

cabecinhas de prego,

tiros azul-claro.

 

 

E uma vez com a boca

como uma xícara,

cor de argila ou cor de sangue,

abriam como uma barragem

para o oceano perdido

e abriam como a forca

para a primeira cabeça.

 

 

Uma vez

minha fome era de Jesus.

Ah minha fome! Minha fome!

Antes de ficar velho

ele andou calmamente por Jerusalém

procurando a morte.

 

Desta vez

com certeza

não peço compreensão

e ainda espero que todos os outros

se voltem quando um peixe não-treinado pular

na superfície do Lago Echo;

quando o luar,

sua nota grave elevada,

ferir algum prédio em Boston,

quando os belos de verdade jazerem juntos.

Eu penso nisso, claro,

e pensaria nisso muito mais

se não estivesse... se não estivesse

naquele velho fogo.

 

 

Eu poderia admitir

que sou só uma covarde

choramingando eu eu eu

sem mencionar as mosquinhas, as traças,

obrigadas pelas circunstâncias

a chupar a lâmpada.

Mas certamente você sabe que todo mundo tem uma morte,

sua própria morte,

esperando.

Então vou agora,

sem doença ou velhice,

descontrolada mas precisa,

sabendo minha melhor rota,

andando naquele burro de brinquedo que montei esses anos todos,

sem jamais perguntar “Pra onde vamos?”

Nós íamos (ah, se eu soubesse)

Pra isso.

 

 

Querido amigo,

por favor não pense

que eu visualizo guitarras tocando

ou meu pai arqueando seu osso.

Não espero nem a boca da minha mãe.

Eu sei que já morri antes _

uma vez em Novembro, outra em Junho.

Que estranho escolher Junho de novo,

tão concreto com seus peitos e ventres verdes.

Claro que as guitarras não vão tocar!

As cobras certamente não notarão.

Nova York não vai ligar.

À noite, os morcegos vão bater nas árvores,

sabendo de tudo,

vendo o que sentiram o dia todo.

 

 

 

 

Reproduzo aqui a tradução da Lavínia, que por ela gentilmente me foi enviada. Muito obrigado!

 

 

 

 

SYLVIA’S DEATH

 

for Sylvia Plath

.

O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,

with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,

with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,

(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)

what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?

Thief --
how did you crawl into,

crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,

the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breasts,

the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,

the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,

the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?

(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)

O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,

how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy

to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,

and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,

and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides

and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,

(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)

And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,

what is your death
but an old belonging,

a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?

(O friend,
while the moon's bad,
and the king's gone,
and the queen's at her wit's end
the bar fly ought to sing!)

O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!

 
 

 

 

Menstruation at Forty
 

 

I was thinking of a son.

The womb is not a clock

nor a bell tolling,

but in the eleventh month of its life

I feel the November

of the body as well as of the calendar.

In two days it will be my birthday

and as always the earth is done with its harvest.

This time I hunt for death,

the night I lean toward,

the night I want.

Well then"

speak of it!

I was in the womb all along.

 

I was thinking of a son . . .

You!  The never acquired,

the never seeded or unfastened,

you of the genitals I feared,

the stalk and the puppy's breath.

Will I give you my eyes or his?

Will you be the David or the Susan?

(Those two names I picked and listened for.)

Can you be the man your fathers are"

the leg muscles from Michaelangelo,

hands from Yugoslavia,

somewhere the peasant, Slavic and determined,

somewhere the survivor, bulging with life"

and could it still be possible,

all this with Susan's eyes?

 

All this without you"

two days gone in blood.

I myself will die without baptism,

a third daughter they didn't bother.

My death will come on my name day.

What's wrong with the name day?

It's only an angel of the sun.

Woman,

weaving a web over your own,

a thin and tangled poison.

Scorpio,

bad spider"

die!

 

My death from the wrists,

two name tags,

blood worn like a corsage

to bloom

one on the left and one on the right"

It's a warm room,

the place of blood.

Leave the door open on its hinges!

 

Two days for your death

and two days until mine.

 

Love!  That red disease"

year after year, David, you would make me wild!

David!  Susan!  David!  David!

full and disheveled, hissing into the night

never growing old,

waiting always on the back porch . . .

year after year,

my carrot, my cabbage,

I would have possessed you before all women,

calling your name,

calling you mine.

 
   

 

 

 

Self in 1958

 

 

What is reality?

I am a plaster doll; I pose

with eyes that cut open without landfall or nightfall

upon some shellacked and grinning person,

eyes that open, blue, steel, and close.

Am I approximately an I. Magnin transplant?

I have hair, black angel,

black-angel-stuffing to comb,

nylon legs, luminous arms

and some advertised clothes.

 

I live in a doll’s house

with four chairs,

a counterfeit table, a flat roof

and a big front door.

Many have come to such a small crossroad.

There is an iron bed,

(life enlarges, life takes aim)

a cardboard floor,

windows that flash open on someone’s city,

and little more.

 

Someone plays with me,

plants me in the all-electric kitchen,

Is this what Mrs. Rombauer said?

Someone pretends with me –

I am walled in solid by their noise –

or puts me upon their straight bed.

They think I am me!

Their warmth? Their warmth is not a friend!

They pry my mouth for their cups of gin

and their stale bread.

 

What is reality

to this synthetic doll

who should smile, who should shift gears,

should spring the doors open in a wholesome disorder,

and have no evidence of ruin or fears?

But I would cry,

rooted into the wall that

was once my mother,

if I could remember how

and of I had the tears.

 

June 1958 – June 1965

 

 

 

 

Imitations of Drowning

 

Fear

of drowning,

fear of being that alone,

kept me busy making a deal

as if I could buy

my way out of it

and it worked for two years

and all of July.

 

This August I began to dream of drowning. The dying

went on and on in water as white and clear

as the gin I drink each day at half-past five.

Going down for the last time, the last breath lying,

I grapple with eels like ropes – it’s ether, it’s queer

and then, at last, it’s done. Now the scavengers arrive,

the hard crawlers who come to élan up the ocean floor.

And death, that old butcher, will bother me no more.

 

 

I

had never

had this dream before

except twice when my parents

clung to rafts

and sat together for death,

frozen

like lewd photographs.

 

Who listens to dreams?  Only symbols for something –

like money for the analyst or your mother’s wig,

the arm I almost lost in the washroom wringer,

following fear to its core, tugging the old string.

But real drowning is for someone else. It’s too big

to put in your mouth on purpose, it puts hot singers

in your tongue and vomit in your nose as your lungs break.

Tossed like a wet dog by that juggler, you die awake.

 

 

Fear,

a motor,

pumps me around and around

until I fade slowly

and the crowd laughs.

I fade out, and old bicycle rider

whose odds are measured

in actuary graphs.

 

This weekend the papers were black with the new highway

fatalities and in Boston the strangler found another victim

and we were all in Truro drinking beer and writing checks.

The other rode the surf, commanding rafts like sleighs.

I swam – but the tide came in like ten thousand orgasms.

I swam – but the waves were higher than horses’ necks.

I was shut up in that closet, until, biting the door,

they dragged me out, dribbling urine on the gritty shore.

 

 

Breathe!

And you’ll know…

an ant in a pot of chocolate,

it boils

and surrounds you.

There is no news in fear

but in the end it’s fear

that drowns you.

 

 

September 1962

 

   

 

 

 

Live

 

Live or die, but don't poison everything...

 

Well, death's been here

for a long time --

it has a hell of a lot

to do with hell

and suspicion of the eye

and the religious objects

and how I mourned them

when they were made obscene

by my dwarf-heart's doodle.

The chief ingredient

is mutilation.

And mud, day after day,

mud like a ritual,

and the baby on the platter,

cooked but still human,

cooked also with little maggots,

sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,

the damn bitch!

 

Even so,

I kept right on going on,

a sort of human statement,

lugging myself as if

I were a sawed-off body

in the trunk, the steamer trunk.

This became perjury of the soul.

It became an outright lie

and even though I dressed the body

it was still naked, still killed.

It was caught

in the first place at birth,

like a fish.

But I play it, dressed it up,

dressed it up like somebody's doll.

 

Is life something you play?

And all the time wanting to get rid of it?

And further, everyone yelling at you

to shut up. And no wonder!

People don't like to be told

that you're sick

and then be forced

to watch

you

come

down with the hammer.

 

Today life opened inside me like an egg

and there inside

after considerable digging

I found the answer.

What a bargain!

There was the sun,

her yolk moving feverishly,

tumbling her prize --

and you realize she does this daily!

I'd known she was a purifier

but I hadn't thought

she was solid,

hadn't known she was an answer.

God! It's a dream,

lovers sprouting in the yard

like celery stalks

and better,

a husband straight as a redwood,

two daughters, two sea urchings,

picking roses off my hackles.

If I'm on fire they dance around it

and cook marshmallows.

And if I'm ice

they simply skate on me

in little ballet costumes.

 

Here,

all along,

thinking I was a killer,

anointing myself daily

with my little poisons.

But no.

I'm an empress.

I wear an apron.

My typewriter writes.

It didn't break the way it warned.

Even crazy, I'm as nice

as a chocolate bar.

Even with the witches' gymnastics

they trust my incalculable city,

my corruptible bed.

 

O dearest three,

I make a soft reply.

The witch comes on

and you paint her pink.

I come with kisses in my hood

and the sun, the smart one,

rolling in my arms.

So I say Live

and turn my shadow three times round

to feed our puppies as they come,

the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,

despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!

Despite the pails of water that waited,

to drown them, to pull them down like stones,

they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue

and fumbling for the tiny tits.

Just last week, eight Dalmatians,

3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood

each

like a

birch tree.

I promise to love more if they come,

because in spite of cruelty

and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,

I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.

The poison just didn't take.

So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,

repeating The Black Mass and all of it.

I say Live, Live because of the sun,

the dream, the excitable gift.

 

February the last, 1966

 

 

 

 

 

My Friend, My Friend

 

Who will forgive me for the things I do?
With no special legend of God to refer to,
With my calm white pedigree, my yankee kin,
I think it would be better to be a Jew.

I forgive you for what you did not do.
I am impossibly quilty. Unlike you,
My Friend, I can not blame my origin
With no special legend or God to refer to.

They wear The Crucifix as they are meant to do.
Why do their little crosses trouble you?
The effigies that I have made are genuine,
(I think it would be better to be a Jew).

Watching my mother slowly die I knew
My first release. I wish some ancient bugaboo
Followed me. But my sin is always my sin.
With no special legend or God to refer to.

Who will forgive me for the things I do?
To have your reasonable hurt to belong to
Might ease my trouble like liquor or aspirin.
I think it would be better to be a Jew.

And if I lie, I lie because I love you,
Because I am bothered by the things I do,
Because your hurt invades my calm white skin:
With no special legend or God to refer to,
I think it would be better to be a Jew.

 
 

 

 

The Kiss

My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby, you fool!

Before today my body was useless.
Now it's tearing at its square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot
and see - Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!

Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.

My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this
Pure genius at work. Darling, The composer has stepped
into fire.

 

Il bacio

La bocca sboccia come un taglio.
Son stata maltrattata tutto l'anno, uggiose
notti, scabri gomiti solamente nelle notti
e morbide scatole di Kleenex mi sgridano
frignona, frignona, sciocchina!

Prima d'oggi il mio corpo era inutile.
Ora si stacca di dosso gli angoli retti,
straccia nodo per nodo le vesti della vecchia Mary
-e guarda- adesso è¨ in piena botta d'elettrica scossa.
Zing! Una resurrezione!

Un Tempo era una barca piuttost legnosa,
senza commerci né  acqua salata di sotto
e bisognosa di una mano di vernice. Niente più
di un insieme d'assi. Ma tu l'hai ghindata, l'hai attrezzata
lei fu prescelta.

I nervi sono accesi. Ascolto gli strumenti.
Là  dov'era silenzio risuonano
tamburi percossi, corde incurabilmente pizzicate.
Merito tuo.

Puro genio all'opera. Caro, il compositore
ha fatto un passo nel fuoco.

 
 

 

 

 

The Kiss

 

 

My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby, you fool!

 

Before today my body was useless.
Now it's tearing at its square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot
and see - Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!

 

Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.

 

My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this
Pure genius at work. Darling, The composer has stepped
into fire.

  

EL BESO

 

 

Mi boca florece como una herida.

He estado equivocada todo el año, tediosas

noches, nada sino ásperos codos en ellos

y delicadas cajas de Kleenex, llamando llora bebé

¡llora bebé, tonto!

 

Antes de ayer mi cuerpo estaba inútil.

Ahora está desgarrándose en sus rincones cuadrados.

Está desgarrando los vestidos de la Vieja Mary, nudo anudo

y mira, ahora está bombardeada con esos eléctricos cerrojos.

¡Zing! ¡Una resurrección!

 

Una vez fue un bote, bastante madera

y sin trabajo, sin agua salada debajo

y necesitando un poco de pintura. No había más

que un conjunto de tablas. Pero la elevaste, la encordaste.

Ella ha sido elegida.

 

Mis nervios están encendidos. Los oigo como

instrumentos musicales. Donde había silencio

los tambores, las cuerdas están tocando irremediablemente. Tú hiciste esto.

Puro genio trabajando. Querido, el compositor ha entrado

al fuego.

 

 

 

Mr Mine

 

Notice how he has numbered the blue veins

in my breast. Moreover there are ten freckles.

Now he goes left. Now he goes right.

He is building a city, a city of flesh.

He's an industrialist. He has starved in cellars

and, ladies and gentlemen, he's been broken by iron,

by the blood, by the metal, by the triumphant

iron of his mother's death. But he begins again.

Now he constructs me. He is consumed by the city.

From the glory of words he has built me up.

From the wonder of concrete he has molded me.

He has given me six hundred street signs.

The time I was dancing he built a museum.

He built ten blocks when I moved on the bed.

He constructed an overpass when I left.

I gave him flowers and he built an airport.

For traffic lights he handed at red and green

lollipops. Yet in my heart I am go children slow.

 

Signor Mine

 

Osservate come mi ha contato le vene azzurre
sul seno. Ci sono anche dieci efelidi.
Ora va sinistra, ora a destra.
Sta costruendo una città, una città di carne.
È un imprenditore, ha fatto la fame in scantinati
e, signore e signori, è stato distrutto dal ferro,
dal sangue, dal metallo, dal ferro trionfante
della morte di sua madre. Però ricomincia.
Ora costruisce me. È tutto preso dalla città.
Con assi gloriose mi ha costruito.
Con cemento mirabile mi ha creato.
Mi ha dato anche seicento cartelli stradali.
Una volta che ballavo costruì un museo,
e dieci isolati quando mi spostai sul letto.
Aggiunse un cavalcavia quando me ne andai.
Gli diedi dei fiori, costruì un aeroporto.
Come semafori ha sparso lecca-lecca rossi e verdi.
Eppure io nel mio cuore sono “Rallentare – Bambini”.

 
 

 

 

 

The nude swim

 

On the southwest side of Capri

we found a little unknown grotto

where no people were and we

entered it completely

and let our bodies lose all

their loneliness.

 

All the fish in us

had escaped for a minute.

The real fish did not mind.

We did not disturb their personal life.

We calmly trailed over them

and under them, shedding

air bubbles, little white

balloons that drifted up

into the sun by the boat

where the Italian boatman slept

with his hat over his face.

 

Water so clear you could

read a book through it.

Water so buoyant you could

float on your elbow.

I lay on it as on a divan.

I lay on it just like

Matisse's Red Odalisque.

Water was my strange flower,

one must picture a woman

without a toga or a scarf

on a couch as deep as a tomb.

 

The walls of that grotto

were everycolor blue and

you said, "Look! Your eyes

are seacolor.  Look!  Your eyes

are skycolor."  And my eyes

shut down as if they were

suddenly ashamed.

 

 

                  Natanti nudi



Nel lembo di Capri a Ponente
scoprimmo una piccola grotta deserta,
e dentro quel vuoto in due
profondammo interamente
lasciando che i corpi abbandonassero
la loro solitudine.

 

Guizzarono via in un momento
tutti i pesci dentro di noi.
Ai veri pesci fu indifferente,
non turbavamo la loro intima vita.
Languidamente scivolavamo
intorno a loro effondendo
bollicine, piccoli bianchi
palloncini che aleggiavano
fino al sole, vicino alla barca
dove il barcaiolo italiano dormiva
col berretto calato sul viso.
 

Acqua così limpida da poterci
leggere un libro dentro,
acqua così leggera da poterci
galleggiare su un gomito.
Lì giacqui come fosse un divano.
Lì giacqui
come l'Odalisque Rouge di Matisse.
L'acqua era il mio fiore strano.
Si dipinga una donna
senza tunica nè sciarpa
su un lettino profondo come tomba.

 

Le pareti della grotta
svariavano il blu e tu
dicesti:"Guarda! Hai gli occhi
color mare, guarda! Hai gli occhi
color cielo".
E abbassai gli occhi
come per improvvisa vergogna.
 

 

 

 

 

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,
through God
in His perversity
unties the knot.

 

 

Quando l’uomo entra nella donna

 

Quando l’uomo
entra nella donna
come l’onda scava la riva,
ripetutamente,
e la donna, godendo, apre la bocca
e i denti le luccicano
come un alfabeto,
il Logos appare mungendo una stella,
e l’uomo
dentro la donna
stringe un nodo
perché mai più loro due
si separino
e la donna si fa fiore
che inghiotte il suo gambo
e il Logos appare
e sguinzaglia i loro fiumi.

 

Quest’uomo e questa donna
con la loro duplice fame
hanno cercato di spingersi oltre
la cortina di Dio, e ci sono
riusciti per un momento,
anche se poi Dio
nella sua perversione
scioglie il nodo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOVE SONG

 

I was
the girl of the chain letter,
the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes,
the one of the telephone bills,
the wrinkled photo and the lost connections...."

the one who kept saying-
Listen! Listen!
We must never! We must never!
and all those things...

the one
with her eyes half under her coat,
with her large gun-metal blue eyes,
with the thin vein at the bend of her neck
that hummed like a tuning fork,
with her shoulders as bare as a building,
with her thin foot and her thin toes,
with an old red hook in her nouth,
the mouth that kept bleeding
into the terrible fields of her soul...

the one
who kept droping off to sleep,
as old as a stone she was,
each hand like a piece of cement'
for hours and hours
and then she'd wake,
after the small death,
and then she'd be soft as,
as delicate as...

as soft and delicate as
an excess of light,
with nothing dangerous at all,
like a begger who eats
or a mouse on a rooftop
with no trap doors,
with nothing more honest
than your hand in her hand-
with nobody, nobody but you!
and all those things.
nobody, nobody but you!
Oh! There is no translating
that ocean,
that music,
that theater,
that field of ponies.

 

April 19, 1963.

 

CANZONE D'AMORE
 

Ero la ragazza della catena di S. Antonio,
la ragazza tutta discorsi di bare e serrature,
quella delle bollette del telefono,
la foto sgualcita e i contatti persi,
quella che continuava a dire
Ascoltami! Ascoltami!
Mai! Mai!
e cose del genere

Quella con il bavero
tirato su fino agli occhi,
con gli occhi blu canna di fucile,
con una venuzza sulla piega del collo
che vibrava come un diapason,
con le spalle nude come un palazzo,
con quei piedini e quei ditini,
con un vecchio gancio rosso in bocca,
una bocca il cui sangue gocciolava
nelle regioni orrende della sua anima

la ragazza che si addormentava sempre,
era vecchia come i sassi,
ogni mano un pezzo di cemento,
per ore e ore
e poi si svegliava,
dopo la breve morte,
ed era tenera come,
delicata come

tenera e delicata come
luce in eccesso,
per niente pericolosa,
come un barbone che mangia
o un topo su un tetto
senza botole,
con niente di più onesto
che la tua mano nella sua,
con nessun altro, nessun altro che te!
E cose del genere.
Nessun altro, nessun altro che te!
Oh, non si può tradurre
quell'oceano
quella musica
quel teatro
quel campo di pony.

 

 

 

 

An Obsessive Combination Of Ontological Inscape, Trickery And Love


Busy, with an idea for a code, I write
signals hurrying from left to right,
or right to left, by obscure routes,
for my own reasons; taking a word like writes
down tiers of tries until its secret rites
make sense; or until, suddenly, RATS
can amazingly and funnily become STAR
and right to left that small star
is mine, for my own liking, to stare
its five lucky pins inside out, to store
forever kindly, as if it were a star
I touched and a miracle I really wrote

 

   

 

 

 

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.

 

DESEANDO MORIR

 

Ahora que lo preguntas, la mayor parte de los días no consigo recordar.
Camino vestida, sin marcas de ese viaje.
Luego la casi innombrable lascivia regresa.

Ni siquiera entonces tengo nada contra la vida.
Conozco bien las hojas de hierba que mencionas,
los muebles que has puesto al sol.

Pero los suicidas poseen un lenguaje especial.
Al igual que carpinteros, quieren saber
qué herramientas.
Nunca preguntan
por qué construir.

En dos ocasiones me he expresado con tanta sencillez,
he poseído al enemigo, comido al enemigo,
he aceptado su destreza, su magia.

De este modo, grave y pensativa,
más tibia que el aceite o el agua,
he descansado, babeando por el agujero de mi boca.

No se me ocurrió exponer mi cuerpo a la aguja.
Ni siquiera estaban la córnea y la orina sobrante.
Los suicidas ya han traicionado el cuerpo.

Nacidos sin vida, no siempre mueren,
pero deslumbrados, no pueden olvidar una droga tan dulce
que incluso los niños mirarían con una sonrisa.

¡Empujar toda esa vida bajo tu lengua!
que, por sí misma, se convierte en una pasión.
Es la muerte un hueso triste, lleno de golpes, se diría,

y a pesar de todo ella me espera, año tras año.
para reparar delicadamente una vieja herida,
para liberar mi aliento de su prisión dañina.

Balanceándose, así se encuentran a veces los suicidas,
rabiosos ante el fruto,  una luna inflada,
abandonando el pan que confundieron con un beso,

dejando la página del libro abierta al azar,
algo sin decir, el teléfono descolgado
y el amor, lo que quiera que haya sido, una infección
 

 

 

 

Kind Sir: These Woods

For a man needs only to be turned around once
with his eyes shut in this world to be lost. . . . Not
til we are lost . . . do we begin to find ourselves.
Thoreau, Walden

Kind Sir: This is an old game
that we played when we were eight and ten.
Sometimes on The Island, in down Maine,
in late August, when the cold fog blew in
off the ocean, the forest between Dingley Dell
and grandfather's cottage grew white and strange.
It was as if every pine tree were a brown pole
we did not know; as if day had rearranged
into night and bats flew in sun. It was a trick
to turn around once and know you were lost;
knowing the crow's horn was crying in the dark,
knowing that supper would never come, that the coast's
cry of doom from that far away bell buoy's bell
said your nursemaid is gone. O Mademoiselle,
the rowboat rocked over. Then you were dead.
Turn around once, eyes tight, the thought in your head.

Kind Sir: Lost and of your same kind
I have turned around twice with my eyes sealed
and the woods were white and my night mind
saw such strange happenings, untold and unreal.
And opening my eyes, I am afraid of course
to look--this inward look that society scorns--
Still, I search these woods and find nothing worse
than myself, caught between the grapes and the thorns.

 

Amable señor, este bosque

 

 

 

 

 

Amable señor: le voy a contar un juego antiguo

que jugábamos a los ocho y a los diez.

A veces, en La Isla, al sur de Maine,

a finales de agosto, cuando desde alta mar

llegaba la niebla fría, el bosque entre Dingley Dell

y la cabaña del abuelo se ponía blanco, raro.

Era como si cada pino fuera un poste desconocido;

como si el día se convirtiera en noche y los murciélagos

volaran hacia el sol. Nos divertía

dar una vuelta y, ¡ya!, saber que estabas perdida;

saber que el cuerno del cuervo sonaba en la oscuridad,

saber que nunca llegaría la cena,

que el alarido maldito de la lejana sirena decía

tu tata se ha marchado para siempre. Oh, señorita,

la barca ha volcado. Y entonces estabas muerta.

Gira una vez, los ojos apretados, pensando en eso.

 

Amable señor: perdida y de su misma naturaleza,

he dado dos vueltas, con los ojos bien cerrados,

y los bosques eran blancos y mi mente nocturna

vio cosas tan extrañas, innombradas, irreales.

Y al abrir los ojos, me da miedo mirar

(con esta mirada interior que tanto desprecia la sociedad).

Aun así, busco en estos bosques y no encuentro nada peor

que mi imagen, atrapada entre la uvas y las zarzas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

 

 

If you danced from midnight

to six A.M. who would understand?

 

The runaway boy

who chucks it all

to live on the Boston Common

on speed and saltines,

pissing in the duck pond,

rapping with the street priest,

trading talk like blows,

another missing person,

would understand.

 

The paralytic's wife

who takes her love to town,

sitting on the bar stool,

downing stingers and peanuts,

singing "That ole Ace down in the hole,"

would understand.

 

The passengers

from Boston to Paris

watching the movie with dawn

coming up like statues of honey,

having partaken of champagne and steak

while the world turned like a toy globe,

those murderers of the nightgown

would understand.

 

The amnesiac

who tunes into a new neighborhood,

having misplaced the past,

having thrown out someone else's

credit cards and monogrammed watch,

would understand.

 

The drunken poet

(a genius by daylight)

who places long-distance calls

at three A.M. and then lets you sit

holding the phone while he vomits

(he calls it "The Night of the Long Knives")

getting his kicks out of the death call,

would understand.

 

The insomniac

listening to his heart

thumping like a June bug,

listening on his transistor

to Long John Nebel arguing from New York,

lying on his bed like a stone table,

would understand.

 

The night nurse

with her eyes slit like Venetian blinds,

she of the tubes and the plasma,

listening to the heart monitor,

the death cricket bleeping,

she who calls you "we"

and keeps vigil like a ballistic missile,

would understand.

 

Once

this king had twelve daughters,

each more beautiful than the other.

They slept together, bed by bed

in a kind of girls' dormitory.

At night the king locked and bolted the door

. How could they possibly escape?

Yet each morning their shoes

were danced to pieces.

Each was as worn as an old jockstrap.

The king sent out a proclamation

that anyone who could discover

where the princesses did their dancing

could take his pick of the litter.

However there was a catch.

If he failed, he would pay with his life.

Well, so it goes.

 

Many princes tried,

each sitting outside the dormitory,

the door ajar so he could observe

what enchantment came over the shoes.

But each time the twelve dancing princesses

gave the snoopy man a Mickey Finn

and so he was beheaded.

Poof! Like a basketball.

 

It so happened that a poor soldier

heard about these strange goings on

and decided to give it a try.

On his way to the castle

he met an old old woman.

Age, for a change, was of some use.

She wasn't stuffed in a nursing home.

She told him not to drink a drop of wine

and gave him a cloak that would make

him invisible when the right time came.

And thus he sat outside the dorm.

The oldest princess brought him some wine

but he fastened a sponge beneath his chin,

looking the opposite of Andy Gump.

 

The sponge soaked up the wine,

and thus he stayed awake.

He feigned sleep however

and the princesses sprang out of their beds

and fussed around like a Miss America Contest.

Then the eldest went to her bed

and knocked upon it and it sank into the earth.

They descended down the opening

one after the other. They crafty soldier

put on his invisisble cloak and followed.

Yikes, said the youngest daughter,

something just stepped on my dress.

But the oldest thought it just a nail.

 

Next stood an avenue of trees,

each leaf make of sterling silver.

The soldier took a leaf for proof.

The youngest heard the branch break

and said, Oof! Who goes there?

But the oldest said, Those are

the royal trumpets playing triumphantly.

The next trees were made of diamonds.

He took one that flickered like Tinkerbell

and the youngest said: Wait up! He is here!

But the oldest said: Trumpets, my dear.

 

Next they came to a lake where lay

twelve boats with twelve enchanted princes

waiting to row them to the underground castle.

The soldier sat in the youngest's boat

and the boat was as heavy as if an icebox

had been added but the prince did not suspect.

 

Next came the ball where the shoes did duty.

The princesses danced like taxi girls at Roseland

as if those tickets would run right out.

They were painted in kisses with their secret hair

and though the soldier drank from their cups

they drank down their youth with nary a thought.

 

Cruets of champagne and cups full of rubies.

They danced until morning and the sun came up

naked and angry and so they returned

by the same strange route. The soldier

went forward through the dormitory and into

his waiting chair to feign his druggy sleep.

That morning the soldier, his eyes fiery

like blood in a wound, his purpose brutal

as if facing a battle, hurried with his answer

as if to the Sphinx. The shoes! The shoes!

The soldier told. He brought forth

the silver leaf, the diamond the size of a plum.

 

He had won. The dancing shoes would dance

no more. The princesses were torn from

their night life like a baby from its pacifier.

Because he was old he picked the eldest.

At the wedding the princesses averted their eyes

and sagged like old sweatshirts.

Now the runaways would run no more and never

again would their hair be tangled into diamonds,

never again their shoes worn down to a laugh,

never the bed falling down into purgatory

to let them climb in after

with their Lucifer kicking.

 

 

                     Las doce princesas danzarinas

 

Si bailas desde la medianoche

hasta las seis a.m., ¿quién lo entendería?

 

El muchacho fugitivo

que rechazó todo

por vivir en la comuna de Boston

a base de anfetaminas y galletas saladas,

orinando en el estanque de patos,

robando con el profeta callejero

traficando plática como puñetazos,

otra persona perdida,

lo entendería.

 

La esposa del paralítico

que lleva a su amante a la ciudad,

sentándose en el banco de un bar,

comiendo stingers y cacahuates,

cantando "That ole Ace down in the hole",

lo entendería.

 

Los pasajeros 

de Boston a París

mirando la película con el amanecer

acercándose como estatuas de miel,

habiendo participado de la champaña y la carne

mientras el mundo gira como un globo de juguete,

esos asesinos de piyamas

lo entenderían.

 

El amnésico

que se ajusta dentro del vecindario nuevo,

habiendo extraviado el pasado,

habiendo arrojado las tarjetas de crédito

y el reloj con monograma de algún otro,

lo entendería.

 

El poeta borracho

(un genio durante el día)

que hace llamadas de larga distancia

a las tres a.m. y entonces te deja sentado

deteniendo el auricular mientras vomita

(él le llama "La noche de los cuchillos largos")

excitándose con el llamado de la muerte,

lo entendería.

 

El insomne

escuchando su corazón

golpeando como un insecto de junio

escuchando en su transistor

a Long John Nebel discutiendo desde Nueva York,

acostado en la cama como una plancha de acero,

lo entendería.

 

La enfermera de noche

con sus ojos abiertos como persianas venecianas,

ella la de los tubos y el plasma,

escuchando el monitor cardiaco,

el grillo de la muerte cantando,

ella que te llama "nosotros"

y está en vigilia como una bala de misil,

lo entendería.

 

Había una vez

un rey que tenía doce hijas,

una más bella que la otra.

Dormían juntas, cama con cama

en una especie de dormitorio para niñas.

Por la noche el rey cerraba y pasaba el cerrojo de la puerta.

¿Como era posible que escaparan?

Cada mañana sus zapatos

estaban desgastados por el baile.

Tan usados como un suspensorio viejo.

El rey envío la proclamación

de que cualquiera que pudiera descubrir

dónde iban a bailar las princesas

podría tomar a la que quisiera de las literas.

De cualquier modo había un detalle.

Si fallaban, pagarían con su vida.

Bueno, así pasó.

 

Muchos príncipes probaron,

sentándose fuera del dormitorio,

la puerta entreabierta para poder observar

qué encantamiento se desprendía de los zapatos.

Pero cada vez las doce princesas danzarinas
 

daban al hombre sabueso una Mickey Finn

y así era degollado.

¡Puff!, como un balón de basquet.

Entonces sucedió que un pobre soldado

escuchó sobre estos extraños sucesos

y decidió hacer la prueba.

En su camino al castillo

se encontró con una vieja vieja mujer.

Por una vez, envejecer servía de algo.

Ella no había sido embutida en un asilo.

Le dijo que no tomara una gota de vino

y le dio una capa que lo volvería

invisible cuando llegará el momento justo.

Entonces se sentó fuera del dormitorio.

La princesa de mayor edad le trajo un poco de vino

pero él amarró una esponja detrás de su barba

pareciendo lo opuesto a Andy Gump.

 

La esponja chupó todo el vino

y así él se mantuvo despierto.

Sin embargo fingió dormir

y las princesas brincaron de sus camas 

agitándose alrededor como en un concurso de Miss América.

Entonces la mayor fue a su cama

golpeó encima y ésta se hundió dentro de la tierra.

Ellas descendieron por la apertura

una tras otra. El astuto soldado

se puso su capa invisible y las siguió.

¡Ups!, dijo la princesa más joven,

algo traspasó mi vestido.

Pero la mayor pensó que había sido un clavo.

 

Llegaron a una avenida de árboles,

cada hoja hecha de plata sterling.

El soldado arrancó una hoja como prueba.

La más joven escuchó el crujido de la rama

y dijo: ¡Uf! ¿Quién anda ahí?

Pero la mayor dijo: Son

las trompetas reales tocando triunfalmente.

Los siguientes árboles estaban hechos de diamantes.

Él arrancó uno que refulgía como una campana de latón 

y la menor dijo: ¡Esperen, él está aquí!

Pero la mayor dijo: Trompetas, querida.

 

Más tarde llegaron a un lago donde flotaban

doce botes con doce príncipes encantados

esperando para conducirlas al castillo subterráneo.

El soldado se sentó en el bote de la más joven

y la lancha estaba tan pesada como si una hielera

hubiera sido añadida, pero el príncipe no sospechó.

 

En seguida vino el baile donde los zapatos hicieron lo suyo.

Las princesas bailaban como taxi girls en Roseland

como si esos boletos pudieran agotarse.

Estaban pintadas con besos en su cabello secreto

y pensando que el soldado estaba borracho

ellas bebieron su juventud sin pensarlo siquiera.

 

Ampolletas de champaña y copas llenas de rubíes.

Bailaron hasta el amanecer y el sol salió

desnudo y enojado y entonces regresaron

por la misma ruta extraña. El soldado

fue de regreso al dormitorio y hacia su

silla de espera para fingir su narcótico sueño.

Esa mañana el soldado, los ojos encendidos

como la sangre en una herida, su propósito brutal

como si enfrentara una batalla, corrió con la respuesta

como si fuese con la esfinge. ¡Los zapatos! ¡Los zapatos!

El soldado habló. Trajo consigo

la hoja de plata y el diamante del tamaño de una ciruela.

 

Había ganado. Los zapatos danzarines no bailarían

nunca más. Las princesas fueron arrancadas 

de su noche como un bebé de su chupón.

Puesto que era un anciano, escogió a la mayor.

En la boda, las princesas desviaban los ojos

doblegadas como sudaderas viejas.

Ahora las fugitivas no escaparían de nuevo y nunca 

jamás su cabello estaría entretejido con diamantes,

nunca jamás sus zapatos consumidos por una risa,

nunca más la cama conduciría al purgatorio

para dejarlas subir después

con la patada de Lucifer.

 

Traducción: Patricia Rivas

 

 

In Celebration of My Uterus
 

Everyone in me is a bird.

I am beating all my wings.

They wanted to cut you out

but they will not.

They said you are immeasurably empty

but you are not.

They said you were sick unto dying

but they were wrong.

You are singing like a school girl.

You are not torn.

 

Sweet weight,

in celebration of the woman I am

and of the soul of the woman I am

and of the central creature and its delight

I sing for you.  I dare to live.

Hello spirit.  Hello, cup.

Fasten, cover.  Cover that does contain.

Hello to the soil of the fields.

Welcome, roots.

 

Each cell has a life.

There is enough here to please a nation.

It is enough that the populace owns these goods.

Any person, any commonwealth would say of it,

"It is good this year that we may plant again

and think forward to the harvest.

A blight had been forecast and has been cast out."

Many women are singing together of this:

one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,

one is at the aquarium tending a seal,

one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,

one is at the toll gate collecting,

one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,

one is straddling a cello in Russia,

one is shifting pots on a stove in Egypt,

one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,

one is dying but remembering a breakfast,

one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,

one is wiping the ass of her child,

one is staring out the window of a train

in the middle of Wyoming and one is

anywhere and some are everywhere and all

seem to be singing, although some can not

sing a note.

 

Sweet weight,

in celebration of the woman I am

let me carry a ten-foot scarf,

let me drum for the nineteen-year-olds,

let me carry bowls for the offering

(if that is my part).

Let me study the cardiovascular tissue,

let me examine the angular distance of meteors,

let me suck on the stems of flowers

(if that is my part).

Let me make certain tribal figures

(if that is my part).

For this thing the body needs

let me sing

for the supper,

for the kissing,

for the correct

yes.

 

EN CELEBRACIÓN DE MI ÚTERO


Todo en mí es un pájaro.
Agito todas mis alas.
Querían cortarte y sacarte
pero no lo harán.
Decían que estabas infinitamente vacío
pero no lo estás.
Decían que estabas enfermo de muerte
pero se equivocaban.
Cantas como una colegiala.
No estás desgarrado.

Dulce peso,
en celebración de la mujer que soy
y el alma de la mujer que soy
y de la criatura central y su deleite
canto para ti. Me arriesgo a vivir.
Hola, espíritu. Hola, copa.
Sujetar, cubrir. Cubierta que contiene.
Hola tierra de las colinas.
Bienvenidas, raíces.

Cada célula tiene una vida.
Aquí hay suficiente para satisfacer una nación,
para que el pueblo haga suyos estos bienes.
Cualquier persona, cualquier sociedad diría:
"Este año está resultando tan bueno que
podemos pensar en otra cosecha.
Una plaga ha sido prevista y eliminada."
Por eso muchas mujeres cantan al unísono:
una maldiciendo la máquina de hacer zapatos,
una en el acuario cuidando de la foca,
una aburrida al volante de su Ford,
una cobrando en la barrera de peaje,
una en Arizona echando el lazo a un ternero,
una en Rusia con un chelo entre las piernas,
una en Egipto trajinando ollas en la cocina,
una pintando de luna las paredes de su dormitorio,
una moribunda pero recordando un almuerzo,
una en Thailandia desperezándose en su estera,
una limpiándole el culo a su hijo,
una mirando por la ventanilla de un tren
en medio de Wyoming y una está
en cualquier parte y algunas en todas partes y todas
parecen cantar, aunque algunas no pueden
cantar ni una nota.

Dulce peso,
en celebración de la mujer que soy
déjame llevar una bufanda de tres metros,
déjame tocar el tambor por las de diecinueve años,
déjame llevar cuencos para la ofrenda
(si eso es lo que me toca).
Déjame estudiar el tejido cardiovascular,
déjame medir la distancia angular entre meteoros,
déjame libar de los estambres de las flores
(si eso me toca).
Déjame hacer ciertas figuras tribales
(si me toca).
Por todo esto el cuerpo necesita
que me dejes cantar
para la cena,
para el beso,
para la afirmación
exacta.

 
 

 

 

 

MUSIC SWIMS BACK TO ME

 

Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.

Imagine it. A radio playing
and everyone here was crazy.
I liked it and danced in a circle.
Music pours over the sense
and in a funny way
music sees more than I.
I mean it remembers better;
remembers the first night here.
It was the strangled cold of November;
even the stars were strapped in the sky
and that moon too bright
forking through the bars to stick me
with a singing in the head.
I have forgotten all the rest.

They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.
and there are no signs to tell the way,
just the radio beating to itself
and the song that remembers
more than I. Oh, la la la,
this music swims back to me.
The night I came I danced a circle
and was not afraid.
Mister?


1959
 

LA MÚSICA VUELVE A MÍ


Aguarde señor. ¿Cuál es el camino a casa?
Apagaron la luz
y la oscuridad se mueve en el rincón.
No hay carteles indicadores en esta habitación,
cuatro damas, de más de ochenta años,
en pañales todas ellas.
La la la, oh la música vuelve a mí
y puedo sentir la melodía que tocaban
la noche en que me dejaron
en esta clínica privada sobre la colina.


Imagina. Una radio encendida
y todos aquí estaban locos.
Me gustó y bailé trazando círculos.
La música entra a raudals en la razón
y de un modo extraño
la música ve más que yo.
Quiero decir que recuerda mejor;
recuerda la primera noche aquí.
Fue el frío estrangulado de noviembre;
incluso las estrellas estaban atadas en el cielo
y esa luna tan brillante
hurgaba entre los barrotes para pincharme
en la cabeza con una melodía.
He olvidado el resto.

A las ocho de la mañana me atan a esta silla
y no hay señales que indiquen el camino,
sólo la radio encendida para ella misma
y la canción que recuerda
más que yo. Oh la la la,
esta música vuelve a mí.
La noche en que vine bailé trazando círculos
y no tuve miedo.
¿Señor?

 

 

 

 

The truth the death know

 

For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped.
They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

 

LA VERDAD QUE LOS MUERTOS CONOCEN


Para mi madre, nacida en marzo de 1902, muerta en marzo de 1959, y para mi padre, nacido en febrero de 1900, muerto en junio de 1959.

Se acabó, digo, y me alejo de la iglesia,
rehusando la rígida procesión hacia la sepultura,
dejando a los muertos viajar solos en el coche fúnebre.
Es junio. Estoy cansada de ser valiente.
Conducimos hasta el Cabo. Crezco
por donde el sol se derrama desde el cielo,
por donde el mar se mece como una cancela
y nos emocionamos. Es en otro país donde muere la gente.

Querido, el viento se desploma como piedras
desde la bondadosa agua y cuando nos tocamos
nos penetramos por completo. Nadie está solo.
Los hombres matan por ello, o por cosas así.

¿Y qué ocurre con los muertos? Yacen sin zapatos
en sus barcas de piedra. Son más parecidos a la piedra
de lo que lo sería el mar si se detuviera.
Rehusan
ser bendecidos, garganta, ojo y nudillo.

 

 

 

 

YOUNG

 

A thousand doors ago

when I was a lonely kid

in a big house with four

garages and it was summer

as long as I could remember,

I lay on the lawn at night,

clover wrinkling over me,

the wise stars bedding over me,

my mother's window a funnel

of yellow heat running out,

my father's window, half shut,

an eye where sleepers pass,

and the boards of the house

were smooth and white as wax

and probably a million leaves

sailed on their strange stalks

as the crickets ticked together

and I, in my brand new body,

which was not a woman's yet,

told the stars my questions

and thought God could really see

the heat and the painted light,

elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.

 

JOVEN


Hace mil puertas
cuando yo era una chiquilla solitaria
en una gran casa con cuatro
garajes y era verano
según creo recordar,
yacía por la noche sobre la hierba,
los tréboles cedían bajo mi peso,
las estrellas sabias fijas por encima de mí,
la ventana de mi madre un embudo
por el que escapaba un calor amarillo,
la ventana de mi padre, a medio cerrar,
un ojo por donde pasaban durmientes,
y las tablas de la casa,
suaves y blancas como la cera
y probablemente un millón de hojas
se mecían sobre sus extraños tallos
mientras los grillos cantaban al unísono
y yo, en mi cuerpo recién estrenado,
que aún no era el de una mujer,
interrogaba a las estrellas
y pensaba que Dios realmente podía ver
el calor y la luz pintada,
codos, rodillas, sueños, buenas noches.

 

 

 

 

The Starry Night

 

 

 

 

 

 

The town does not exist
except where the one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

 

 


into that rushing beast of the night
sycked up by that great dragon, to spit
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.

 

NOCHE ESTRELLADA

 

Eso que no impide que tenga una terrible necesidad de –pronunciaré la palabra- religión. Entonces salgo en medio de la noche a pintar las estrellas.
(Vincent Van Gogh en una carta a su hermano)

El pueblo no existe
excepto donde un árbol de negra cabellera
se desliza como una mujer ahogada en el cálido cielo.
El pueblo permanece en silencio. La noche hierve con once estrellas.
¡Oh noche estrellada! Así es como
quiero morir.

Se mueve. Todas están vivas.
Incluso la luna se abulta en sus aceros
anaranjados
para expulsar hijos, como un dios, de su
ojo.
La vieja serpiente oculta se traga las
estrellas.
¡Oh noche estrellada estrellada! Así es como
quiero morir:

dentro de esa bestia impetuosa de la noche,
succionada por el gran dragón, para
escindirme
de mi vida sin bandera,
sin vientre,
sin llanto.

 

 

 

 

The fury of sunsets

 

 

Something

cold is in the air,

an aura of ice

and phlegm.

All day I've built

a lifetime and now

the sun sinks to

undo it.

The horizon bleeds

and sucks its thumb.

The little red thumb

goes out of sight.

And I wonder about

this lifetime with myself,

this dream I'm living.

I could eat the sky

like an apple

but I'd rather

ask the first star:

why am I here?

why do I live in this house?

who's responsible?

eh?

 

La furie des soleils couchants

 


"Quelque chose de froid est dans l'air,
une aura de glace
et de flegme.
La journée durant j'ai construit
une vie entière et maintenant
le soleil sombre pour
la détruire.
L'horizon saigne
et suce son pouce.
Le petit pouce rouge
disparaît de mon champ de vision.
Et je m'interroge sur
cette vie avec moi-même,
ce rêve que je suis en train de vivre.
Je pourrais manger le ciel
comme une pomme mais je préfère
demander à la première étoile :
pourquoi suis-je ici ?
Pourquoi est-ce que je vis dans cette maison ?
Qui est responsable ?
Hein ?"

 

Extrait de The Death Notebooks, 1974/Les Furies. Traduit de l'américain par Christine Rimoldy. Ce poème, inédit en français, est extrait du numéro 13 de la revue Les Episodes (avril 2002).

 

 

THE SUN

 

I have heard of fish

Coming up for the sun

Who stayed forever,

Shoulder to shoulder,

Avenues of fish that never got back,

All their proud spots and solitudes

Sucked out of them.

 

I think of the flies

Who come from their foul caves

Out into the arena.

They are transparent at first.

Then they are blue with copper wings.

They glitter on the foreheads of men.

Neither bird nor acrobat

They will dry out like small black shoes.

 

I am an identical being.

Diseased by the cold and the smell of the house

I undress under the burning magnifying glass.

My skin flattens out like sea water.

O yellow eye,

Let me be sick with your heat,

Let me be feverish and frowning.

Now I am utterly given.

I am your daughter, your sweet-meat,

Your priest, your mouth and your birth

And I will tell them all stories of you

Until I am laid away forever,

A thin gray banner.

 

 

May 1962.

 

 

                                O SOL


Tenho ouvido falar de peixes
que vieram acima pelo sol
e ficaram para sempre
ombro a ombro,
avenidas de peixes que nunca regressaram,
deles sugados
todos os pontos de orgulho e solidões.

Penso em moscas,
que das suas grutas torpes
saem ao terreiro.
Primeiro são transparentes.
Depois azuis com asas de cobre.
Rebrilham nas frontes dos homens.
Nem pássaro, nem acrobata,
hão-de mirrar como pequenos sapatos pretos.

Eu sou um ser idêntico,
doente do frio e do odor da casa,
dispo-me sob a lupa ardente.
A minha pele alisa-se como água do mar.
Ó olho amarelo,
deixa-me adoecer do teu calor,
deixa-me ser febril e carrancuda.

Toda me dou agora.
Sou a tua filha, a tua guloseima,
o teu padre, a tua boca, a tua ave,
e hei-de contar a todos histórias de ti
até posta de lado para sempre,
um magro pendão pardo.

 

Tradução de João Ferreira Duarte, em "LEITURAS

poemas do inglês", Relógio de Água, 1993.

ISBN 972-708-204-1

 

18 days without you

December 1st


As we kissed good-bye
you made a little frown.
Now Christ's lights are
twinkling all over town.
The cornstalks are broken
in the field, broken and brown.
The pond at the year's end
turns her gray eyelid down.
Christ's lights are
twinkling all over town.

A cat-green ice spreads
out over the front lawn.
The hemlocks are the only
young thing left. You are gone.
I hibernated under the covers
last night, not sleeping until dawn
came up like twilight and the oak leaves
whispered like money, those hangers on.
The hemlocks are the only
young thing left. You are gone.

 

Diciotto giorni senza te
1 dicembre

 

Al bacio d'addio
eri un poco accigliato.
Ora le luci di Cristo
scintillano sulla città.
Le spighe nel campo sono spezzate,
spezzate e imbrunite.
A fine d'anno lo stagno
abbassa la palpebra grigia.
Scintillano sulla città
le luci di Cristo.

Verde-gatto il ghiaccio s'adagia
sul prato di fronte a casa.
La cicuta è la sola cosa
giovane che resta. Te ne sei andato.
Stanotte sotto le coperte ho svernato
senza dormire finché venne l'alba
come un imbrunire e foglie di quercia
frusciavano come soldi, ostinate.
La cicuta è la sola cosa
giovane che resta. Te ne sei andato.

 
 

 

 

 

December 4th

 

And where did we meet?
Was it in London on Carnaby Street?
Was it in Paris on the Left Bank?
That there that I can thank?

 

No. It was Harvard Square
at the kiosk with both of us crying.
I can thank that there-
the day Jack Kennedy was dying.

 

And one hour later he was dead.
The brains fell out of his dazzling head.
And we cried and drank our whiskey straight
and the world remembers the date, the date.

 

And we both wrote poems we couldn't write
and cried together the whole long night
and fell in love with a delicate breath
on the eve that great men call for death.

 

           4 dicembre

 

E dov'è che ci siamo conosciuti?
A Londra, in Carnaby Street?
Fu Parigi, sulla Rive Gauche,
Quel "là" cui posso essere grata?

 

No. Eravamo ad Harvard Square,
All'edicola in lacrime entrambi.
A quel "là" posso essere grata -
Il giorno che Jack Kennedy moriva.

 

E un'ora dopo era morto,
Le cervella schizzate dalla mente brillante.
E piangendo bevemmo un whiskey liscio,
E il mondo ancora ricorda la data.

 

Entrambi scrivemmo poesie, ma non ci riuscimmo
E insieme piangemmo tutta la notte
E fra teneri sospiri ci innamorammo
La sera che i grandi comandano morte.

 

 

 

December 9th

 

 

Two years ago, Reservist,
you would have burned
your draft card or
else have gone A.W.O.L.
but you stayed to serve
the Air Force. Your head churned
with bad solutions, carrying your heart like a football
to the goal, your good heart
that never quite ceases
to know its wrong. From
Frisco you made a phone call.
Next they manufactured you
into an Aero-medic
who placed together
shot off pieces
of men. Some were sent off
too dead to be sick.

 

But I wrote no diary
for that time then
and you say what you
do today is worse.
Today you unload the bodies of men
out at Travis Air Force
Base- that curse-
no trees, a crater
surrounded by hills.


The Starlifter from
Vietnam, the multi-hearse
jets in. One hundred
come day by day
just forty-eight hours
after death, filled
sometimes with as
many as sixty coffins in array.

 

Manual Minus Number
Sixteen Handbook
perfers to call this
the human remains.

 

This is the stand
that the world took
with the enemy's children
and the enemy's gains.
You unload them slipping
in their rubber sacks
within an aluminum doffin-
those human remains,
always the head higher
than the ten little toes.
They are priority when
they are shipped back
with four months pay
and a burial allotment
that they enclose.

 

All considerations
for these human remains!
They must have an escort!
They are classified!
Never jettisoned in
emergencies from any planes.
Stay aboard! More important
now that they've died.
You say, "You're treated like
shit until you're killed."

 

And then brought into The Cave,
those stamped out human remains
on a Starlifter, a Cargomaster,
a packet, a Hercules
while napalm is in the frying pan,
while napalm is in the death nest.
And what was at home
was The Peace March-
this Washington we seize.

 

 

9 dicembre

 

Due anni fa, Riservista,
avresti voluto bruciare
la cartolina oppure
sparire, disertore.
Invece sei rimasto a servire
l'Aereonautica. La testa sfornava
cattive pensate, mandavi
il cuore in porta
come un pallone, il tuo buon cuore
che mai e poi mai cessa
di riconoscer i suoi torti.
Da Frisco hai fatto una telefonata.
Poi ti hanno confezionato
un Aereomedico
che riappiccicava insieme
pezzi umani staccati
dagli spari. Alcuni rispediti al mittente
troppo morti per essere malati.

 

Ma io non tenni un diario
a quel tempo
e tu dici che oggi
fai di peggio
Oggi scarichi corpi di uomini
alla base aereonautica
di Travis - maledetta -
niente alberi, un cratere
circondato da colline.

 

Lo Starlifter dal
Vietnam, megacarro funebre,
atterra. Cento
ne arrivano giorno dopo giorno
solo quarantott'ore
dopo la morte, carichi
addirittura a volte
di sessanta bare in schiera.

 

Manuale Meno Numero
Sedici Prontuario
preferisce intitolare il tutto
I resti umani.

 

Questa è la posizione
che ha preso il mondo
con i figli del nemico
e le conquiste del nemico.
Tu li scarichi - scivolano
in sacchi di gomma
dentro una bara di alluminio -
questi resti umani,
ché mantengano sempre la testa più alta
dei dieci ditini dei piedi.
Hanno la precedenza assoluta quando
vengono rispediti
con lo stipendio di quattro mesi
e con le spese di sepoltura
acclusi.

 

Quali riguardi
per quei resti umani!
Servono per le statistiche!
Non sia mai che vengano
gettati a mare da aerei in panne.
Restino a bordo! Sono più importanti
ora che sono morti.
E tu mi dici: "Finché non t'ammazzano
ti trattano come una merda".

 

E vengono poi portati nella Caverna
quei resti umani timbrati
su uno Starlifter, un Cargomaster,
un aereo postale, un Hercules
mentre il napalm bolle in pentola,
mentre il napalm s'acquatta nel nido di morte.
E qui da noi si faceva
la Marcia della Pace -
questa Washington che occupiamo.

 
 

 

 

 

December 15th

 

The day of the lonely drunk
is here. No weather reports,
no fox, no birds, no sweet chipmunks,
no sofa game, no summer resorts.

No whatever it was we had,
no sky, no month- just booze.
The half moon is acid, bitter, sad
as I sing the Blended Whiskey Blues.

 

                 15 dicembre

 

Eccoci alla sbronza solitaria.
Non c'è la volpe, né meteo in tivvù,
niente uccelli né i dolci Cip e Ciop,
né giochi sul sofà, no Alpitour.

Niente di quanto c'è stato tra noi,
né cielo, né mese -solo ciucca.
La mezzaluna è acida, amara,
triste mentre mi canto il WhiskeyBlues.