Sinéad Morrissey
Sinéad Morrissey (nacida el 24 de abril de 1972 en Portadown, Condado de Armagh) es una poeta irlandesa. En enero de 2014 ganó el Premio TS Eliot por su quinta colección Parallax.
In my dream the dead have arrived
to wash the windows of my house.
There are no blinds to shut them out with.
The clouds above the Lough are stacked
like the clouds are stacked above Delft.
They have the glutted look of clouds over water.
The heads of the dead are huge. I wonder
if it's my son they're after, his
effortless breath, his ribbon of years ─
but he sleeps on unregarded in his cot,
inured, it would seem, quite naturally
to the sluicing and battering and pairing back of glass
that delivers this shining exterior …
excerpt from "Through the Square Window"
extracto de "A través de la ventana de la plaza"
Criada en Belfast, fue educada en el Trinity College de Dublín,
Obras
There Was Fire in Vancouver (Carcanet Press, 1996)
Between Here and There (Carcanet Press, 2001)
The State of the Prisons (Carcanet Press, 2005)
Through the Square Window (Carcanet Press, 2009)
Parallax (Carcanet Press, 2013)
BALTIMORE
Entre otros ruidos, oigo a mis hijos llorando
—a los niños mayores jugando en la calle
después de la hora de dormir, sus bulliciosas voces
en la luz debilitada; o al bebé
de la puerta colindante, malhumorado y sin sueño,
a través de paredes demasiado finas; o en el constante
y singular tono de Baltimore Westside
en The Wire, sus sirenas y frecuentes disparos,
sus policías atribulados arengando a los niños
desde seis años para confinar
a los camellos en las esquinas, su insolencia
y su colérico discurso; o en el espacio en blanco
entre estaciones de radio cuando no se oye
ninguna voz y el chisporroteo estático
puede engullir por completo los gritos
de socorro de un niño; incluso en el silencio mismo,
sus bucles y pliegues que amortiguan
un grito fantasma, uno que yo he inventado, pero que se oye,
subiendo las escaleras, deteniéndose
en el vestíbulo, se escucha, se escucha con fuerza,
igual que – como mucho– la respiración acompasada
pero la mayoría de las veces no se oye nada, el aire
espeso del rellano con algo suspendido,
motas de polvo, el voladizo de las mantas, un barco
en el Lago a través de la ventana, un sueño infantil.
Versión de Carlos Alcorta
Baltimore
In other noises, I hear my children crying -
in older children playing on the street
past bedtime, their voices buoyant
in the staggered light; or in the baby
next door, wakeful and petulant
through too‐thin walls; or in the constant
freakish pitch of Westside Baltimore
on The Wire, its sirens and rapid gunfire,
its beleaguered cops haranguing kids
as young as six for propping up
the dealers on the corners, their swagger
and spitfire speech; or in the white space
between radio stations when no voice
comes at all and the crackling static
might be swallowing whole a child's
small call for help; even in silence itself,
its material loops and folds enveloping
a ghost cry, one I've made up, but heard,
that has me climbing the stairs, pausing
in the hall, listening, listening hard,
to - at most - rhythmical breathing
but more often than not to nothing, the air
of the landing thick with something missed,
dust motes, the overhang of blankets, a ship
on the Lough through the window, infant slee
V Is For Veteran
A soldier returned from a war
was how my P6 spelling book put it: I saw
cripples with tin cans for coins
in dusty scarlet, back from some spat of Empire.
Later I became aware of buildings
built in squares around a courtyard
where every room looked down
to a fountain
rinsing and bleaching the light
assiduously as the women
who in folded hats like wings
washed clean their wounds.
My erstwhile stepfather was one
for whom Vietnam
was a constantly recurring dream -
the jungle inching its tendrils
into his lungs until he becomes
half‐man, half‐vine, asphyxiating.
The word itself has a click in it.
It halts before the ending.
Boats left stranded in trees.
The ones that survive are amphibian.
As I speak, there is something muscled
and bloody in the sink
the boy young enough to be my son
spat out and I can't look.
I don't know how he got inside my house.
The stereo is playing Buckets of Rain
by Dylan,
over and over again.
Through The Square Window
In my dream the dead have arrived
to wash the windows of my house.
There are no blinds to shut them out with.
the clouds above the Lough are stacked
like the clouds are stacked above Delft.
They have the glutted look of clouds over water.
The heads of the dead are huge. I wonder
if it's my son they're after, his
effortless breath, his ribbon of years-
but he sleeps on unregarded in his cot,
inured, it would seem, quite naturally
to the sluicing and battering and parting back of glass
that delivers this shining exterior...
One blue boy holds a rag in his teeth
between panes like a conjuror.
And then, as suddenly as they came, they go.
And there is a horizon
from which only the clouds stare in,
the massed canopies of Hazelbank,
the severed tip of the Strangford Peninsula,
and a density in the room I find it difficult to breathe in
until I wake, flat on my back with a cork
in my mouth, stopper-bottled, in fact,
like a herbalist's cure for dropsy.
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