GAIL MAZUR [8721]

Gail Mazur

ESTADOS UNIDOS,  1937

Después de casi 13 años de aprendiz de poeta, en los que estudió con Robert Lowell y se sumergió en la escena del Boston / Cambridge literario, Mazur publicó su primer poemario, Nightfire (1978),a los 40 años.

Después llegaron:  The Pose of Happiness (1986); They Can’t Take That Away from Me (2001); and Zeppo’s First Wife: New & Selected Poems (2006)

Es quizá solamente la monotonía

de estos largos días abrasadores 

pero hoy mi hija 

de verdad me exaspera-

¡Para ya! grito -o lo haré-

y tuerzo su pequeño brazo rosado

lentamente, 

calibrando mi ferocidad-

¡No puedes lastimarme no puedes lastimarme! 

Ella es tan desafiante, lanzando miradas de ira, 

deslumbrante ante mí-

pero asustada

sus ojos brillantes con lágrimas- 

¡Mira, ni siquiera estoy llorando!

Miro. Pero es el ángel 

de la exterminación.

Miro, brillando 

en sus atavíos negros, 

y volviéndose en éxtasis 

hacia él, una pequeña muchacha judía

le tienta 

para jugar su juego de la masacre.

Traducción Vicente Gutiérrez

At the Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic

One of those appointments you postpone   

until anxiety propels you to the phone,   

then have to wait too long for, to take   

an inconvenient time . . . Late in the day,   

an old man and I watch the minute hand

on the waiting room wall. I’ve papers

to grade, but he wants someone to talk to,   

and his attendant’s rude, so he turns   

his whiskery face to me: “Y’ know, I lived   

my whole life in Waltham, worked 40 years

at the watch factory—oh, that city used to be

so beautiful, now it’s a mess, those Cubans   

and Puerto Ricans, they ruined it.”   

Coiled in his wheelchair, he’s mad   

for company, probably scared he’s dying,

                            *

and so am I. I don’t remember Watch City   

as beautiful the year I was eleven,

when Merle and I rode the Grove Street bus   

to Moody Street to shoplift haircurlers   

and Pond’s Vanishing Cream, nickel items

at the Waltham Woolworth’s. It was

an old factory town, wooden triple-deckers,   

water rats swimming in the oily river.   

Merle and I didn’t risk a furtive life

of crime in our well-kempt Auburndale

where we thought we were well-known,   

and canoers paddled the same Charles River   

past our homes. And I still wonder

what could have vanished when we rubbed   

the mystery elixir on our silky cheeks?

                            *

His cheeks sucked in, this geezer could be   

my grandfather forty years ago, so

I ignore his racist overture and agree   

Waltham was beautiful, as the attendant   

takes his Social Security card,

and whistles: “Boy, are you old!”

then mutters something else in Spanish.   

The number must be low. . . . “1936—

that was the first year of Social Security!”

the old guy brags. The kid forsakes

our ancient history, flexes his muscles.   

He’s probably been listening

to insults for an hour in the Elder Van,   

he’s bored and angry—why should he be   

nice? Yet hungry for a distracting

fact or story, I encourage the grandfather,   

I want to be treated well myself some day,   

when I’ll need it even more than I do now. . . .

My little bids for attention, my birds, fragile

fluttering words, desire to be visible and seen. . . .

“FDR was okay, wasn’t he?” I’m playing   

90, it’s what I do to make us both   

less lonely, reminisce as if we’d shared   

the ’30s, as if I’d been there, come   

from Sicily or Limerick, a seamstress

earning her hard living one town over.   

I always sat this way with Doc, years   

after he’d retired, his best treasure   

(besides my golden mother) a gold

pocket watch, a Handsome Waltham watch—

                            *

a different time, when the things

a person held or owned weren’t many

but were permanent, a part of who you were.   

So his elegant watch confused me toward   

the idea my little dentist grandfather

had some connection to the company,

as if he’d labored there, a master craftsman,   

had been rewarded by a grateful boss.   

His bit of luxury, the swirling monogram   

on the back (which opened with a click),

IR, for Isaac Rosenberg, timepiece

connected by a chain to a safety pin

at his frayed striped trouser pocket;

another pin secured his Shawmut bankbook,   

deposits he’d made decades before

                            *

that I’d inherit, $214, Shawmut branch   

nearby the long-gone Waldorf Cafeteria   

where he idled weekday mornings   

with his cronies, also reminiscing,   

I suppose (although then I didn’t think

of it), the Good Old Days before

the motorcar, before their children

moved away. Dexterity and skill gone, too,   

from his arthritic hands. He relished   

those mornings! The black-and-white

tiled floor, the nearly empty tables,   

the Perfection Salad, Welsh rarebit,

the “bloomberry pie.” The counterman.   

They serve an elegant porridge there,

he told me, gourmet of the ordinary,

State-of-Maine-ah grandfather, my Mainiac.

The soon-to-be-widowed wives elsewhere,   

polishing mahogany veneer, or playing   

bridge, or shopping Coolidge Corner   

from butcher to baker in prescient

black dresses. Old men and women   

so relieved to be rid of the burden

of one another for a whole morning,   

of the tired bickering sentences

of long American marriages, of pain

and disappointment. What memories

they’d had of courtships long since passed on   

to grandchildren, and half-false anyway,

like studio photographs, mythic stories   

they could live with; now forgotten,

the mistakes they’d been too fearful   

or devout to rectify. I miss that   

cafeteria, the whole idea of cafeterias,   

although Doc never took me, just pointed   

to it on our Sunday drive, repeating

paeans to gray porridge, something no   

description’s glow could make me want.   

Waltham had them, too, free-fire zones   

a kid alone could enter with five cents   

for huge iced cookies, black-and-whites,

                            *

half chocolate, half vanilla, all Crisco   

and white sugar, chewed in gluttonous   

companionable half-light, wonderful—

But who’d know that now? Who cares?   

Merle and I did everything subversive

we could imagine—which wasn’t much.   

I’m sure I cruised Sin City in my mind,   

decayed old town—nowhere—but to me   

forbidden fruit: the 5 & 10, eyelash   

curlers, odd metal torture instruments

I smuggled home that pinched my lids   

and made my lashes angle wildly up,   

delinquent startled in the bathroom   

mirror; Tangee lipsticks the size   

of my little finger, unflattering coral;

pink girdles I’d eye furtively, wondering   

that I’d have to wriggle into one someday,   

or wear the bony corset my grandmother   

assured me was my fate. Oh, esoteric glamorous   

puzzle of the vanished vanishing cream . . .   

                            *

Later, not so much later, the first day

of my driver’s license, I drove the family   

station wagon down Moody Street and banged   

the traffic policeman’s rubber perch.   

He jumped down before it bounced the street,

and yelled me over in a rage. Or maybe,   

he was kindly, it’s only my criminal terror   

I remember, of punishment fine-tuned,   

my ruined life, my new rights vanishing.   

Hardly a threat, I know now, the feckless cop.

I gripped the steering wheel so hard

to stop the huge recalcitrant Ford, doomed   

to lose my brand-new temporary license—

How could I think, my budding power stripped,   

I’d ever get the chance to live or drive?

Gail Mazur, “At the Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic” from Zeppo's First Wife: New & Selected Poems (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). Copyright © 2001 by Gail Mazur.