ROBYN SARAH [9105]

Robyn Sarah (Canadá). Nació en Nueva York de padres canadienses y creció en Montreal, donde aún vive. Es autora de nueve libros de poesía, dos colecciones de cuentos y un libro de ensayos, Little Eurekas: A Decade’s Thoughts on Poetry: 

“Fugue”, “Nocturne”. From The Space Between Sleep and Waking, (Villeneuve, 1981). “Black Walnut”. From Anyone Skating On That Middle Ground, (Véhicule Press, 1984). “Redoing the Entrance”. From Questions About The Stars, (Brick Books, 1998). “Bounty” and “Tony’s Sharpening”. From  A Day’s Grace, (Porcupine’s Quill, 2003).

Sus poemas han sido antologados en Fifteen Canadian Poets x 2 and x 3, The Best Canadian Poetry in English (2009 and 2010), The Bedford Introduction to Literature, The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times (US) and Modern Canadian Poets: An Anthology (UK).  She edited The Essential George Johnston, The Essential Don Coles, and The Essential Margaret Avison for The Porcupine’s Quill.

Actualmente es editora de poesía para Cormorant Books.

FUGA

Las mujeres están en camino

al nuevo país. Los hombres observan

desde altas ventanas de oficina

mientras las mujeres se van.

No llegan muy lejos

en un día. Aún las puedes ver

desde altas ventanas de oficina.

Las mujeres están en camino

al nuevo país. Se lo llevan

todo consigo: mantas,

pianos, niños. O lo dejan

todo atrás: gatos,

plantas, niños.

No llegan muy lejos en un día.

Algunas mujeres viajan solas

al nuevo país. Algunas

con un niño, o niños.

Algunas van en parejas o grupos

o en parejas con un niño

o niños. Algunas en un grupo con

gatos, plantas, niños.

No llegan muy lejos en un día.

Han de parar a hacer pan en la carretera

al nuevo país, y compartir

el pan con otras mujeres. Niños

crecen más allá de sus ropas y las ceden

a niños más pequeños. Las mujeres también

ceden ropas, se ponen las unas

los gatos, plantas, niños de las otras, y en la luna llena

nadie recuerda el camino al nuevo país

en el que habrá espacio para todo el mundo y

será verano y los niños cederán

sus ropas y los panecillos subirán

sin levadura y las mujeres habrán llegado

tan lejos que nadie pueda verlas, ni siquiera desde

altas ventanas de oficina.

Fugue

Women are on their way

to the new country. The men watch

from high office windows

while the women go.

They do not get very far

in a day. You can still see them

from high office windows.

Women are on their way

to the new country. They are taking

it all with them: rugs,

pianos, children. Or they are leaving

it all behind them: cats,

plants, children.

They do not get very far in a day.

Some women travel alone

to the new country. Some

with a child, or children.

Some go in pairs or groups

or in pairs with a child

or children. Some in a group with

cats, plants, children.

They do not get very far in a day.

They must stop to bake bread on the road

to the new country, and to share

bread with other women. Children

outgrow their clothes and shed them

for smaller children. The women too

shed clothes, put on each other’s

cats, plants, children, and at full moon

no one remembers the way to the new country

where there will be room for everyone and

it will be summer and children will

shed their clothes and the loaves will

rise without yeast and women will have come

so far that no one can see them, even from

high office windows.

Nocturne

She sits up late, listening

to the wind in leaves that

may be gone tomorrow: one gust

this time of year, and up they fly,

there is no calling them back, and

it will always happen too quickly:

                                 Midnight;

in the next room the child

stirs in his crib, cries out

without waking — she thinks of sleep

but sits on, unmoving; a moth

flops in the lampshade, the chairs

cast straight shadows. What

keeps her here at this hour, what —

in the plainness of things, the bare floor,

the broom in the corner, the tea stains

on the frayed tablecloth — sharpens her nerve

to the quiver of a flame-end?

She thinks: Alive.

Down the alley a dog begins barking.

The tree shakes with a knowing

the bones soon share.

Black Walnut

We found those funny green balls in the grass,

perfumy as unripe oranges, but hard,

and bleeding rank iodine when cut open,

leaving their stain deep in the palms’ creases.

The stone inside was hard to hack away

from the raw flesh of the stubborn fruit.

Now, heading into winter, one fruit

of the several we picked up that day in the grass

sits on the sill, where I put it away

to see if it would ripen. Blackish, rock hard

though light as pumice, it has dried in ridged creases.

It would take a hammer to break this open.

But who would ever think of breaking it open?

It seems an artifact now, not a fruit.

Its history is sealed into these creases

as ice preserves the lay of the tangled grass.

I have no use for this thing; why is it hard

to decide the time has come to throw it away?

Maybe because the scent has not gone away,

and the faint spice of it has power to open

thought-ways to other things grown soft or hard

with age or their own failure to yield fruit

(though they persist, unkillable as the grass

that, flattened, springs back up from its own creases.)

I think how ice moves over the earth, and creases

the face of it, or grinds the edges away,

leaving a smooth bed for the blanketing grass.

I think how, in the rock, deep fissures open

and endure to become valleys, lush with fruit —

and then, how rotting trees have turned stone hard.

And I think of the passion to preserve, the hard

clear light that loves to register the creases

in a face, or a cloth with an arrangement of fruit:

as if recording these could hold away

the shadow of that chasm we know must open

soon at our feet, in the supple familiar grass.

Hard as its nut, this mummy of a fruit

creases the brow. The mind drifts far away,

open to every current in the grass.

Redoing the Entrance

Today the stairs end in mid-air, halfway down.

I see you at the bottom — pencil in hand,

chewing your lip, assessing with slight frown

the space you’ve opened for the curved stairs planned

in place of straight ones. — You’ve got it figured out,

you tell me — smell of hot sawdust on the air —

you see how you can do it. (Scenting my doubt?)

I gaze down at the sawdust in your hair,

and wonder at the faith that made the cut

before the plans were drawn. The way you are.

The way you made me yours — not asking what

could go wrong — trusting we’d come this far.

And how you’ve placed a table for a landing,

so I can climb down now, to where you’re standing.

Bounty

Make much of something small.

The pouring-out of tea,

a drying flower’s shadow on the wall

from last week’s sad bouquet.

A fact: it isn’t summer any more.

Say that December sun

is pitiless, but crystalline

and strikes like a bell.

Say it plays colours like a glockenspiel.

It shows the dust as well,

the elemental sediment

your broom has missed,

and lights each grain of sugar spilled

upon the tabletop, beside

pistachio shells, peel of a clementine.

Slippers and morning papers on the floor,

and wafts of iron heat from rumbling rads,

can this be all? No, look — here comes the cat,

with one ear inside out.

Make much of something small.

Tony’s Sharpening

A summer evening sound, his silver bell

summoning householders to bring

their scissors, kitchen knives, blunt blades

to sing against his whetstone.

Tony the Sharpener. He used to pass

on a bicycle, years back.

Now it’s a little truck he has,

but the same sweet-toned bell

cling-clings across the evening’s

linden-laden air, the languid games

of after-supper children

granted a stay of bath and bed

for the red hour of afterglow

when robins pipe in the hedge.

Tony, spin your stone again,

give life back its edge.