DESMOND O’GRADY
Nacido en Limerick, Irlanda del Norte en 1935, falleció en 2014. O’Grady fue poeta, profesor, editor y traductor. Reputado no sólo por sus diecisiete colecciones de poesía y su destreza lingüística, sino por ser miembro fundador de la Comunidad Europea de Escritores. Actuó en La Dolce Vita, de Federico Fellini.
OBRA:
Poesía
My Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt 2006.
On My Way, Dublin, Ireland 2006.
The Wide World, Salzburg, Austria 2003.
The Wandering Celt, Dublin, Ireland 2001.
The Road Taken, 1956 – 1996, Salzburg, Austria 1996.
Il Galata Morente, Pescara, Italy 1996.
My Fields This Springtime, Belfast, Ireland 1993.
Tipperary, Galway, Ireland 1991.
Alexandria Notebook, Dublin, Ireland 1989.
His Skaldcranes Nest, Dublin, Ireland 1979.
The Headgear of the Tribe, Dublin, Ireland 1979.
Sing Me Creation, Dublin, Ireland 1977.
Stations, Cairo, Egypt 1976.
Separations, Dublin, Ireland 1973.
Hellas, Dublin, Ireland 1971.
The Dying Gaul, London, England 1968.
The Dark Edge of Europe, London, England 1967.
Separazioni, Rome, Italy 1963.
Reilly, London, England 1961.
Chords and Orchestrations, Limerick, Ireland 1956.
Traducciones
Ten Modern Arab Poets, Dublin, Ireland 2007.
Kurdish Poems of Love and Liberty, London, England 2005.
The Song of Solomon, 2003.
Croatian My Love, 2003.
C.P. Cavafy: Selected Poems, Dublin, Ireland 1999.
The Golden Odes of Love: Al-Mu'allaqat , Cairo, Egypt 1997.
Trawling Tradition: Translations 1954 – 1994,
Salzburg, Austria 1994.
Alternative Manners, Alexandria, Egypt 1993.
Ten Modern Arab Poets, Dublin, Ireland 1992.
The Seven Arab Odes, London, England 1990.
Grecian Glances, Cambridge, MA U.S.A. 1981.
A Limerick Rake, Dublin, Ireland 1978.
The Gododdin, Dublin, Ireland 1977.
Off Licence, Dublin, Ireland 1968.
Prosa
Essays:International Poetry
Memoirs: Samual Beckett, Erza Pound, Constantine Brawcusi, Anna Akhmatova, Olga Pound, Patrick Kavanagh
Propósito
Contemplé mis días y vi que
con la primera afirmación del verano
debo dejar todo lo que conocí: la casa,
la familiaridad de la familia,
compañeros y recuerdos de la niñez,
un porvenir cortado como un traje a medida,
una vida ordenada entre mis amigos de la escuela.
Contemplé cara a cara a mi futuro:
vi viajes a lugares distantes,
la diaria pelea para sobrevivir
en ciudades extranjeras con lenguas extranjeras
y pequeños cuartos alquilados durante noches
sin compañía, solo a veces el consuelo
de un amable brazo anónimo sobre la almohada.
Contemplé los rostros a mi alrededor
y vi el final de mis días como un barco que regresa,
con su vigía cantando en las jarcias.
Vi mi vida y fui hacia ella,
como un marino parte solo a la noche de su casa
y va hacia el puerto con sus pertenencias atadas,
y zarpa hacia la oscuridad.
Traducción de Jorge Fondebrider
PURPOSE
I looked at my days and saw that
with the first affirmation of summer
I must leave all I knew: the house,
the familiarity of family.
companions and memories of childhood,
a future cut out like a tailored suit.
a settled life among school friends.
I looked face to face at my future:
1 saw voyages to distant places,
saw the daily scuffle for survival
in foreign towns with loreing tonges
and small rented rooms on companionless
nights with sometimes the solace
01 a gentle anonymous arm on the pillow.
I looked at the faces about me
and saw my day's end as a returned ship,
its witness singing in the rigging.
I saw my life and I walked out to it.
as a seaman walks out alone at night frouo
his house down to the port with his bundled
belongings. and sails into the dark.
El poeta de edad avanzada pescando
al atardecer
Para Ezra Pound
Llega el momento
en el que hasta las ideas viejas y familiares
flotan fuera del alcance de los anzuelos de la mente,
y la plenitud del alma
se ha escurrido como un pez a través del que fuera el dique alto
de una confianza achacosa. Oh, ¿dónde están los libros
sobre esta forma de muerte?
Erguido como amor
en la punta más lejana de una roca,
el mar desenredándose del ojo,
la línea como el nervio
tensando hacia atrás el atardecer del reloj,
él se funde por un tiempo en la mentira
de su propia silueta.
Desmond O'Grady, Reilly, 1961, The Phoenix Press
Versión: Marina Kohon
The Poet in Old Age Fishing at Evening
For Ezra Pound
Comes a time
When even the old and familiar ideas
Float out of reach of the mind’s hooks,
And the soul’s prime
Has slipped like a fish through the once high weirs
Of an ailing confidence. O where are the books
On this kind of death?
Upright as love
Out on the tip of a tail of rock,
The sea raveling off from the eye,
The line like the nerve
Straining the evening back from the clock,
He merges awhile into the lie
Of his own silhouette.
The Spaniard Inn
Dawn's breeze pianos spring leaves and gently plays
all those trees around my home. Those crows
congregate in our churchyard each day.
A southwest wind hoots that ghostly fog
hom of the Old Head of Kinsale. My dog,
Gameball, wags in his bark to wake my day.
Glad voices of children's play at school
bell my hour. I exit, glad dog to heel.
We laze the Low Road. Open sea portside.
I watch for that-chance salmon's jump. Wood heights
to starboard. I pursue my greening thoughts
in their shade, an exile from exile alongside.
Pause at The Seat to swap chat with old seamen
stare lost between our harbour and horizon.
All Scilly ways and byways lead us straight
face to The Spaniard anchorage day or night.
Sailors have stood at this bar for centuries.
Robinson Crusoe began his voyage from here
where I dropped anchor after my voyage elsewhere.
Retired seamen, ashore for their last years,
salute my come on board, remark the weather.
Then for our day's forecast wisely refer
to telltale spiders' webs. We drink, then break
the bread of life leavened by common talk.
Our brief the local paper's headlines. We balk
at none. With ease we right each grave mistake
of State, in Sport, the outside world made last night
and, glass for glass, stand all downfalls upright.
That man and his three brothers torpedoed
the same day in the War. All four survived.
This one adrift alone for weeks, same War.
The postman daily walks his thirty miles
round here before they got those postwar bicycles.
That man's glass eye, a poke out by his ship's spar.
And so on for generations past.
Some historic pictures hang nailed fast
to these old walls. The Luisitania, sunk
off The Old Head, contrasts with the bad luck
of Captain Smith on his bridge, the Titanic
my mother would not sail on.
Her Limerick best friend Molly Dwyer did. She survived.
Then I was born. History's what's retrieved.
It took me forty years of world wander
before I shipped in here and dropped anchor.
Some voice amid life whispers where to scuttle.
My wanderlust lies diydocked here forever.
Memory's my seachart now, this pub home harbour---
where old and young sailors enjoy their gargle.
Our youths return with news of foreign places.
We hear them with unmoved, reflective faces.
We've been there, seen all, (lone that but don't tell
what we got up to then when we were young.
The talc's the same for all of youth's far flung
flight. Don't foul your homeport still holds our rule.
That old sailor told me what an older
one told him. Once home the world shrinks closer.
We tell the hour of day, day of the week.
by our each move: Who shows up first to sneak
his pint of breakfast and cheek off the day's
racehorses in the morning newspaper
who's dodged down Breakheart Hill to shop before
he'll drink the money here if he delays;
who's bailed out or painted up their boats
while waiting. Who's pulled all his lobster pots
and earned his day; our breadman with town news;
just now the Bike pushed past the window,
never enters. Another round. It's now
the hour that old seadog drinks up and leaves.
No local women weekdays. After Mass
on Sundays, with their husbands, some show face.
We each must have a place to sit our perch
where we may live our separate selves, or worse,
a while, daily. There we may lapse with ease
into our local dialect for talk
with friends. This we punctuate with mock
gestures to make a point when we so please.
That's when our dreams, conjured in innocence,
find likeminded dreamers who believe us
in this our public shrine of reverie.
I launched and sailed this boat, my life, as mine
to master. In fair and foul, through dark and shine,
I safely navigated many a sea.
But now, as the poet said in dream to me:
'The devil is tired. The devil a monk shall be.'
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