BRUCE WEIGL [9556]

Bruce Weigl (Lorain, Ohio, EEUU, 1949). Poeta, narrador, traductor. En poesía ha publicado, entre otros títulos: Like a Sack Full of Old Quarrels (1976); A Romance. Pittsburgh (1979); The Monkey Wars (1984); Song of Napalm (1988); What Saves Us (1992) y Declensions in the Village of Chung Luong (2006). Es veterano de guerra  y ha traducido a poetas vietnamitas al inglés. Ha sido nominado para el premio Pulitzer y ha obtenido importantes premios por su obra.

Publicaciones:

Poesía

Like a Sack Full of Old Quarrels. Cleveland: Cleveland State University Poetry Series, 1976.

A Romance. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979.

The Monkey Wars. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984.

Song of Napalm. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988.

What Saves Us. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 1992. ISBN 978-0-8101-5013-3.

Sweet Lorain. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 1996. ISBN 978-0-8101-5053-9.

Not on the Map. Chester Springs, PA: Dufour, 1996.

Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems. New York: Grove Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-8021-3607-7.

After the Others. Evanston, IL: Triquarterly Books/Northwestern UP, 1999.

The unraveling strangeness: poems. Grove Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-8021-3938-2.

Declension in the village of Chung Luong. Ausable Press. 2006. ISBN 978-1-931337-31-1.

Traducciones

Thanh T. Nguyen, Bruce Weigl (1994). Poems from Captured Documents. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-0-87023-922-9.

Prosa

The Circle of Hanh: A Memoir. New York: Grove Press. 2000. ISBN 978-0-8021-3805-7.

Canto del Napalm.

Después de la tormenta, después de que la lluvia acallara su golpeteo,

nos paramos en la puerta observando a los caballos

cruzar a paso lento y desganadamente  la pastura en la colina.

Los miramos a través del mosquitero de la puerta,

nuestra visión alterada por la distancia

entonces pensé que había visto nubecitas de  niebla

surgiendo alrededor de sus cascos,

cuando palidecieron

como perfiles recortados en el horizonte

alejándose de nosotros.

Los pastos no fueron nunca tan azules, tan

escarlatas; más allá de la pastura

los árboles mezclaron sus voces raspadas dentro del viento, las ramas

se cruzaron unas a otras en el firmamento como alambre de púas

pero vos dijiste que eran solamente ramas.

Muy bien. La tormenta detuvo sus golpes.

Estoy intentando decir esto de  un modo directo: por una vez

yo estaba por completo en mis cabales para hacer una pausa y respirar

más allá de mis planes salvajes y después de la dura lluvia

le di mi espalda a los viejos maleficios. Finalmente

pude creer que se habían alejado de mi…

Sin embargo las ramas todavía son alambres

y los truenos el estruendo de la artillería,

ha pasado el tiempo y cuando cierro mis ojos

aún veo a la niña huyendo a la carrera de su aldea, el napalm

adherido a su vestido como jalea,

sus manos extendidas hacia nadie

que  frente a ella aguarda en olas de ardiente calor.

Entonces para seguir viviendo,

para poder permanecer aquí a tu lado,

trato de imaginar que ella corre por el camino

y que en su interior se agitan alas hasta que se eleva

sobre la selva maloliente y su dolor

se alivia, y también el tuyo, y el mío.

Pero, la mentira da media vuelta, regresa.

La mentira funciona solamente durante

                    /el tiempo en que se demora en hablar

y la niña corre tan lejos

como se lo permite el napalm

hasta que sus tendones en llamas

y los crepitantes músculos se tensan

en esa su posición final.

Quemar cuerpos a la perfección, imagínatelo. Nada

podrá cambiar eso; ella arde detrás de mis ojos

y ni tu buen amor, ni el aire barrido por la lluvia,

ni el selvático verde de la pastura

extendiéndose frente a nosotros, podrán negarlo.

(versión Esteban Moore)

Song of Napalm

for my wife

After the storm, after the rain stopped pounding,   

We stood in the doorway watching horses   

Walk off lazily across the pasture’s hill.

We stared through the black screen,

Our vision altered by the distance

So I thought I saw a mist

Kicked up around their hooves when they faded   

Like cut-out horses

Away from us.

The grass was never more blue in that light, more   

Scarlet; beyond the pasture

Trees scraped their voices into the wind, branches   

Crisscrossed the sky like barbed wire

But you said they were only branches.

Okay. The storm stopped pounding.

I am trying to say this straight: for once   

I was sane enough to pause and breathe   

Outside my wild plans and after the hard rain   

I turned my back on the old curses. I believed   

They swung finally away from me ...

But still the branches are wire

And thunder is the pounding mortar,   

Still I close my eyes and see the girl   

Running from her village, napalm   

Stuck to her dress like jelly,

Her hands reaching for the no one   

Who waits in waves of heat before her.

So I can keep on living,

So I can stay here beside you,

I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings   

Beat inside her until she rises   

Above the stinking jungle and her pain

Eases, and your pain, and mine.

But the lie swings back again.

The lie works only as long as it takes to speak   

And the girl runs only as far

As the napalm allows

Until her burning tendons and crackling   

Muscles draw her up

into that final position

Burning bodies so perfectly assume. Nothing   

Can change that; she is burned behind my eyes   

And not your good love and not the rain-swept air   

And not the jungle green

Pasture unfolding before us can deny it.

Apparition of the Exile

There was another life of cool summer mornings, the dogwood air and the slag stink so gray like our monsoon which we loved for the rain and cool wind until the rot came into us. And I remember the boys we were the evening of our departure, our mothers waving through the train’s black pluming exhaust; they were not proud in their tears of our leaving, so don’t tell me to shut up about the war or I might pull something from my head, from my head, from my head that you wouldn’t want to see and whoever the people are might be offended. 

From the green country you reconstruct in your brain, from the rubble and stink of your occupation, there is no moving out. A sweet boy who got drunk and brave on our long ride into the State draws a maze every day on white paper, precisely in his room of years as if you could walk into it. All day he draws and imagines his platoon will return from the burning river where he sent them sixteen years ago into fire. He can’t stop seeing the line of trees explode in white phosphorous blossoms and the liftship sent for them spinning uncontrollably beyond hope into the Citadel wall. Only his mother comes these days, drying the fruit in her apron or singing the cup of hot tea into his fingers which, like barbed wire, web the air.

Elegy for Peter

That night we drank warm whiskey   

in our parked car

beyond woods now lost to the suburbs,   

I fell in love with you.

What waited was the war   

like a bloody curtain,   

and a righteous moment   

when the lovely boy’s

spine was snapped,

then the long falling into hell.

But lately, you’ve been calling me

back through the years of bitter silence

to tell me of another river of blood   

and of the highland’s

howl at dusk of human voices   

blasted into ecstasy.

That night in sweet Lorain   

we drank so long and hard   

we raised ourselves

above the broken places,

mill fires burning

red against the sky. Why   

is there is no end   

to this unraveling.