LAURIE LEE [9320]

Laurie Lee, cuyo nombre completo era Laurence Edward Lee, fue un escritor y poeta inglés nacido en Stroud el 26 de Junio de 1914.

Laurie Lee murió en Slad el 13 de Mayo de 1997.

Escritor y poeta inglés. Nació en Stroud (Gloucestershire). A la edad de 19 años abandonó el hogar familiar y se marchó andando a Londres. En esta ciudad trabajó como albañil hasta 1935, fecha en la que recorrió España a pie subsistiendo gracias a lo que ganaba con su violín como músico ambulante. Más tarde cruzó los Pirineos durante los últimos días de la Guerra Civil española. De regreso en Londres, trabajó como copista en el ministerio de Información durante la II Guerra Mundial. Una rosa para el invierno (1955) relata sus viajes por España. La fama le llegó con Sidra con rosas (1959), evocación de una infancia campesina seguida de otros libros autobiográficos: Cuando salí de paseo una mañana de verano (1969), Yo no puedo durar (1975) y Un momento de guerra (1991). Si bien en estas obras se deja sentir la influencia de Auden y Spender, y acaso la del poeta español García Lorca, Lee emerge claramente en su poesía como uno de los pocos herederos de la tradición oral inglesa. El sol, mi monumento (1944), Un brote de velas (1947) y Mi hombre de tantos abrigos (1955), revelan el talento, el encanto y la fuerza de Lee como poeta. Escribió además dos dramas en verso, El cura de los campesinos (1947) y El viaje de Magallanes (1948).

-Traducción: Carmen Asunción Sola y Ángel Manuel Gómez Espada:

LA GUERRA PROLONGADA

Menos apasionada, la prolongada guerra dispara

Su ardiente espina sobre todos los hombres;

Atrapados por una profunda pena, compartimos una herida,

Y gritamos en el dialecto del dolor.

Hemos olvidado quién incendió la casa,

Cuya simple travesura vertió la primera sangre;

Bajo un enloquecido techado tiramos.

La culpa no asumida.

Pero cuando nuestros brazos enredados abracen

El desierto en el que nuestras ciudades estuvieron,

Y la muerte tenga un aire familiar en cada rostro

Debe aparecer, al fin, nuestra fraternidad.

THE LONG WAR

Less passionate the long war throws 

its burning thorn about all men,

caught in one grief, we share one wound,

and cry one dialect of pain.

We have forgot who fired the house,

whose easy mischief spilt first blood

under one raging roof we lie

the fault no longer understood.

But as our twisted arms embrace

the desert where our cities stood,

death's family likeness in each face

must show, at last, our brotherhood.

Apples

Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:

juice-green of July rain,

the black polestar of flowers, the rind

mapped with its crimson stain.

The russet, crab and cottage red

burn to the sun’s hot brass,

then drop like sweat from every branch

and bubble in the grass.

They lie as wanton as they fall,

and where they fall and break,

the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,

the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite

of boys’ teeth tears the skin;

the waltzing wasp consumes his share,

the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take

entire my season’s dole;

welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,

the hollow and the whole. 

Christmas Landscape

Tonight the wind gnaws

With teeth of glass,

The jackdaw shivers

In caged branches of iron,

The stars have talons.

There is hunger in the mouth

Of vole and badger,

Silver agonies of breath

In the nostril of the fox,

Ice on the rabbit’s paw.

Tonight has no moon,

No food for the pilgrim;

The fruit tree is bare,

The rose bush a thorn

And the ground is bitter with stones.

But the mole sleeps, and the hedgehog

Lies curled in a womb of leaves,

The bean and the wheat-seed

Hug their germs in the earth

And the stream moves under the ice.

Tonight there is no moon,

But a new star opens

Like a silver trumpet over the dead.

Tonight in a nest of ruins

The blessed babe is laid.

And the fir tree warms to a bloom of candles,

And the child lights his lantern,

Stares at his tinselled toy;

And our hearts and hearths

Smoulder with live ashes.

In the blood of our grief

The cold earth is suckled,

In our agony the womb

Convulses its seed;

In the first cry of anguish

The child’s first breath is born. 

Milkmaid

The girl's far treble, muted to the heat,

calls like a fainting bird across the fields

to where her flock lies panting for her voice,

their black horns buried deep in marigolds.

They climb awake, like drowsy butterflies,

and press their red flanks through the tall branched grass,

and as they go their wandering tongues embrace

the vacant summer mirrored in their eyes.

Led to the limestone shadows of a barn

they snuff their past embalmed in the hay,

while her cool hand, cupped to the udder's fount,

distils the brimming harvest of their day.

Look what a cloudy cream the earth gives out,

fat juice of buttercups and meadow-rye;

the girl dreams milk within her body's field

and hears, far off, her muted children cry. 

April Rise

If ever I saw blessing in the air 

I see it now in this still early day 

Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips 

Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye. 

Blown bubble-film of blue, the sky wraps round 

Weeds of warm light whose every root and rod 

Splutters with soapy green, and all the world 

Sweats with the bead of summer in its bud. 

If ever I heard blessing it is there 

Where birds in trees that shoals and shadows are 

Splash with their hidden wings and drops of sound 

Break on my ears their crests of throbbing air. 

Pure in the haze the emerald sun dilates, 

The lips of sparrows milk the mossy stones, 

While white as water by the lake a girl 

Swims her green hand among the gathered swans. 

Now, as the almond burns its smoking wick, 

Dropping small flames to light the candled grass; 

Now, as my low blood scales its second chance, 

If ever world were blessed, now it is.