VIVIAN DEMUTH [9708]

  

Vivian Demuth es poeta y escritora de ficción canadiense- americana cuyo trabajo ha sido publicado en diversas revistas y periódicos de Canadá, los Estados Unidos y Europa. Ha publicado la colección de poemas Breathing Nose Mountain y es anfitriona del encuentro de poesía Poetry on the peaks, que se lleva a cabo cada verano en la montaña donde trabaja como guardabosques observando la presencia de incendios. Recibió el premio Sarah Tucker de ficción que otorga la Universidad de Long Island Su primera novela, Eyes of the forest, se publicó en 2007. Parte del año vive en Nueva York trabajando con personas sin hogar. 

Las Abejas

En mi infancia me picó una abeja cuando iba camino a casa de la bruja.

Ahora, cuando observo a las abejas de Chiapas que armonizan 

saliendo del enjambre en grupo como hacen ellas, zumbando los tormentos 

pacíficos de la muerte, me pregunto si estoy lista para el machete del dolor.

En Estados Unidos los insectos expiran por el mal llamado colapso de las colonias de abejas, no así estas enlutadas abejas femeninas que se adornan con chales tejidos a mano  y negras faldas de lana; ellas cantan  para  mantener viva la memoria. Cantan 

sobre la sociedad civil de abejas que zumbaron por la paz en diciembre de ‘97 

y a las que dieron un  cuasimilitar apretón de manos hacia la masiva fosa 

común.

En el trance de este canto, veo caléndulas anaranjadas con esencia de verdad

en el bajo mundo.  Veo matrices abiertas y desgarradas de mujeres encintas 

que mecen suavemente a los fetos difuntos murmurando sus nombres. 

Veo a 49 personas muertas  bendiciendo con ramaje de pino a sacerdotes católicos; 

a niños descalzos que no pueden dormir y a seudomilitares borrachos 

que sí pueden. 

Entonces tomo un sorbito de su néctar comunal y conforme la música crece,

una abeja de un metro y medio me toma con su cálida mano, ella 

que fue picada en Acteal, se  detiene a consolarme. “Mira”, dice y señala, 

“¿No son hermosas las danzas folclóricas?”

[Traducción de Olga Y. Mancinelli]

I Have Been Calling Them

For a long time  I have been calling them   without reply.

I smell them in the DNA hills of my boreal bed

I see them waiting on a black forest coat of male arms

I hear them arguing, tongues flying in Native winds

I rub their dark feathers dipped in a dry Alberta stream

As I write in the rocky darkness to talk with them.

For a long time  I have been calling them  without response.

And after I saw the twirling Precision helicopter crash

After I ran downhill into the smell of crushed metal and dreams

After I touched a cold firefighter’s blue-winged lips

with the erratic cry of my breath, then I called them again

while walking alone in logged woods  and for once

the giant ravens  croaked and lifted me

as we listened to our breath alight in tall evergreens.

The Red Kyoto Button

The world caresses icy newspapers

while the rainforests lament

clenches human barren dreams

evaporating in desert capitals.

The cry of hurricanes

knocks on govenment doors

delivers dead birds

for presidential terror cells.

Everywhere darkness

gloved hands that grip pretense

except for the guy in grey suit

who inside a purple light bulb

cooks up a solar dream

for sleepless monsters

eyeing a red Kyoto button

unsure whether pressing it

will blow up Kyoto Accords or the world.

 

The Age of Extinction

A few nights ago, a bear danced around my garden carrots

            and bowed to sniff the sow’s scat in the soil bed.

Last summer, a deer yanked my Tibetan prayer flags

            from firetower scaffolding

and paraded adorned antlers past trampled skulls

            in the broken forest.

I am a human animal walking a dirt trail of illusions

            tossing vegetable scraps a mile from cabin

            for the closest or quickest to snack.

In my first six years of alpine solitude wrestling

I saw a hungry caribou out-run a wild six-pack

            of dartgun helicopters,

I heard ravens chuckle circling above loggers’

            orange flagging tape alit in forest flames,

I followed a scarred moose chase a fleeing Honda generator

            along another new mountain road,

and took photos of a wolf pack stealing the seismic camp’s

            grilling steaks & biting off a page

            from the First Handbook of Habitat Protection.

Over the next six years from mountain heights, I’ve watched

            the wildlife thin and the oil drills strike back.

Is this the Age of Extinction in which only Fortune’s wheels

            will roll on?

Will some drugged grizzly bear wake up and flip the switch?

Can a human ever gain the insight of a drugged bear?

In the meantime, I’ll sit in the petrified bedrock

            with what looks like a young dinosaur

            just for the unwritten record.

Operation Alternative

Last night struggling through a downpour,

dead people rained in my mind, bodies I had hovered

over as E.M.T. protecting them from mundane rites

of doctors and police officers debating bmw’s and jaguars.

A hunched woman knocked me with her cane

and whispered, “Angel, Angel” and pointed

at store mannequins with half a head, only up to the nose

like some politicians I know. I was heading to my new job,

Operation Alternative for homeless people and I wondered:

What if George Bush walked in naked and hungry,

down and out after post-2004 elections? What if Ramal

said to me “He’s yours”? And what if I gave George a terry cloth

housecoat that said “anarchist antichrist” in big black letters

on the back and sent him with corn chips to the end

of the line? What if one of the fire breathing clients,

spat on George and stole his bourbon bottle?

Or what if the clients complained that he smelled

worse than newly polluted Texas? But what if George

complained that he was surrounded by dirty criminals?

“Just like the White House Mr. Bush,” I’d say.

What if I asked him for ID and he handed me his insider

trading papers? What if I pushed the black emergency button

behind the plexiglass and twenty cops came charging in

and jumped on and arrested the anarchist-cloaked George

for hiding a bottle? Poor dyslexic Prez. Oh Homeless Oh Inmates:

It’s just a stormy prophecy, I mumbled, wishing this were

a gay city where Mumia Abu-Jamal is honorary citizen

and where multi-parties and anarchists can be

and where a patriot act is a poet speaking for rights

of Guantanamo detainees and Geneva not Republican       

Conventions. I was following blurry city lights

to Operation Alternative where I opened the door on a dozen

longing eyes who welcomed my dripping face out of the rain.