Chris Abani
Chris Abani nació en Nigeria en 1966. Poeta, novelista, músico de jazz, profesor universitario con estudios en Nigeria, Gran Bretaña y Estados Unidos. De madre inglesa y padre Ibo-nigeriano, nació en medio de la guerra y comenzó a escribir desde muy temprano.
Su primera novela Master of theboard en la que él, con sólo 16 años, situaba al cuarto Reich en Nigeria, tuvo consecuencias nefastas para el joven escritor. Dos años después de su publicación, fue condenado a tres años de cárcel por el carácter revolucionario de sus textos. Entre las rejas sufrió torturas y aislamiento completo por períodos, hasta que fue liberado en 1991.
Describiéndose a sí mismo como “fanático del optimismo”, viaja entre intersecciones cargadas de atrocidad y amor, política y religión, pérdida y renovación. Sus poemas, de belleza devastadora, indagan la compleja historia personal, familiar, y el amor romántico. Exploran los lugares y el humor, el exilio y la libertad con poemas de la experiencia y la imaginación.
Su obra poética está constituida por libros como KalakutaRepublic, 2001; Daphne’s Lot, 2003; DogWoman, 2004; HandsWashingWater, 2006; There Are No Namesfor Red, 2010; Feed Me TheSun – Collected Long Poems, 2010; Sanctificum, 2010. Obra narrativa: Masters of theBoard, 1985; GraceLand, 2004; Becoming Abigail, 2006; SongForNight, 2007; TheVirgin of Flames, 2007. Ha recibido, entre otros, El Premio Pen Club de Estados Unidos a la Libertad de Escribir, el Premio Prince Claus, el Premio al libro de California y el Premio Guggenheim.
UNA PEQUEÑA ORACIÓN (A SMALL PRAYER)
Nada sé de la verdad
imponiéndose como esa primera luz,
inconmovible río sagrado.
Pero mi corazón es inacabable,
Girando en un rosario que cae pesadamente. Fruto
De la mano fatigada de la piedad
Y hay ese rumor —Esto es amor, esto es amor
¿pero qué sé yo de sus solitarias estaciones,
el peso completo de una cruz, la ternura de los remaches?
Pero hay redención en esta aventura
—la verdad como la mejor adivinanza de la memoria—.
Así que rebusco con manos mugrientas dando forma
con un poco de cartón grueso y engrudo, a sus ayeres,
reclamando algo atrapado en la sombra
entre coplas rebosantes de promesa
inventándome, este niño pequeño, este niño, este hombre
y mi corazón conoce las estrellas que veo,
y sabe que otros han viajado antes por esta oscura senda: hacia la poesía.
Traducción de Nicolás Suescún
Sanctificum
I say hibiscus and mean innocence.
I say guava and mean childhood.
I say mosquito netting and mean loss.
I say father and it means only that.
Happen that we all dream, but the sea is only sea.
Happen that we call upon God but it is only a breeze
ruffling a prayer book in a small church
where benches groan in the heat . . .
“Stunning poems.”
Blue
I
Africans in the hold fold themselves
to make room for hope. In the afternoon’s
ferocity, tar, grouting the planks like the glue
of family, melts to the run of a child’s licorice stick.
Wet decks crack, testing the wood’s mettle.
Distilled from evaporating brine, salt
dusts the floor, tickling with the measure
into time and the thirst trapped below.
II
The captain’s new cargo of Igbos disturbs him.
They stand, computing the swim back to land.
Haitians still say: Igbo pend’c or’ a ya!
But we do not hang ourselves in cowardice.
III
Sold six times on the journey to the coast,
once for a gun, then cloth, then iron
manilas, her pride was masticated like husks
of chewing sticks, spat from morning-rank mouths.
Breaking loose, edge of handcuffs held high
like the blade of a vengeful axe, she runs
across the salt scratch of deck,
pain deeper than the blue inside a flame.
IV
The sound, like the break of bone
could have been the Captain’s skull
or the musket shot dropping her
over the side, her chains wrapped
around his neck in dance.
“Blue” from Dog Woman. Copyright © 2004 by Chris Abani. Reprinted by permission of Red Hen Press.
Chant:
It was the hornbill that spoke it.
In the nothing, becoming nothing,
begetting nothing; this is everything.
The world is old, the world is new
How does the darkness hide?
In the nothing, becoming nothing,
begetting nothing; this is everything.
The world is old, the world is new
The sun is no bigger than a crab.
In the nothing, becoming nothing,
begetting nothing; this is everything.
The world is old, the world is new
Hot soup is devoured from the edges.
In the nothing, becoming nothing,
begetting nothing; this is everything.
The world is old, the world is new
The blood sign is red; burning like fire.
In the nothing, becoming nothing,
begetting nothing; this is everything.
The world is old, the world is new
It has no name; silence is its name.
In the nothing, becoming nothing,
begetting nothing; this is everything.
The world is old, the world is new.
“Chant” from Dog Woman. Copyright © 2004 by Chris Abani. Reprinted by permission of Red Hen Press.
Dog Woman
It’s like flying in your dreams, she said. You empty
Yourself out and just lift off. Soar. It’s like that.
*
Red. Red. Red.
Just that word. Sometimes.
*
Yang & Yin. Like twins tumbling through summer.
He, the rooster crowing sun; desperate—afraid—
As only men can be.
And Yin? Let’s say she has long hair—
No, that won’t work. If we are to believe
the ancient Chinese, she was a dog
howling moon.
*
When I counted out the pills, it was a slowing down.
Like the delay between when the car goes through
the dip and your stomach falls away—
And won’t stop.
*
Of course it was because she didn’t fit my mold.
So I punished her. And why? And why? And why?
You did it, I said. You did it.
Wouldn’t fill my world.
*
And eventually we all kill our mothers.
Their eyes a tenderness that doesn’t flinch
from it. Knowing. Eventually.
*
What else is there?
*
Paula’s paintings are real. The women thick, visceral,
like stubborn cliffs the sea cannot contain—or drown.
*
Or dogs. And such as these drove Homer to despair—
And his cry: Oh to see! To see! To see!
*
So Paula says: To be a dog woman is bestial is good.
Eating, snarling.
Utterly believable.
Gross.
*
Like when Cesaria Evora breaks your heart with a smile
all melancholy and sea and salt.
Assim ’m ta pidi mar
Pa ’l leva ’me pa ’me ca voeta
And it doesn’t matter that you don’t know what
the words mean. Some things are beyond that.
*
So. Tanya bought the record because Cesaria’s face
is beautiful with all the lost love of the world
and darker than the blue of the sun setting over the Atlantic.
*
It’s in the angle of light washing her hair
with sun into a puddle that catches in the throat
The wood deck creaks from the weight
of all that air and sun and silence
Water chuckling in the tiny fountain in the corner
holding up the song of wind chimes and flies
And it’s all here. Fire. Water. Stone. Wood.
*
All caught up in Yeats and the cuckoo
that wasn’t a real bird but cried
with all the agony of the desire for flight
hemmed by wooden wings, and springs and cogs.
I think.
*
Or looking for Rilke—
How the panther is like the rage
of a doll’s soul caught in the body: but
to say: under an open window, a violin
Accomplishment though is another matter—
Just ask Baudelaire and so I
thought I could do it.
Necromancer, necromancer, necromancer
make me a mate
only one of my ribs pray take.
So why won’t women fit into that space?
*
Is that why in the photograph David plays
an inflatable lyre? Does his smile make it all artifice?
*
But life is this and it will not
be contained. The Igbo say:
No one can outrun their shadow.
And this is good. This is hope.
Because, or maybe, we cannot outrun love.
*
To drive down a road, she said. Until it stops
at the edge of the sea. An ocean vast and immense,
she said. If you are lucky, she said. It fills you.
“Dog Woman” from Dog Woman. Copyright © 2004 by Chris Abani. Reprinted by permission of Red Hen Press.
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