REGINALD SHEPHERD [10.361]

Reginald Shepherd 

(10 abril 1963 hasta 10 septiembre 2008) fue un poeta estadounidense   nacido en la ciudad de Nueva York y se crió en el Bronx. Murió de cáncer en Pensacola, Florida , en 2008.

Shepherd, afroamericano y gay, se graduó de la universidad de Bennington en 1988, y recibió MFAs de la Universidad de Brown y de la Universidad de Iowa, donde asistió a la prestigiosa Iowa Writers Workshop. Posteriormente enseñó en la Universidad del Norte de Illinois y la Universidad de Cornell. En su último año en la Universidad de Iowa, recibió el premio "Descubrimiento" de la Calle 92, y su primera colección, algunos están muriendo (1994), fue elegida por Carolyn Forché para la Asociación de Escritores y Programas de Escritura Award' en la poesía.

Libros 

Poesía 

Some Are Drowning ( University of Pittsburgh Press , 1993)

Angel, Interrupted ( University of Pittsburgh Press , 1996)

Wrong ( University of Pittsburgh Press , 1999)

Otherhood ( University of Pittsburgh Press , 2003)

Fata Morgana ( University of Pittsburgh Press , 2007)

Crítica

A Martian Muse: Further Readings on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press , 2010)

Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press , 2008)

Antologías 

The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries ( University of Iowa Press , 2004)

Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath Press, 2008)

Tú, por tanto

A Robert Philen

Tú eres como yo, tú también morirás, pero no hoy:

tú, inconmensurable, por tanto las horas brillan:

si te digo “Te digo”, no se te ha puesto

música, no te retransmite

en directo una radio fantasma,

quizá nunca haya óleo

o boceto al carbón de un Maestro Antiguo: concuerdas

en persona, número, voz y lugar, las fresas

se extienden por tu nombre

como matas brotando, cómo me recuerdas

a cierta primavera, frías y claras las aguas

(lluvia tardía en tus hojas, mecidas por la brisa),

por eso aconteces con la luna herbal:

y eres un lirio, un áster, trilio blanco

o viburno, mío de pleno derecho, estrella blanca

en cielo de llanura, la nieve aún llega

de sus viajes terrestres, aquí donde

no hay nieve (soñé que la nieve eras t

cuando había nieve), tú eres mi derecho,

eres mi lecho (tu cuerpo toma

las dimensiones del sueño, la forma del sueño

se hace tú): y caes del cielo

con flores diversas, palabras se derraman de tu boca

en oleada, tus labios saben a mar, dulces de sal (los árboles

y los mares han partido, a eso le llamo

amarte): hogar en ningún lugar, por tanto tú,

especie de morada y bienvenida, canción después de todo,

libre de todo edén que podamos nombrar

Traducción de Fruela Fernández

You, Therefore

For Robert Philen

You are like me, you will die too, but not today:

you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:

if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not been

set to music, or broadcast live on the ghost

radio, may never be an oil painting or

Old Master’s charcoal sketch: you are

a concordance of person, number, voice,

and place, strawberries spread through your name

as if it were budding shrubs, how you remind me

of some spring, the waters as cool and clear

(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind),

which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:

and you are a lily, an aster, white trillium

or viburnum, by all rights mine, white star

in the meadow sky, the snow still arriving

from its earthwards journeys, here where there is

no snow (I dreamed the snow was you,

when there was snow), you are my right,

have come to be my night (your body takes on

the dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleep

becomes you): and you fall from the sky

with several flowers, words spill from your mouth

in waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (trees

and seas have flown away, I call it

loving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,

a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,

and free of any eden we can name

Reprinted from Fata Morgana by Reginald Shepherd, 

published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. 

A Muse

He winds through the party like wind, one of the just 

who live alone in black and white, bewildered

by the eden of his body. (You, you talk like winter 

rain.) He's the meaning of almost-morning walking home 

at five A.M., the difference a night makes 

turning over into day, simple birds staking claims 

on no sleep. Whatever they call those particular birds. 

He's the age of sensibility at seventeen, he isn't worth

the time of afternoon it takes to write this down. 

He's the friend that lightning makes, raking 

the naked tree, thunder that waits for weeks to arrive; 

he's the certainty of torrents in September, harvest time 

and powerlines down for miles. He doesn't even know 

his name. In his body he's one with air, white as a sky

rinsed with rain. It's cold there, it's hard to breathe, 

and drowning is somewhere to be after a month of drought. 

Blue

See my colors fall apart? Green

to yellow with just one shade gone,

the changing tints of your sun-struck eyes,

if there were sun. Today the prism held to mine’s

a prison, locking in the light. In one of those mirrors

the colors are true. In one of these pictures the pigment’s

my own. The sound there is aquarelle and indigo,

and dripping distant water, the day’s habitual failure

to be anything substantial. Today a blank like color

by numbers, filled in with fog that frames the lake

in transient tones. That’s the color I mean, some mist

painting the shore pastel and pointillist

rain, painting the shadow between window and light. Today

each hue dissolves in humid air, transparency

I try to grasp and then let go, clear overflow

of waves on gravel. The mist with its single-dipped brush

smears itself across the canvas of the pines.

The pines, knowing no better, run together on a morning

palette. Today the scene’s dismantled, that can’t be

dismissed. I once was blind, but now

I see my landscape attenuate itself, drowned lake

of evergreens. On a morning like this with new crayons

I drew a man, that red valentine

in the side. The picture of two hands scrawling the outline

where only one thing’s missing; the crayons scattering

from childish fingers. Color me or leave me vacant 

Eros In His Striped Blue Shirt

and green plaid shorts goes strolling

through Juneau Park at eight o’clock

with only a hooded yellow windbreaker

for protection, trawling the bushes after work

while tugboats crawl the dark freshwater

outlook. Mist coming in not even from a sea, rain

later in the evening from Lake Michigan, a promise

like wait till your father gets home. The air

is full of fog and botched seductions, reluctance

of early summer to arrive. It’s fifty-five degrees

in June, the bodies can barely be made out

leaning on picnic tables under trees or

set sentinel like statues along the paths (the founder

corrodes quietly on his pedestal, inscription

effaced under faggots go home). Lips

touched to a public fountain for a passerby

shape clouded breath into a who-goes-there?, into a

friend-or-foe?, eyes catching eyes like hooks

cast in a shallow tide. Night pouring in like water

into a lock, the rusted freighter lowered level

to level, banks of the cement canal

on either side, but miles from any dock. 

Manifest

Sir star, Herr Lenz, white season body

master snapping masts in half, absent

winds’ workmanship: what window

will I look you through, what brook, stream

creaking past fretwork weeds, clouds

in the context of cold? Lord knot

to be untied, skiff hard alee ill winds:

a hiss of wish and cinders and I

am warm, crossing dazed oceans by hand

to sow the doubtful sea with drought. Mine

of rain and seize and sluice, you change

your mind again, a rage for green waves’

open vowels, undrinkable. No talking

to the weeds, no talking with the snow.