Trevor Conway
Trevor Conway es de Sligo, Irlanda. Escribe poesía, cuentos, canciones y libretos. Ha publicado en Decanto, Inclement, Irish Journal Ropes, Poetry Salzburg Review y Boston’s Fusion.
Inspirado
Las mejores ideas
son concebidas con calma.
He escrito sonetos con un café al lado,
desviado por su aroma
de una cara a una cara en pleno atisbo;
sentado en una piedra,
su abrigo de musgo un filtro de espuma,
mientras el río murmura.
Han emergido historias
junto al fuego y la tele.
Durante el medio tiempo,
he trazado algún lamento:
Milán 3–Liverpool nada.
Un libro en blanco tendido
junto a mi cama;
sus hojas serán llenadas.
De manzanas que caen
grandes teorías han sido formuladas.
Horas soporíferas en una oficina de patentes
proyectan luz reveladora,
el dilema de un rey resuelto
entre el vapor de un baño público.
Yo no tengo una gran teoría,
sólo palabras,
como un viejo amigo que regresa
vistiendo ropa nueva.
Algún día me sentaré con papel en mano.
Alguna revelación jugará frente a mi nariz.
Alguna pluma llegará a mis manos
para sembrar la semilla de
la Gran Novela Irlandesa y
palabra caerá sobre palabra,
cada letra bañada en oro,
un toque de fuego en mi sangre;
luego, me voy a sonrojar.
Especulación
Ven figuras en las estrellas,
tallan una línea entre dos puntos
y trazan un viaje.
Señalan las zanjas de pincelazos
que nunca estuvieron ahí.
Él escribirá,
pero mientras lo leen
las letras se desprenderán
y reamoldarán para formar
otro significado.
«Lo que quiere decir es…»
«Puede significar ambas cosas.»
«Quiso decir eso, obviamente.»
Sus mentones son suaves como el aceite,
palabras forjadas con precisión
en tonos melancólicos
con metáforas en forma de resorte.
¿Acaso no todos tenemos ojos de colores?
Él podrá negarlo.
Él podrá no decirlo.
Pero ellos no pueden distinguir
su sabiduría de su pose.
«Llegó del subconsciente.»
«Nunca lo admitiría.»
«Con tan poco, dice mucho.»
¿Qué tan válidas son sus voces?
Tan firmes como la base
sobre la que están paradas,
abrazadas por signos de interrogación.
La medida se mueve en ángulos.
Todos estamos torcidos,
hermosamente torcidos.
Nadie se erige en noventa grados.
Él habla:
«Pregúntenle a las estrellas.»
Las palabras y los días
Los versos medidos de un poema
se burlan de la vida:
tanto tiempo para perfeccionar una frase,
y las palabras son tan precisas.
Si la vida fuese arte,
¿qué tan refinado sería?
¿Y acaso no es que la mitad de su alegría
reside en su incertidumbre?
Pero las vidas siempre terminarán en palabras,
que tallan sus legados.
Traducción de Raúl Bravo Aduna
Atlantic
Today, I touched America,
Felt its sweat wash over me.
I became metallic blue,
Slipped into the cool chill
With the smooth, neoprene skin of a seal:
Delicious.
The world was a thing behind me.
Under water, you’re inside a bottle
Quilted with the jostling clink of waves.
Nostrils fizzle.
We are pre-born fish,
But I, too, hang like the seagull,
Held at the hips as though
Lit into the air.
(Applaud.)
Taste with your skin.
I was ragged, flat and limp,
Philosophical or dead.
All the birds must’ve thought me strange.
Commerce, culture, communication –
All were skeletal things,
Faces coated in metal and glass.
I saw shadowy figures on the sand,
And was part of history, unrecorded.
Continents came and spoke to me.
Breathing daily through my window,
I hear it, a heaving animal.
I touched it yesterday, too.
The foam, engorged brown and red,
Dripped like silk from my limbs.
I had been beaten,
Saved.
The salt on my lips made me long
For something I’d tasted before.
I think it was – in fact, I’m sure –
Deep-fried potato.
Black and White
I stared at the screen:
It was “black and white”,
Or, as I called it,
“Grey”.
(I was a pedantic child.)
My parents said they were old films,
Images from long ago,
So, naturally, I assumed everything
Was black and white:
The trees,
The clothes,
The sky
And skin.
What an amazing world.
When did it change? I wondered.
Did everyone just wake up
And find themselves in colour?
Nothing is black and white now.
But I want to believe again.
I want to see the world in these two shades.
The orange street lamp glows
As evening ripens blue.
Words fall to the page:
Black and white.
Second Glance
It’s strange to like a face,
To appreciate its curves and lines,
Humps and hollows,
The twisted arch of the jaw.
Our words and deeds
Define,
Defame
Or distinguish,
But we value the frame
By its condition.
Why pay so much for skin
Which will crack and smudge?
Fertile hair is coiled
With the vigour of the young.
Does it spring, too,
From the shape of the face?
Silver might be richer
From one town to another,
Slung around the necks of tribal women.
What hangs will sway.
What’s dabbed will change our eyes
As much as the light.
If you are a woman,
I will judge your beauty
Before your words.
Will you afford me the same?
I have wanted a different face,
Something better.
But how would my thinking change?
I have pitied others
I shouldn’t have.
Social value is a surface measure,
Every layer of fat a Jewish star.
“Shoot me if I ever let myself go that far.”
The unfit are prey,
Attracting the predator,
So stay away!
Beauty, a kind of gravity
Drawing us closer.
I strive to make attractive things –
Things to attract who?
Cicada
From the ground,
Having fed
On the juices of roots.
Seventeen years’ gestation –
A prime number
To which no predator
Can synchronise.
Into the spring evening
Millions of wings beat
Their final party.
Dark-Skull-Cliff-Blood
Boo!
Welcome to life,
Where you will taste no fear
Till taught, unfed or left alone.
Sleep in reason,
Breeding monsters,
Absorbent as a page in red light.
(Fade into colour.)
Finally, you’ll walk,
Having learned to fall,
Ground the greatest height you’ll achieve.
But turn away
From strangers
And moving cars.
Soon, you’ll tackle daily giants
(We are Napoleons of private lands),
Your only fears
Flimsy as a fist of beans:
Failure,
Public speech
And a closed laptop.
True fears return
When smooth skin grows choppy.
New faces silhouetted at the edge of your field.
From the future,
Its hand will strike sharply,
Raised to a rattle in suit-speckled rooms:
Loss gathers crowds quicker than a prophet.
You will need protection,
And you will know it.
I can’t tell
How it may turn your mind,
Only its bleaching of your hair,
Its twisting of your arteries,
Its poisoning of your cells.
Try not to heed it:
It has sent men to war, or from it.
(Tell this to widows and weeping children.)
You will frown at fear (we all do),
But ask yourself why,
Whether it’s a lesson or intuition.
Dodos haven’t been to school;
They never will.
Threatened mothers, they can’t hear their homework.
And martyrs burn cold, you know –
See not even an eyelid flicker.
You may call this “madness”, “ignorance” or “naivety”.
You’ll hear of Goya,
Might even see his pain as a holiday aside,
Hanging black on bright walls.
Your fingers will obscure dark moving images of fiction,
Following the supernatural,
But the real fright jumps out from leaves,
Flesh
And salivating jaws.
How odd it is, you’ll observe,
That some fear words,
Chins, paper, poetry,
Bald men and, even,
Objects to the left.
Disabled, you’ll learn motivation,
And might even taste my blood
(But men are not for being afraid):
The nemesis within
Might beat or multiply,
But let’s not think of it.
Let’s think of a wonderful land
Where anxious thoughts have no volume:
I’d walk through that door,
But then, maybe, I’d realise
That lack of fear is the end of life.
And you must know a poem could be
A shriek in the dark.
Telephone Poles
Forty miles an hour,
The line droops till the next hit –
A brief rise, full-bellied again.
The jaunty rhythm flattens to a blur
As you gather speed,
Each pole hammered
Quicker than the last,
Like needles threaded with molten mascara,
Some slack, some taut,
Standing askew,
Set with an eccentric touch.
Each seems like a bishop's reminder
That someone once suffered for us,
Someone who never had to pass
Through the Tuam roadworks.
In the fog of email and Skype,
Only a few generations
Will know the purpose of these things
Rotting through grime-stubbled glass.
Crossing roads, trudging up
The sides of hills, they slouch
Like dole-queue scarecrows
Shouldering garrulous birds,
Lining each path,
Reminders, to some, that
There are still voices.
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