ARTHUR BOYARS [13.365]

Arthur Boyars 

Poeta británico. Nacido en 1925 es poeta y musicólogo, traductor y crítico y editor. Es el editor de la importante guía The International Annual.  Su poesía, así como su trabajo crítico fue publicado en numerosos diarios y revistas. Ha sido considerado en la significativa antología londinense The New Poetry (1962).

OBRAS:

(ed. with Barry Hamer ), Oxford Poetry 1948, Oxford: Blackwell, 1948

(trans. with David Burg) Yuli Daniel, Prison poems, 1971

(trans. with Simon Franklin) Yevgeny Yevtushenko, The Face behind the Face, 1979

FLORENCIA: EL DÍA DE GARIBALDI 1949

Ninguna calle que lo diga.

Ningún amante

en la Via dell'Amorino,

ninguna belleza

en la Via delle Belle Donne.

Tan sólo

las lindas mujeres

entre sus estantes silenciosos,

tras las flores

puestas por amantes de los santos.

Y ninguna abundancia—

las manos

estirándose por unos cuantos reales,

los muchachos

con los pájaros presos.

mientras que los enamorados

se tocan a través

de las ranuras ciegas.

El puente:

y las joyas

una decepción.

Las manos

todavía agarradas

hasta que los dedos

alcancen esas nubes

y caigan

hacia el anochecer.

Muerte de un día,

el río desaparece

y el último pájaro

se retira a su casa

entre su jaula hambrienta.

Este 5 de junio.

No hay bandera

que por éstos se interese.

Ni días

(como los llaman ellos).

Poesía inglesa contemporánea (Barral Editores, Barcelona, 1975, versión de Antonio Cisneros).

FLORENCE: GARIBALDI DAY 1949

No streets what they say.

No lovers

In the Via dell'Amorino,

No beauties

In the Via delle Belle Donne.

Only

The lovely women

Silent on their shelves,

Flowers before them

Fixed by the lovers of Saints.

And no plenty—

The bands

Stretched out for farthings,

The boys

With imprisoned birds,

While the amorous

Touch

Through blind chinks.

The bridge:

And the jewels

A deception.

Still

Hands grasping

Till the fingers

Reach to the clouds

And pull down

Nightfall.

Death of a day,

The river fades

And the last bird

Moved homeward

In his hungry cage;

This

Fifth of June;

No flag

Concerned with these.

No days

As they call them.

Lycidas

Wherever he may walk on the silent plain

There are the berries haunting him, the weeds

Lacquered with water tiding towards the cave

Of no return, - or drifting where his blade in vain

Besieged by river-mirth becomes a pattern of refraction,

He notes the cold unsmiling steeds, their gills 

In tumult vaunting the liquid fall, the well-worn destiny 

Of streams and time of day, these he regards in isolation,

For, tumbling past the dream, they are his moon and stars,

Inverted catkins fallen through the oiled glass,

Berries that had swept his face dry of the earth 

And all its wish, - had passed the fringe of hands far

On the bank, and now were treading on the spiral

Of his death: the sea turned river, and he might not think

That as they rode the stairs theirs was a dead ascent,

Or that his breath was now become a pearl beyond inquiry

Draped in a prison, void of fire; and where they passed, the 

Fallen

Berries, was his sky, split and miraculously circled through 

The green gem, passaged with rain and all the water-burden

Of his song, waking with movement the dead lips, and he, the

pearl wall,

Tender and white against the flash of his massed 

Fortune, learning from the sepulture of words where

They grew from him living, and of trees also,

And how each falling leaf must finally be lost.

On the Birth of a Child

What daybreak of your body's shade has passed

   into this crystallizing of a tear, 

   this clutching at the moulded air

with new inverted hands of animal?

Or did they sleep, who thought themselves

     to be your father, fashioning another

     love than night, and seek a mother

not your own, but with her crescent smile

around the wasted cycle of the year

   and test with words the words they heard her speak

   strange with rebellion, and suddenly in meek

submission turned to weaker will?

Where had the voice departed, where

   the shadows that had formed her skin, and now

   had left their fruit no courage to enow

the day with argument, or prove the night;

the half moon falling on her face till you 

   were born, and all like dead memory cut free

   lay in her hands like some old ivory

and fell to life, a gift beyond refusing.

From some unthought-of hand strange

   music lifts, strained life awakes

   from struggle into noise, this change it makes, 

and, like the sound, bears generations in it:

and now the leaves displace their heaviness

   and leave her throat to words she would

   not say, and with this being in her eyes should

not remember at the drowning of her ship of speech, -

and this is all the end or some beginning

   unwritten in her hand, which joins her voices

   into unison and overrules the choices

which, in your body's daybreak had existed never.

On the Decent from the Cross

First they had lifted him, 

Tired with the falling of sky, 

To where the earth

Unmentioned in his dreams

Moved stars at him, flowering 

Beneath the Winter's crust.  

And he, seeing the while ;

The image motionless pressed 

On his clay-sight, seems

To be carved from rivers, - but sound

Of the nails had flowed

The liquid flesh in pattern,

And had turned to man, backed by

The breakwater of his

Dying wood: then

To his mouth, soured by the

Acid kiss, they lifted petals

Uncorrupted through dead Autumn

And touched their murmur

To his tongue, while he

The ' Wherefore ' still on his lips,

Grooved his dead spirit to

Their core, and sprung their

Summer-tint upon his blood.

But others had smoothed clear

His wounds, and remedied with magic

Art his hands impaled 

For wonders ; and soon they lay

Unmarked, as though the barbs

Had been of nettle-fabric, and

Had faded from the painted part

And pointed then no longer

To the strangers of his death

And sharers of his mortal day : and so

They helped him anoint with fingers

Shuddering with thought of how the Sun

Was sifted through them, -

They touched his head and through

Its maze, confused, plucked thorns

Now gilded in his agony

Till at his side a golden mountain lay

And lifted quietly his crown from him.

  

Lovers in a Park

The claw protective flung 

About her shoulders? haven,

Decrees nor you nor I shall touch

His starveling heaven;

Her stars low sockets hold,

Thin lips her hollow,

Pale tongue through banks of teeth winds where

His love must follow.

Compulsion rears no voice; 

In this safe posture

She and her jig-saw man make one

No green imposture; 

Love?s animals, though light

Against their barest tender

Mouths show indifferent flint set to 

Indifferent tinder.

And yet no haloes of 

Good-byes are spread like dawn 

Above her known metropolis,

No moon falls down -

Their paper fingers scorch

Then crinkle, it is still

The same excuse of fire which tempts

Ashes to steal

Their winking heat again:

This is his own version

Of how his others love; a mouse

She smiles, and proves herself his vision.

Funeral

Friend, you were my child

My mother also

Ages long past:

The worm is dead in the shell

The spark lit its ruin;

Saw my reflection

Stretching in crannies of earth

To hoard the last part of you:

In clay the earth gleams

How shall it hide its gold

Till you are lost out of story:

Uneven the falling of rain -

The yellow light unexpected

Dazzles the salvager

In a year without myths.

Final Day

A DOZEN years of days and nights these loved,

Days they were separate, and most nights alone,

Only the evenings made their common home

Where intimacy grew, but this was gloved ;

Mouth touching mouth in kiss,

Loins touching loins, but doomed to miss.

They ate the ordinary food, and none complained,

But spoke extraordinary words whose meaning raced

Beyond the language which had not encased 

Such thoughts till then. Words die, but these remained ;

Instead of children, better,

Grew up, and were not flesh to fetter.

Only in loneliness; for when food was short

Their private language would unlearn its grace,

And world rushed in with stricken daily face

And made her mouth each pious mundane thought

Which all their life had banished

To beyond, where such thoughts vanished.

Not vanished quite, the ordinary never;

Like fire in flint, its being lay concealed

Till friction for its flame to be revealed,

And famine was the end of this endeavour.

Famine and drought on two mouths lay,

Which, rubbing, set alight their final day.