Jonathan Davidson
Reino Unido, ganador del premio Eric Gregory en 1990, autor de varios poemarios, incluyendo Early Train (Smith/Doorstop, 2011) del cual proviene esta muestra. Ha ganado la BBC Proms Poetry Competition en 2013 y el Café Writers Prize en 2014. Su próxima plaquette, “Humfrey Coningsby: Poems, Explanations and Demands for Satisfaction”, será publicada por Valley Press en 2015. Ha escrito ocho obras para radio difundidas por BBC Radio 3 y 4, al igual que adaptaciones radiales de “Mercian Hymns” de Geoffrey Hill, y “The Nightfishing” de W.S. Graham. Vive en Coventry, Reino Unido.
Presentamos, en versión de Francisco Larios, algunos textos del poeta inglés Jonathan Davidson (1964). Actualmente es Director Asociado del Birmingham Literature Festival and Chief Executive of Writing West Midlands. Además de poeta es productor teatral y ha trabajado para la radio en la BBC. Valley Press publicó este 2015 su libro más reciente, Explanations and Demands for Satisfaction.
El regreso de Coningsby
Y cuando ya había escalado la última colina
y pudo ver claramente su ciudad con
todos sus huesos y dientes, bajó deslizándose
del lomo del caballo y no anduvo más,
quedó de pie muy quieto. Su piel mostraba
el bronce de sus viajes. Traía rancios
bigotes, y en sus brazos, cicatrices
de combate. Su caballo quiso proseguir el camino
y él lo dejo marcharse, y se quedó contemplando,
en las arterias y en el corazón de Inglaterra
su vida
latiendo lentamente. Algo
anda mal en este país, es
demasiado verde. ¿Dónde están los camellos
y las cabras itinerantes? ¿Dónde
está la sabiduría nacional? Lo único que veo
son los pueblerinos alegres de Brueghel.
No es suficiente. Quiero Sharbat.
Conningsby’s Return
And when he had risen up the last hill
And could see clearly his parish,
All its teeth and bones, he slipped
From his horse’s back and did not walk
But stood very still. His skin showed
The colour of his travels. He wore old
Whiskers and had marks on his arms
From warfare. His horse would go on
So he let it go on, and he was left
Looking through his years of life
At the heart and arteries of England
Which pulsed slowly. Something
Is wrong about this country, it is
Too green. Where are the camels
And the itinerant goats? Where
Is the national wisdom? All I see
Are Breughel’s cheery bumpkins.
That’s not enough. I want sherbet.
Esbozo de mi padre
Te veo claramente en la distancia,
tu figura compacta sobre una bicicleta,
nada más una mano, ligera, en el manubrio,
o pedaleando cuesta arriba, dándole batalla
a la pendiente. No estás furioso
pero hay quien te perturba y
decepciona, y ahora los días
tienen formas extrañas, cada uno colapsa
sobre su múltiple sí para arrastrarte
de regreso a un campo Galés en tiempos de guerra,
y a tu infante-yo cantando mientras recortabas helechos
o mirabas las vacas que volvían a casa.
Tenías un valle y una pequeña montaña
que ascender. Y tenías la vida entera de una niñez.
Sketch of my Father
I see you at a distance, complete,
your compact figure wheeling a bike,
one slight hand only on the handlebars,
or else pulling the pedals up a hill,
fighting the gradient. You are not angry
but some people have unnerved or even
disappointed you and now the days
are oddly shaped, the days fall over
their many selves to bring you back
to a Welsh field in wartime
and your child-self singing as you hacked
at bracken or watched the cows home.
You had a valley and a small mountain
to climb. And you had a boy’s lifetime.
Tren al amanecer
Al dejar la casa a media oscuridad, salgo
sin decir adiós, jalo la puerta que al cerrarse
deja ir un ahogado estruendo. Por la noche,
a las dos y luego a las tres en punto, el de cuatro años
y después el de seis años se habían subido
a nuestra estrecha cama. Dormíamos todos felices
bajo la claridad, como de luna, de la farola
extraviada al cruzar la bahía, frente al puerto,
y el mar de hojas que revoloteaban en los árboles
era una borrasca fiera que llenaba los sueños.
Al irse la noche por efímeros
canales en la arena, despertamos
uno a uno. Yo fui el primero, y antes de salir
en bicicleta a la estación, tomé una foto
de los tres ellos, a la luz de las cinco y media,
para guardar el sosiego de sus cuerpos en mi mente,
sus caras y sus voces, sus palabras, sus respuestas
flotando hacia una playa lejana, para recordar en qué
nos convertimos cuando vivíamos juntos.
Early Train
Leaving the house in half-dark, I am going
without goodbye, pulling the front door shut
with a muffled clunk. During the night,
at two and then at three o’clock, the four
and then the six year old had clambered up
into our narrow bed. We’d all slept sound
in the same moonlight from the street lamp
marooned across the bay from our harbour,
and the sea of leaves that turned in the trees
was a fierce squall that filled our dreaming.
As the night went out, scouring temporary
channels in the sand, we would, one by one,
wake up. I was the first, and before I left
to cycle to the station, I took a photo
of the three of them, in the five-thirty light,
to remember the lie of their bodies becalmed,
their faces and voices, their words and replies
washed up on the further shore, to remember
what it was we became when we lived together.
Jonathan Davidson’s most recent poetry collection is Early Train (Smith/Doorstop, 2011). His pamphlet Humfrey Coningsby: Poems, Complaints, Explanations and Demands for Satisfaction is due from Valley Press in 2015. Seven of his radio plays have been produced by BBC Radio, with an eighth due for broadcast on BBC Radio Four in April 2015. He is also a theatre/poetry performance producer working with Midland Creative Projects (www.livepoetry.org), most recently on The Hundred Years’ War – Verdun to Afghanistan (touring Spring/Summer 2015). He lives in Coventry.
Brickwork
They use a Flemish bond, but set in it
Sufficient blue-flared headers
To make the lozenges
Of language for an eye
To read with ease a hundred years ahead.
A brick arch frames a window for the light
To be let in, and for a door,
A lintel. All are laid
Like script declaimed on Sundays
At faces plain as chimneys on a roof.
The building of a cottage, house or grange,
That finds its height and stands
Against the day, is song
For hands that speak in courses,
That harden as they weary of the work.
And they are dumb or gone away or dead
Who cut the sweet, pale clay
Of sentences and fired them
In common kilns to make
The narratives that keep us home and dry.
What we read now when walking through a place
Is all that’s left of those
Who squared the quiet day
With chisel, hawk and bolster,
Who held their tongues but spoke vernacular.
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