MENKA SHIVDASANI [15.688] Poeta de India

 

Menka Shivdasani 

(India 1961). Es miembro fundadora del Círculo Poético de Bombay que se inició en 1986. Sus libros incluyen Nirvana and Ten Rupees (1990) y Stet (2001). Junto a Anju Makhija tradujo Fissures and Freedon, antología de poesía de la partición sindi.

 Notas de bajo

 ‘¿Cómo tu pelo puede ser tan sedoso?’

el músico negro preguntó y ella,

entredormida, dijo que Hong Kong era todo suavidad

y a veces el lugar se metía en el pelo.

 Él era un profesional y jugaban

el uno con el otro, notas muy afinadas

sobre sedosa piel. ‘El problema’, dijo él

‘es que eres muy sensible’ y sacó música

de entre las cuerdas de guitarra en la cabeza de ella.

 Fue cuando llegó al bajo

que algo cambió.

Después, ansioso, preguntó, ¿También tú,

chica, también tú? Pues en un punto crucial

hubo silencios que él no esperaba.

 ‘Siempre yo vengo callada”, le dijo,

sin agregar, ‘Siempre me voy callada también’.

Otro país

 Arundhathi Subramaniam, poeta, ensayista y compiladora 

Why Rabbits Never Sleep

Lettuce is Nature's sedative, I read somewhere,

so at three a.m., I finally

decided to make a little salad.

There were cockroaches in the refrigerator

but I washed the vegetable well, then peeled

layer after layer, startling a sleepy worm

that had crawled indignantly from beneath the leaves.

But the pieces lay untidily, splashed across the plate,

like splotches of sun on the street;

so I tried another strategy - common, really,

any housewife-poet will know it.

I took a knife, its blade seductive in the dark,

and I chopped. The fragments, I noticed, as I yawned,

had begun to take the most extraordinary shapes.

Somewhere I recognised a bride,

her toenails turned to ash,

a mother-in-law and husband shut the door.

Another piece bore the face of a politician;

a third was a child with eyes wide open.

And why did the dish resemble

a wounded Hiroshima?

I went at it like the smiling Nazi

in a half-remembered film, who invited

his prisoner to lunch, then demonstrated

the art of cutting carrots.

"Chop, chop," he said, and as the slices fell,

still smiling, hacked the prisoner's finger off,

two actually, with the words, "Chop, chop,"

and another smile.

That night, I discovered the reason

rabbits never seem to sleep.

Tea Party

When you and I were about to break

there was no question of a fight

over who would take the cups

and who the saucers.

You spilled over with steam,

meniscus rippling with the slightest

touch; I, supine on the floor,

licked the milk once meant

for you. Both of us

were china at that point.

One of us had been to China too,

known the meaning of porcelain freedoms,

sniffed red guards. One of us

had known the sound of an alien tongue,

harsh and guttural as it came

from smiling mouths.

Our smiles were circular, yours and mine,

yours from the top of the tea

and mine below - two halves joined

together on separate rims. When we blew

at each other, the crockery

stayed firm, and who but you

and I would know the liquid moved?

No, there was no fight

over chipped white glass.

The pieces lay upon the kitchen floor.

And I - I've moved to tea parties

in other living rooms, balancing

alien porcelain on a frigid palm.