Bob Hicok
Poeta
Fecha de nacimiento: 1960, Grand Ledge, Míchigan, Estados Unidos
Educación: Vermont College of Fine Arts
Premios: Beca Guggenheim en Artes Creativas, Estados Unidos y Canadá
OBRA:
Elegy Owed, 2013, Copper Canyon Press
Words for Empty and Words for Full, 2010, University of Pittsburgh Press
This Clumsy Living, 2007, University of Pittsburgh Press
Insomnia Diary, 2004, University of Pittsburgh Press
Animal Soul, 2003, Invisible Cities Press
Plus Shipping, 1998, BOA Editions, Ltd.
The Legend of Light, 1995, University of Wisconsin Press
Bearing Witness, 1991, Ridgeway Press
Bob Hicok
Traducción de Daniela Birt
Otras vidas, otros mundos y al final un poema de amor
Mi mano izquierda vivirá más que mi derecha. Los ríos
de mis palmas me lo anuncian.
Nunca le discutas a los ríos. Nunca esperes que tus vidas terminen
al mismo tiempo. Creo
que rezando, creo que aplaudiendo es como las manos sufren. Yo creo
que permanecer despierto y esperar
el suspiro de una pintura es ciencia. En otro mundo esto
es justo lo que está ocurriendo,
es de lo que escriben ponencias: la cromodinámica
de Murmulladores sufrientes,
el dolor sonoro y la decadencia en beta del “Old Battersea Bridge”.
Me gusta la idea de distintos
allís y esos otros lugares, un Idaho conocido por su bluegrass,
un Bronx donde la gente habla
como las violetas huelen. Quizás soy un tanto paciente, algo más
amable, quizás en un escondrijo
de un universo alterno nunca he ensuciado ni traicionado
a nadie. Aquí tengo
dos manos y estás desvaneciéndose, la curva de tu espalda
para reposar mi mejilla,
tu voz y nada más que mi asiduo miedo a adorarte.
Mis manos están hendidas
como una telaraña herida por el viento, como si se hubieran asido
a algo en el vientre
mas no pudieron aferrarse. Uno de esos otros mundos
o una vida que sentí
atravesar la mía, o el mar dentro de la panza que mi madre
tuvo que sacar a gritos.
Aquí cuando digo “Nunca quiero estar sin ti”
en otro lado estoy diciendo
“Nunca quiero estar sin ti otra vez”. Y cuando te toco
en todos los lugares donde nos encontramos
en todas las vidas en las que estamos, es con manos que mueren
y reviven.
Cuando no te toco es un error en cualquier vida,
en todos los lugares y por siempre.
Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem
My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
at the same time. I think
praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think
staying up and waiting
for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this
is exactly what's happening,
it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamics
of mournful Whistlers,
the audible sorrow and beta decay of "Old Battersea Bridge."
I like the idea of different
theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook
of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed
anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
to rest my cheek against,
your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
something in the womb
but couldn't hang on. One of those other worlds
or a life I felt
passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's belly
she had to scream out.
Here when I say "I never want to be without you,"
somewhere else I am saying
"I never want to be without you again." And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet
in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.
A private public space
You can’t trust lesbians. You invite them
to your party and they don’t come,
they’re too busy tending vaginal
flowers, hating football, walking their golden
and chocolate labs. X gave me a poem
in which she was in love with a woman
and the church but the church
couldn’t accept four breasts in one bed.
When I asked if our coworkers knew,
she dropped her head and I said nothing
for years until this morning I realized
no one reads poems: my secrets and hers
are safe in verse. I knew she’d have enjoyed
the Beaujolais and I want to meet Dianne,
Mona Lisa, Betty, Alice,
the name’s been changed
to protect women who can’t stand in a room
holding hands because you can’t trust
heterosexuals to love love, however
it comes. So I recorded
the party for her, for them, the mic
a bit away from the action
to catch the feel of waves touching shore
and letting go, the wash of moods
across the hours of drink and yes, some grapes
were thrown and I breathed
the quickening revelation
of a cigarette, someone said “I gave up
underwear for Lent” and I hope
they play the tape while making love.
As if finally the world’s made happy
by who they are, laughing with, not at
the nipple lick clit kiss hug
in bed and after, the on and on
of meals and moons and bills
and burning days of pretending
they don’t exist. “Who’s she? Just
a friend.” And oceans are merely dew
upon the land.
A Shopkeeper’s Story
I sell one bristle brushes. People
seeking two bristle brushes I send
to the guy on Amsterdam, who’s in a rush.
I may have one customer a year
for my one bristle brushes, a one-eyed
lover of tanagers, she may have
one dollar to spend in the moment
light’s neither day’s or night’s,
but one’s where infinity begins. Whoever
she is, she’s always painting barbules,
I’m always thinking, no one will notice
that they notice this, that her tanagers
move, that everything’s alive. We talk
care and feeding of the one
bristle brush. Care exists. I thrive.
Bars poetica
This is the story I’ve tried to tell. Guy
exists. Father mother sister brother.
Oh pretty stars, oh bastard moon
I see you watching me. The trembling
years leading to sex, the trembling sex.
Death as garnish. Death as male lead,
female lead, death as a cast
of thousands. God in, on, as, with,
to, around, because who knows
because. All the while feeling air’s
a quilt of tongues, that spaces
between words are more articulate
than words. It’s not like you’d hope,
that anyone can make sense.
Look around you, let your ears
breathe deep — almost no one does.
Have another drink. When they throw us out
there’s a place down the street
that never closes, after that
we’ll climb a fire escape and praise
the genealogy of light. The Big Bang
sounds like what it was, the fucking
that got everything under way.
That love was there from the start
is all I’ve been trying to say.
Self reliance
I have a picture of Earth on my wall.
Would lice keep a photo of me?
I am their world after all.
The green parts are trees
or where Leprechauns blew up.
The offices of squid are blue.
A satellite took this photo
as it jogged around the world.
Beside Earth I’ve hung Mars.
They look like testicles
keeping each other company.
The red planet’s really brown,
you could color it in
with crayons made of dirt.
It’s Earth minus the recipe
for everglades and cows.
Scientists are interrogating Mars.
They slap it around and deny it
the famous phone call.
They want to know if anything
ever lived there, small or large.
So far it’s held its tongue.
Not long ago we were afraid
that Martians would come
and destroy the Earth
with bad breath and ray guns.
Have you kissed a river lately?
We can kill the world fine
on our own.
The invisible man
He is my manta ray. The Degas
that got away from me.
Any shoe you choose
or the pause in war
when men apologize
to each other’s wounds.
I make him up as I go.
Nearly see him each week.
Blur dashing curb to door,
shadow in daylight
and cataract to the moon,
relfex of the ineffable
wisp. His skin hides
from eyes, lips refuse
the brand of words.
Twelve years and I don’t know
how many noses he owns,
if feet by two or is he a horse,
sea of course, or made
of cheese to the knees.
His quick silver speed
never fails. Though once
I saw an ear clear, nautilus
shaped, that’s it
for biography. He is
my summer, always leaving,
my hero in sprint
& embrace of the neural twitch
that counsels no, stay low.
Avoid life, the sun and chafe.
Sociophobe means afraid
of people, he is
blank page, void, the dot
the TV swallows when power
sleeps. The hummingbird
no living person’s seen,
blue unless red until green.
Gracias por compartir la traducción que hice. Muchos saludos!
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