Nora May French
(Nueva York, Estados Unidos, 1881 - Carmel-by-the-Sea, Estados Unidos, 1907)
Aunque muchos de sus poemas celebran la serenidad del paisaje costero, otros son menos optimistas: ofrecen vistas a la mente de una joven mujer desgarrada entre la presión de representar roles sociales y las ganas de vivir de forma creativa.
A lo largo del sendero
El sendero me ha conducido más allá del pueblo
Para seguir el día a través de los menguantes campos,
La hierba quebradiza y eriales de un tierno marrón.
A un lado y a otro las altas cumbres emplumadas,
Una tracería de arabescos rotos
Sobre el lúgubre carmesí del cielo.
Hacia el oeste, las vías se estrechan rápidamente.
Cortan la suavidad de tiza del crepúsculo
Con delgados y convergentes destellos de rojo sangre.
Un lugar de ensueño
Aquí beberemos contentos, mi camarada;
Aquí, donde el pequeño riachuelo, al encuentro del sol,
Desciende como vino amarillo por una roca amarilla.
Aquí lanzaremos una hoja hacia costas lejanas,
Y en ella encerrada una palabra para el País de las Maravillas,
El Desconocido azul más allá de los sicomoros.
The Outer Gate: The Collected Poems of Nora May French, Hippocampus Press, Nueva York, 2009
Versiones de Jonio González
ALONG THE TRACK
The track has led me out beyond the town
To follow day across the waning fields,
The crisping weeds and wastes of tender brown.
On either side the feathered tops are high,
A tracery of broken arabesques
Upon the sullen crimson of the sky.
Into the west the narrowing rails are sped.
They cut the crayon softness of the dusk
With thin converging gleams of bloody red.
A PLACE OF DREAMS
Here will we drink content, comrade of mine—
Here, where the little stream, to meet the sun,
Flows down a yellow rock like yellow wine.
Here will we launch a leaf to distant shores,
And in it shut a word for Wonderland—
The blue Unknown beyond the sycamores.
After-knowledge
You found my soul an untried instrument.
I closed it fast and bade you take the key,
Serene in my unquestioning content
That you alone could wake the harmony.
I gave the key, indifferent though it cost
Familiar lightness of unskillful touch,
The music to the master. If I lost,
He lets the little go who profits much.
Ah, then the keen, reluctant knowledge grew
That thought the chords were helpless at your will
You had nor wit nor power to sound them true:
Discordant they, or else forever still
Change
Beloved, have I turned indeed so cold?
My eyes are faithful, grieving with your grief;
And if the year itself could grow not old,
Could stand at waking sap and budding leaf,
An April heart might keep its first unrest,
An April love the petals of its spring.
When all the birds are silent in my breast,
How can I answer when you bid me sing?
The autumn hills are brown: you will not see.
The saddened woodland speaks, and finds you strange.
Ah, dear one, all my world is kin to me,
And with the swerving days I change, I change.
The Constant Ones
The tossing trees had every flag unfurled
To hail their chief, but now the sun is set,
And in the sweet new quiet on the world
The king is dead, the fickle leaves forget.
A placid earth, an air serene and still;
In misty blue the gradual smoke is thinned—
Only the grasses, leaning to his will,
The grasses hold a memory of wind.
Down The Trail
Break camp, the dawn is here!
A sea has swept beneath us in the night—
Poured outward in a wrinkled floor of white,
And left our eyrie clear.
There in the deeps the little trail is curled—
We plunge like divers to the under-world.
The manzanita stirs!
Look, in that little thicket just ahead!
Down, down, the covey whirrs,
Mocking us, careful, led,
Slow-slipping beads along a slender thread.
Here the stream flows;
Here we tread yellow leaves.
(Sun in the sycamores,
Sun on the granite walls.)
All is so still,
Never wind blows,
Only the singing stream
Shouts little waterfalls.
We round the mighty shoulder of a hill—
Oh, sweet airs damp with ferns!
The day is old, the lengthening shadows chill—
The wanderer returns.
Traffic, and wakeful eyes of little lights;
The black crowd passing near; and far away
A fading rose of sunset hanging low
Above the roofs of indigo and grey.
The Garden Of Dolores
The garden of Dolores! Here she walked
When fretted in the twilight"s pallid space
The trees were black and delicate as lace,
And palms were etchings, sharp and slender-stalked.
Now riots summer in these magic closes,
And life is rounded in the frailest spray . . . .
Dolores, cold and buried yesterday,
Is it thy spirit here among the roses?
For restless murmurs through the garden seek;
To shadowy caress the flowers unclose;
A blossom in the dark magnolia glows—
Or leaning pallor of an oval cheek?
Upon the dusk is borne a strange long cry,
And one quick sob of wind the air has moved.
Ah, perfect garden that Dolores loved,
Her soul has called to thee . . .a far goodbye.
In Camp
I
As down I bent with eager lips
Above the stones and cresses cool—
The yellow tent, the little moon,
I found within my twilight pool.
The fringing trees, the floating moon,
The bubble tent—I passed them by,
And sipped a tiny, shattered star,
Deep drinking from that mirrored sky.
II
My tent is shadowed day and night
With leaves that shift in moon and sun;
Across its walls of lucent white
The lovely varied tracings run;
And black and slender, quickly sped,
I watch the little feet at dawn—
A sudden oriole overhead,
A darting linnet come and gone.
The Message
So might it brush my cheek with errant wings,
So might it speak with thrilling touch and light
Of answering eyes, of dim, unuttered things—"
A moth from hidden gardens of the night.
So, in a land of hills, where twilight lay,
Might come a sudden bird-call to the ear,
Across the canyons, faint and far away. . .
O Heart, how sweet . . . half heard and wholly
dear.
Footnote reads: "These lines were in response to a long telegram dispatched at night by a distant friend."
San Francisco New Year's, 1907
Said the Old Year to the New: "They will never
welcome you
As they sang me in and rang me in upon my
birthday night—
All above the surging crowd, bells and voices
calling loud—
A throng attunded to laughter and a city all alight.
"Kind had been the years of old, drowsy-lidded,
zoned with gold;
They swept their purples down the bat and sped
the homeward keel;
The years of fruits and peace, smiling days and
rich increase—
Too indolent with wine and sun to grasp the
slaying steel.
"As my brothers so I came, panther-treading,
silken, tame;
The sword was light within my hand, I kept it
sheathed and still—
The jeweled city prayed me and the laughing
voices stayed me—
A little while I pleased them well and gave them
all their will.
"As a panther strikes to slay, so I wrenched my
shuttering prey.
I lit above the panic throng my torches' crimson
flare;
For they made my coming bright and I gave them
light for light—
I filled the night with flaming winfs and Terror's
streaming hair.
"They were stately walls and high—as I felled
them so they lie—
Lie like bodies torn and broken, lie like faces
seamed with scars;
Here where Beauty dwelt and Pride, ere my torches
flamed and died,
The empty arches break the night to frame the
tranquil stars.
"Though of all my brothers scorned, I, betrayer,
go unmourned,
It is I who tower shoulder-high above the level
years;
You who come to build anew, joy will live again
with you,
But mightiest I who walked with Death and taught
the sting of tears!"
Think Not, O Lilias
Think not, O Lilias, that the love of
this night will endure in the sun.. Hast
thou beheld fungi, white, evil, rosy-lined,
poisonous, shrivel in the eyes of day?
In this wilderness of strange hearts it is
not thine alone that concerns me. Many
brave hearts of men are more to me than
thine. The hearts of men breathe deeply.
As for thy heart, it runs from me, it is
Quicksilver, it does not concern me greatly.
Footnote reads: "Think Not, O Lilias." These prose lines were recalled out of a dream. They are included here because of their singular beauty.
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