WILL STONE [17.420]

Will Stone 

Nacido en 1966 en Reino Unido, divide su tiempo entre Inglaterra y Bélgica. Licenciado en Traducción Literaria por la Universidad de East Anglia (Norwich) ha traducido al inglés a los poetas Franco-belgas Émile Verhaeren y Georges Rodenbach.

En el año 1999 Menard Press publicó su primera colección de traducciones del francés, Les Chimères de Gérard de Nerval. En 2005 publicó Arco Al silenciada, sus poemas seleccionados de Georg Trakl. Otras traducciones de poetas como Baudelaire, Verhaeren, Maeterlinck, Rodenbach, Stramm y Schiele han aparecido en revistas y los dos últimos, junto con Trakl, publicados en el importante Music While Drowning – Tate anthology of German Expressionist Poetry (2003).

Su primer libro de poemas, Glaciation, se publicó en 2007 y al año siguiente fue galardonado con el prestigioso Premio Internacional de Poesía Glenn Dimplex. Publicó su segundo libro de poemas, Drawing in Ash, en 2011.  Un tercer libro, The Sleepwalkers será publicado próximamente.

REGENERACIÓN      

Primero nos mostraron unas fotos.

Ruinas de hogares del suburbio,

salones abiertos al cielo

con lo que parecía gente viviendo dentro,

como si no hubiera ocurrido nada.

Algunos junto a una chimenea

o alrededor de la televisión,

sus rostros de cera fingiendo

caricias de los dedos

de ese fuego de fantasía.

Otros sentados a una mesa

metiendo cucharadas

de polvo y ceniza en sus bocas.

Bajo el entramado de vigas del vestíbulo

dialogan seriamente un médico y un cura.

En la puerta de al lado,

reza un niño en pijama

junto a su lecho, embrión de fe

indefenso bajo un millón de estrellas.

Al fondo, ese nimbo omnipresente,

vigilado por ventanas tullidas,

amenaza el poco espacio que queda,

como un péndulo oscuro,

el puño del político encima del estrado.

    (de su libro Glaciation)                                        

*Traducción de PEDRO SÁNCHEZ SANZ.

http://traducciones.lagallaciencia.com/

REGENERATION  

First we were shown pictures.

Ruins of suburban homes,

rooms open to the sky,

with what looked people inside

living on as if nothing had happened.

Some gathered round a fireplace

or television,

their waxen faces pretending

the fantasy fire's fingers

touched them.

Others sat at a a table spooning dust

and ash into their mouths.

In the rafter-strewn hallway

a priest and a doctor in earnest dialogue.

Next door a child in pyjamas

praying by his bed, an embryo of faith

exposed to a billion stars.

In the back ground always that nimbus shape

watched by cripple windows,

bullying the remaining space,

dark pendulum,

a politician's fist above the podium.

EL FINAL DE NIETZSCHE*

Sí, ese del sillón soy yo,
mi cara dócilmente encendida de locura.
Los perros corren con los huesos que desecho
y estas viejas tontas me los devuelven.
Se inclinan sobre mí, alborotando.
Pero yo aún soy Dionisos
y con una mano terriblemente delgada
que emerge de la manta
digo adiós al mundo que roí hasta los huesos.
¿Y qué son mis ojos ahora?
La sombra de humedad que rápidamente
se esfuma de la piedra.
¿Y qué es mi corazón?
Un guijarro en un charco negro
en el lado de la montaña
que nunca toca el sol.
¡Idiotas!
Y la estupidez que está por venir,
monos de cuerda golpeando la piel del tambor
y mi rostro que aparece de nuevo
bajo la escarcha
deteniendo el deshielo.


*Traducción de PEDRO SÁNCHEZ SANZ.

NIETZSCHE AT THE END

Yes, that’s me in the armchair,

my face obediently lit by madness.

Dogs run with any bone I give up

and these silly old women fetch them back.

They lean in on me, fussing.

But I am still Dionysus

and with a terrifyingly thin hand

emerging from the blanket

I wave the world I gnawed white away.

What are my eyes now?

The shadow of moisture fading

too quickly from stone.

What is my heart?

A pebble in a black pool

on the side of the mountain

that never sees the sun.

Idiots!

And the stupidity that must come,

clockwork monkeys beating the skin drum

and my face seen again beneath the ice

interrupting every thaw.

GLACIATION   –  After Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’

Once handed over by the deities to death,

we truly began to live, glacial.

Now, cut off in our ice holes

we listen to the creeping snout,

the slow cracking of human hearts,

lashed rafts almost submerged by pain,

that somehow are carried down

between steep walls of rock,

before whose primeval malevolence

the earlier explorer turned insane.

Birds cry out sadly as they wheel again

back and forth over the sucking abyss,

over the monstrous plaster limb of ice.

Here where firs are snapped like twigs

and huge boulders weigh their anchors

to set out on endlessly repeated summer nights,

or in winter when fresh shale and rock

peppers the dull blue ice, and wolves

drag tattered scraps of carrion about.

Against the waxing moon they unleash

their white snarls, then sated run into the forest,

the dark dust spaces, to sleep side by side

licking each others bloody faces.

And the huge cables quiver mournfully

on their towers, where in clusters

the little cars huddle together.

But they are lifeless, deserted

and all around tall firs sag with snow.

There is no way through.

Only the relentless flow of unseen rivers

in deep icy fissures, where the leathery bodies

of the ancients are strangely preserved.

Crows form a thicket on a lonely mountain road.

At the cars approach they rise with reluctance.

In the slipstream the fur of the carrion faintly stirs.

A hungry prey is hunted by hungrier wolves.

We do not see the kill, nor the ice move

and in summer’s thaw leave its passengers

polished skulls in clear rock pools.

Vainly the climber hacks into the ice wall

and the explorer sinks his nation’s flag.

Nothing remains of their inexplicable straining.

Only the ice moves, a snake slowed by feeding.

The ice moves and shackled, relentless,

slave winds groom her awful surface.

HARROWING

Do you see the old moon waiting,

a tired gull tethered to the harrow

above the dawn reluctant field.

Do you see the rabid activists,

book brandishers, men of power

burning crude effigies for the crowd

and how even this evil is absorbed

by the eye blink of a deer in a glade?

Do you see the unblemished children

prodding the ditch with sticks?

They are finding out what it feels

to sink down an escalator in the mall

into the cutlasses of neon,

the vacancy encrusted men and women,

finery of the pit where coinage entrails

spill themselves unashamed.

Do you see this and weep for another age

which is only a mocking fantasy,

a tail pinned on the donkey,

a desperate raking of coals, brief glow,

piano played by the tramp’s filthy nails,

or another rower whipped aboard

your heart’s slow slave ship.

Feel the prow dip and drink,

only momentum and more funerals,

the warmth of child and mother

slipping away into jaundiced snow.

GUIDED TOUR OF THE RUINS

Gather round, ladies and gentlemen,

and behold,  for this was their city

their profound well, reflecting

a sad constellation of cheap tin stars.

Nourished on the hampers of decadence,

still they breathed in night’s mint air

and under the elaborate tortures

of their own design, finally confessed…

Let us begin downtown, when,

on gala night, the hysterical movie star

was suddenly impaled

on a lance of white-hot realisation.

How she struggled to swab her wound

as the onyx limousine pulled away.

Let us remember, ladies and gentlemen,

the day when all finally awake

and fight to take cuttings

from madmen’s brains.

Imagine, if you will, how worms feel

when finally the rotten apple gives.

Imagine the hardest winter,

imagine the longest scream

quite unable to fade, for that is how

this generation lived…