HARRY RICKETTS [17.822]

Fotografía: Robert Cross/

Victoria University of Wellington

Harry Ricketts

Poeta, académico, editor y crítico, Harry Ricketts estudió filología inglesa en la Universidad de Oxford, y fue profesor en Hong Kong y Leicester antes de llegar a su puesto en la Universidad de Victoria, Wellington, Nueva Zelanda, en 1981. Ha publicado colecciones de poesía, ensayos y una admirada biografía de Rudyard Kipling, The Unforgiving Minute: A Life of Rudyard Kipling (Chatto and Windus, 1999). Su poesía se define por sus tonos y recursos dramáticos y satíricos, muchas veces fundamentados en anécdotas personales.

Harry Ricketts en Random House Books, NZ

Gap 

para Tommy

«Cuando me crezco quiero ser

el hombre que dice: "Mind the gap"».

A lo largo de los años, igual que tu voz,

esa frase me ha acechado.

Mind the gap: Es equivalente a la advertencia en el metro: "tengan cuidado para no introducir el pie, entre coche y andén"

Wellington, a finales del verano 2014 

En la grada del Basin aplaude el público;

las cigarras hacen clic-clic con sus castañuelas.

Escucha al lento bramido del dinero, que retrocede. 

En la grada del Basin aplaude el público.

«Wellington es una ciudad que muere»,

dice el hombre con fríos ojos de pargo.

En la grada del Basin aplaude el público;

las cigarras clic-clic, con sus castañuelas.

Basin: la cancha de críquet de Wellington.

(Traducción de los poemas Gap y Wellington, late summer 2014 de Harry Ricketts de su último libro Half Dark (Victoria University Press, 2015) por Charles Olsen. Leer los poemas en inglés en booknotes unbound)

Polonius

everything seems disconnected

mottled hands mischievous eyes

rough frosted hair and disobedient brown shoes

cheeks with the blush of mulled wine

your soft-vowelled Scottish blur

you shuffle frailly inside your suit

the blood must move so slowly now

your mind still moving in worlds not realised

you shared the air that Eliot breathed

you know we all tell stories

in coffee-rooms and corridors

ironically envious of your eccentricity

how once you said: 

‘Which way was I going?

Ah, thank you, that way

– then I have had lunch.’

but Polonius

you are so far out

you’re on your own

way back

though it’s true you stalk dead minotaurs

in labyrinths where we lack the clue

and Hamlet is dead, Polonius,

and Ophelia too

and maybe you’ll never write

all those poems you promised to 

you did once live in Elsinore

and for that

                  we envy you

El Prado

A damp morning, just a touch nippy

for January. You’re here

in this indoor meadow, this art-house barn,

randy for epiphany,

or at least hoping to be surprised.

So Raphael’s Transfiguration

is certainly dramatic –

in fact, quite literally uplifting.

So why does that boy agoggle

at Christ levitating leave you cold?

Thirty-five years ago with a head

full of Gormenghast, Seventh

Seal, Crow, the Velvet Underground, you’d have found

El Greco’s silver-lit e-

longations ‘really weird’, but not now.

Now what hits home is Saint Barbara

by Parmigianino,

a left profile. Her face shines with youth.

Braided, brown hair hangs on her

right shoulder. She’s holding – what? – a part

of the tower daddy’ll shut her up in.

Her upper lip curves over

slightly. She wears rather a chic pink

number, such an inward look.

She knows exactly what lies ahead.

And here, opposite Van der Velden’s

flesh-heavy Deposition,

Robert Campin’s Annunciation.

Mary’s a blonde, long, straight hair,

bit plump. A nice girl lost in a book

and apparently quite unaware

of the heavenly rays round

her head, beamed down from top left,

or Gabriel patiently

kneeling, wings half-furled, with some pretty big news.