Richard O. Moore
Richard O. Moore (26 de febrero 1920 - 25 de marzo 2015) fue un poeta estadounidense asociado con Kenneth Rexroth y el Renacimiento de San Francisco.
Su primera poesía fue publicada en 1945 en la revista Círculo por George Leite. En 1949 fue uno de los fundadores de KPFA, la primera estación de radio pública oyente-apoyada en los Estados Unidos. Él continuó escribiendo poesía, pero rara vez trató de publicar. Durante los próximos cincuenta años estuvo activo como director de documentales y ejecutivo de la televisión pública, en KQED, San Francisco y KTCA, Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
A su retiro en 2000, Moore regresó a tiempo completo a la poesía. "Escribir los Silencios" editado por Brenda Hillman y Paul Ebenkamp, incluye una selección de su poesía desde 1946 hasta 2008.
De / From:
Writing the Silences © 2010, Richard O. Moore & University of California Press
Evocación
Agarrando en una estación tarde
a un desplazamiento de mundos,
dentro del equilibrio dorado del otoño,
del amor y de la razón,
hicimos nuestra paz.
Nos quedamos quieto en octubre,
dentro de la luz decreciente,
y buscamos, uno al otro,
reposo y liberación de un silencio,
y de la condenación lente de una expresión
que es débil y cae del silencio.
En el sol de octubre,
por el río verde,
hablábamos.
Y en octubre – tarde en octubre –
las hojas de los arces plateados
habían descendido.
Pero lo que dijimos
– entre las hojas vivas –
estuvo perdido:
presto como la caída de las hojas,
y quebradizo,
y de un rojo sangre.
Para Kenneth Rexroth, 1950
Spanish, ZP Translator: Alexander Best
A Reminiscence
Held in a late season
At a shifting of worlds,
In the golden balance of autumn,
Out of love and reason
We made our peace;
Stood still in October
In the failing light and sought,
Each in the other, ease
And release from silence,
From the slow damnation
Of speech that is weak
And falls from silence.
In the October sun
By the green river we spoke,
Late in October, the leaves
Of the water maples had fallen.
But whatever we said
In the bright leaves was lost,
Quick as the leaf-fall,
Brittle and blood red.
For Kenneth Rexroth, 1950
Holding On
1.
How account
for dimming
of the lights
baggage
of old age
tagged and waiting?
or light tricks
in snow
at sun-up?
waiting in line
waiting in line
come sundown
watching the horizon
eyes glowing.
2.
Who
not the
other myself
my prisoner
night flesh
ear-skewered
music
in natural
air
screams well-deep
seep to the brain-root
days
Treblinka nights
guilt
guts the ferret
in my cage
sanity puddles the floor.
3.
In memory sickness
eyes unlace
open
as last night’s boots
a glacier of light
saps the air
remember
the torturer’s
tinnitus
starts the day.
4.
The irrationality
of it
mob noise
angels struck
from the block
of darkness
a sunlit sky breaks
through in shrapnel
hard screaming night
feather touch
troops improvising
for the kill
panic
my enemy
my nail-hold.
5.
Of the texture
of elbows shattered
and stairwell falls
hallucinations
of confession
rush to stop pain.
6.
Andean snow-stats
blind me
the flashlight
of the Burglar
of Death flares
and holds
on my eyes.
7.
In the Feast Halls
ghosts linger
feeding
avoiding
dogs
and the memory
of cracked bones.
8.
Present danger
colors hiss
from a blue masque
bone-bonded
Autumn in no
year’s season
a nerve twitches
across the path.
9.
Planets by lamplight
street laughter
embraced in being
parallel lines
collapse curbside
cornices fall
from a stranger’s dream
moon-sand ears
the inhabitants
lean in to hear.
Richard O. Moore, “Holding On” from Writing the Silences.
from d e l e t e, Part 2
Set up curbside, jewelry tray entanglement with things looking up, but nothing sells unless there is someone looking down, and who might that be? For the moment it’s not raining and off-coast in pods the gray whales parade south. Photographs sprout with the season. The gray whale’s spout is heart shaped, enough said. Just listen for the icon’s intake of breath and see what you can see. Yes, but that was yesterday and which way are prices going to go? There is a pack forming and they will need a leader. It’s then you kick the snot out of them, not before, and make it believable this one last time; but don’t depend on it, auditors, even though it’s turned out like this so many times before. There may be an image whose mind has changed. Sorry, no rain checks in this scheme of things, the windows are broken and boards keep out the light, it’s the cheapest thing to do and then forget it, as has been done before, before, etc. Could you pick out of a lineup who is the culprit here? The mirror is one-way and there’s no way to be sure which side you’re on, but so what? Go on making faces anyway, but be sure, now and then, to check your hand before your face, if just to say Wheaties, the best is yet to be. Our inventions, gods and needles, for instance, are built to say this to us ever and forever. It’s obvious why we can’t give them up, they’re ours, for ourself self’s sake! We live in the afterlife of what, unalterable, has already taken place. The minute you start acting like Robinson Crusoe it’s plain to see you’ve lost your hold on the world. There are many such, so many, washed up on our island shores! They end up sleeping over grates and in doorways at night, far distant from tree ripe fruit and warm sand. The dumps of our artifacts bewilder them. They probe, not knowing what to expect from excess. They act out an experiment, a hairline calculation for survival: is the expenditure of energy to dig up carrots from the frozen ground more than their return in calories? Did you notice the price tag when the wine was poured, the cool chardonnay, the special cabernet, white and red absurdities of words? The motion lights are set to react outside the house but, tell me, did you see the clutter in the study, one would think! Those catalogs, the cave, shadows.
Richard O. Moore, from “d e l e t e,” from Writing the Silences.
from d e l e t e, Part 6
Assume you have discovered an entropy of spirit, immeasurable of course, but it pulls graveward all those whose element is breath, not as the in and out again of water and the sun, but oblivion’s ass-first downhill twenty-four-hour drag. Knowledge is an after-the-fact affair, fair game for a hunger striker’s skeptic gopher tooth. Remember your “agenbite of inwit,” but don’t, please don’t, go knocking on doors declaring you’ve gone hollow with all the others, no one will believe you so long as your bag of flesh is fair. Fall down the stairs to another street. Have you noticed nature does not care for you, no matter the pathos of your fallacies, your antiperspirant, or you arms folded over the stretch marks of your hardest years? That’s you, cell mate, roping a Platonic calf. Rare air, this is all you’ll catch and never can. Live on that for a week and leave a message on your machine, “nourished by words alone.” Those fireworks you inherited, where are they now? Will you set them off to end the show? You have a story that simply cannot be sold, and no rewrite can change country or cast, so here you are in never-never land again. That figure off there in the mist is Nietzsche, stay clear, they say his breath is vile, he needs his space or so the professors say. Were you handed this out of an old script or are you improvising this to-do? Whatever you are, an actor or a human merely with all the other actors, or can you tell the difference without a script in hand, you talk about a text that is not there. Each morning your own short-form obituary appears on every page. An open mike will follow. But this is only in the babblesphere, don’t inhale those dialogues that bubble up. Weariness grows in direct proportion to answers that recede nightly as you snore. Did you audition for this part or did you win it in an all-night poker game? The difference is the same, none, today. Don’t give your chips to another to bet, that’s stacking the odds in your favor, sharing the blame. Avoid places where the lights are always on. Try finding a sunset through a simple gift of looking west. There can be too much light for your own good. Pace Pascal. Let someone close your eyes. Necessary, or so I’m told. That hand in front of your face, try it now.
Richard O. Moore, from “d e l e t e,” from Writing the Silences.
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