MARK WEISS [18.122]

Mark Weiss 

(Nueva York, Estados Unidos, 1943)

Mark Weiss es una figura visible en la escena poética neoyorkina y es autor de varios volúmenes de poesía entre los que cabe destacar su más reciente As landscape (Chax Press, 2010). 

Weiss, autor de seis libros de poemas, ha servido de traductor de autores como José Koser, cuyos poemas son a veces como juegos de palabras de muy difícil interpretación. Mark Weiss es el editor de The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry A Bilingual Anthology. University of California Press, 2009, 602 pp. Weiss ha hecho un esfuerzo gigantesco en recolectar poemas escritos en las últimas seis décadas.

En el exilio, ¿te cuentan cosas

horribles sobre tu tierra y

te retorcés las manos? ¿le das

la espalda y empezás, como quien dice, una

nueva vida?

.

Como si el lenguaje-del-cuerpo tuviera acentos,

que los tiene, el extranjero fácilmente identificable

del otro lado del campo.

Pero aquí, mirando a la camarera irlandesa que espera el trago,

el brazo flexionado de tal modo que el antebrazo se apoya en el esternón,

curvada la muñeca, los dedos

jugueteando con un collar.

Uno pensaría que duele, pero la pose

tiene años de práctica detrás,

la línea que va del gesto a la danza,

de representación a enunciación.

Hablaba los gestos

de su tierra nativa.

Y aquella lo hacía después de tres generaciones.

.

De pronto me encuentro imaginando

a mis amigos descuartizados, des-

membrados, pesadillas del

noticiero de la noche,

e imagino las últimas palabras,

a Carlos anotándolas

porque yo estoy más allá de la escritura. "Siempre fui un

arlequín", digo,

demasiado absorto para encontrar la palabra justa.

Qué clase de legado sería ese,

con la suerte que he tenido:

todos los sonidos del mundo para elegir.

.

Siempre desconcertado por la exclusión de la pasión de la vida cotidiana.

Imposible imaginar cómo estallaría el instinto

a través de tales vidas, cubrirse,

una forma de negarse.

.

Incluso ahora tus labios recuerdan

cuando eran capullos.

Y yo recuerdo cuando decía

"Tus labios son capullos".

.

La cultura y su malestar.

Es cuestión de grado, no es cierto.

El tema es la complicidad, no es cierto.

.

Dos chicos en un porche oscuro

novian y fuman y tosen

enfrente, esperando que la noche y sus

brisas dispersen

toda prueba.

.

Poner nombre a un lugar por las primeras palabras oídas allí. Entonces

lo que llamo “granada” lo llamás

“rubicunda”, o “fue”, y el noviazgo deviene

intercambio de nombres.

Embelesado, qué encantador que lo que llamás

"cartapacio" yo llame

"peso", aunque ambos

nademos allí. Al traducir deseo,

echo mano a "porra", ese monte que

te encanta que toque, el izquierdo, y su compañero,

"compasión".

.

Cada palabra una suerte de conquista.

Mark Weiss (Nueva York, Estados Unidos, 1943)

Versión de Judith Filc

In exile do you hear

horrible stories from the homeland and

wring your hands? do you

turn your back and begin to make as they say

a new life?

.

As if body-language had accents,

which it does, the stranger easy to spot

across the field.

But here, watching the Irish barmaid wait for the drink, her arm

folded so that forearm rests against sternum, wrist

curled, her fingers

toying with a necklace.

One would have thought it painful, but the stance

has years of practice behind it,

the line from gesture to dance,

depiction to enunciation.

She spoke the gestures

of her native land.

And that other one did so after three generations.

.

I suddenly find myself imagining

my friends torn, dis-

membered, nightmares

from the evening news,

and imagine last words,

Carlos taking them down

because I'm beyond writing. “I have always been

a harlequin,” I say,

too distracted to find the right phrase.

What kind of legacy would that be,

lucky as I've been,

all the sounds of the world to choose from.

.

Always puzzled by the separation of passion from the everyday.

Impossible to imagine the way instinct could erupt

through such lives, clothing itself

a form of refusal.

.

Even now your lips remember

when they were blossoms.

And I remember when I would say

“Your lips are blossoms.”

.

Civilization and its discontents.

It's a matter of degree isn't it.

Complicity's the point isn't it.

.

Two kids on a dark porch

court and smoke and cough

across the street, expecting the night

and its breezes to disperse

whatever evidence.

Mark Weiss: 'Glass Palace,' 17 poems

ADVICE

What you need, he said,

is another trip to the edge

and beyond.

And I thought he was joking.

EASE OF MOTION

This fantasy that has deluded many,

that you could open the door and walk

into another place,

just like that.

AMONG THE BULRUSHES

It must have happened all the time, a woman

giving a child to the river. But the misery, to think

that chance could better care for it—the conditions of famine,

slavery and such—and the fantasy, that the child, rescued,

would come to recognize itself

at the last moment, and free the tribe

from its wretchedness. It must have been that commonplace

to become their story.

A MESSAGE TO THE GODS IN THE 

BLOOD OF SACRIFICE

“See, we have horses.

Life is good.”

A SIMILE

That red red rose is like my love:

thorns below and thorns above.

ADAM AND EVE

It's the snake, they think,

that renders tolerable

this insipid garden.

SIREN

Moving her legs slowly against the water,

folding it.

In gelid light

small tufts

on either side.

SURVIVAL

Shock of the ocotillo's red spear

against the creosote's green and the yellow flowers

of brittlebush. Birds

melodically proclaim

there's a stranger here, while insects,

wild with delight,

bid me welcome as a source of liquid.

And the bees

suck at the mud where the stream

had overflowed its banks.

THE KING

Oedipus the Riddle Solver becomes the answer

to the plague's question:

“What sleeps with his mother

and murders his father?

EXILE

The pace of change being what it is

the homeland you dreamed of

is no longer there.

Like Troy to the Trojans, no stone

left as a marker.

FOCUS

Whose greatest worry was to paint the petal

just so.

A decent restraint,

when the moon seems the largest thing.

HIS WILL

Stunned into numbness,

numbed

into silence.

Who could have imagined

any of it?

A SIMILE

Tastes like rabbit, the fox thinks,

slinking from the hen-house.

HORSE SENSE

There's many a slip

twixt the clop and the clip.

We call it luck

to die by increments.

A STORY

Dressed for the bridal bed

her shawl became the sky, her gown

the sea.

GLASS PALACE

I imagined a broken glass thing

inside me.

My grandmother had a clock

built of mirrors in the form

of a palace. In my first

memory it was broken

and dangerous.

Lovely, the way it glinted.

This was the broken thing

I had imagined.

AND SO

You may go on to other things

now that you understand the mysteries.

The daily miracle and the daily curse.

Something about the dance

or stagger

of anxiety.

A NOTE IN THE PLACE OF A POETICS. Put two things next to each other and a third thing happens. Sometimes a series of short poems create their own world, but fragmented, like reflections on shards of glass. (M.W.)