Frances Leviston
(Edimburgo, 1982). Tiene un MA en Escritura por la Sheffield Hallam University. En 2006 recibió el premio Eric Gregory Award de la Sociedad de Autores. Public Dream, su primer libro, lo publicó Picador en 2007 y quedó finalista del premio T.S. Eliot. Su poemas han aparecido en Poetry, London Review of Books, the Guardian, The Times, the TLS, Edinburgh Review, Granta/British Council New Writing y en varias antologías. Vive en Durham y trabaja como escritora. Más información sobre ella aquí: http://www.francesleviston.co.uk
Frances Leviston was born in Edinburgh in 1982. She grew up in Sheffield and read English at St Hilda’s College,Oxford. In 2006 she received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Public Dream, her first collection, was published in 2007 by Picador and shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Times, The TLS, and various anthologies. She works as a freelance writer and an occasional writing tutor.
ÍNCUBO
He oído que les ha pasado a otras mujeres
y otras mujeres dicen que han oído que pasa
pero que pensaban que a ellas no podía pasarles,
o que, si lo hacía, lucharían por la justicia
costase lo que costase, y he oído que tarda
varios años en quedar en nada,
varios años junto con lo demás.
Desde que me pasó a mí, me he oído decir
que había oído que esta clase de cosas podían pasarle
a miles de mujeres, pero nunca pensé
que podría pasarle a alguien como yo,
y luego me oí pidiendo justicia
costase lo que costase. Ahora me está costando
toda mi vida en quedarse en nada,
toda mi vida junto con lo demás.
Lo que parece ser el problema es esto:
que estaba completamente sola cuando ocurrió,
no digo sola en el cuarto con él,
sola con él – me refiero a realmente sola,
sola sin nada. No había testigos.
Soy una víctima y no puedo ser testigo.
Uno debe jugar un papel u otro.
Si cargase al testigo no sería una víctima,
él sería la víctima, si hubiese estado allí,
y si él hubiese estado allí entonces sería el testigo
contra si mismo, pero estaba sola. Sola
sin nada. La ventana estaba abierta.
El viento y la lluvia entraban,
los hechos de la vida, levantando las cortinas,
y yo estaba dormida. No sé cuando.
Lo que pasa ahora es que hago una confesión –
Confieso, aunque aquí yo soy la víctima,
tener los sueños más increíbles
y creerlos reales, mientras duran;
haber tenido sueños que creía finalizados
cuando el fin era sólo una parte del sueño,
la parte en la que te levantas en tu cuarto
contenta de estar despierta, hasta que cruje la puerta
y fuese lo que fuese de lo que huías
entra. Confieso que he tenido sueños
recurrentes en los que mi cuarto esta poseído
que parecían más reales que mi vida despierta,
soñar un fantasma que se aparece en forma de presión
atrapándome por el esternón y los hombros
y los muslos como si estuviese bajo cristal.
Aquí preguntaréis si alguna vez protesté,
lo alejé de mí, o pedí ayuda,
si luché hasta el final, si opuse resistencia
y le hice ver mi falta de deseo
con palabras que comprendiese de inmediato,
a pesar de su fuerza, rasgando mi slip
sin tocarme, sin acercarse,
si hablé pese a ser incapaz de hablar,
o me moví pese a ser incapaz de moverme,
incluso incapaz de girar mi cabeza
en la oscuridad, si por casualidad vi
una característica distintiva, o si deseé descubrir
si era un extraño o alguien conocido,
os diré de nuevo que no fui testigo de nada
más de lo que he dicho, y de nada menos.
Sé lo que estáis pensando. Esto no es un crimen.
Un crimen requiere de un autor
que sentar en el banquillo, que acusar o defender,
para acabar la trama, pero no hay nadie aquí.
Hace años, habría habido cuerpos,
cuerpos físicos a los que podía señalar
y pedir cuentas por sus células
entre mis uñas, su saliva en mi cuello,
pero ahora han aprendido a atravesar las paredes.
Si pudiese daros un retrato o un nombre
tendríamos una dinámica. Y aun así si lo hiciese,
esto todavía no sería considerado un crimen
de cierto orden, sino algo más leve
algo a lo que uno debería poner la otra mejilla,
algo que podría haber sido peor.
Ahora bien, ¿estoy dormida o estoy despierta?
Este tribunal parece más el tribunal de un sueño
que visito cada noche, mal vestidos,
en el que estoy condenada a repetirme
y en la repetición me condeno
ante esta centena de caras hostiles
a no encontrar alivio en el golpe de martillo
que nunca llega. Un sueño, vale,
un sueño de correr. Las extremidades se niegan,
el aire se resiste con la pesadez del agua,
la mente deja atrás al cuerpo y ve
a un crío cayendo, pero no logra reaccionar,
como yo lo vi venir y no logré reaccionar,
encerrada en mi cuerpo durmiente.
Nunca me liberaré de eso.
Incubus
I’ve heard of it happening to other women
And other women say they’ve heard it happens
But thought it could not happen to them,
Or that, if it did, they would fight for justice
Whatever it took, and I’ve heard of it taking
Several years to come to nothing,
Several years along with the rest.
Since it happened to me, I’ve heard me saying
I’d heard this sort of thing could happen
To thousands of women, but I never thought
It could happen to somebody such as myself,
And then I heard me demanding justice
Whatever it took. Now it is taking
The rest of my life to come to nothing,
The rest of my life along with the rest.
What seems to be the problem is this:
That I was completely alone when it happened.
I don’t mean alone in the room with him,
Alone with him – I mean really alone,
Alone with nothing. There was no witness.
I am a victim and cannot be witness.
One must play one role or the other.
If I bore witness I’d not be a victim,
He would be victim, if he had been there,
And if he’d been there then he would be witness
Against himself, but I was alone. Alone
With nothing. The window was open.
The wind and the rain were driving in,
The facts of life, lifting the curtains,
And I was asleep. I don’t know when.
What happens now is I make a confession –
Confess, though I am the victim here,
To having the most incredible dreams
I believed were real, as long as they lasted;
To having had dreams I believed were ended
When the end was only a part of the dream,
The part where you wake in your own bedroom
Glad to be woken, till the door creaks
And whatever it was you were running from
Walks right in. I confess to recurring
Dreams in which my room is haunted
That seem more real than my waking life,
To a ghost who comes in the form of a pressure
Imprisoning me, by sternum and shoulders
And thighs, as if I were caught under glass.
Here you will ask if I ever protested,
Pushed him away, or cried for help,
If I fought my end, if I offered resistance
And made him aware of my lack of desire
With words he could readily comprehend,
In the face of his power, tearing my slip
Aside without touching, without coming near,
If I spoke though I was unable to speak
Or moved though I was unable to move,
Unable even to turn my head
In darkness, whether I happened to see
A distinguishing feature, or felt like revealing
If he was a stranger or someone I know,
And I’ll tell you again that I witnessed nothing
More than I’ve mentioned, and nothing less.
I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t a crime.
A crime requires a perpetrator
To put in the dock, to accuse or defend,
To finish the plot, but there’s nobody here.
Years ago, there would have been bodies,
Physical bodies at which I could point
And call them up to account for their cells
Under my nails, their spit on my neck,
But now they’ve learned to walk through walls.
If I could give you a face or a name
We’d have a dynamic. And yet if I did,
This still would not be considered a crime
Of a certain order, but something less,
Something one should take on the chin,
Something that could have been worse.
Now, am I sleeping, or am I awake?
This court seems more like the court of a dream
I visit each night, improperly dressed,
In which I am doomed to repeat myself
And in the repeating I doom myself
Before these hundred unfriendly faces
To find no relief in the fall of the gavel
Which never arrives. A dream alright,
A dream of running. The limbs refuse,
The air resists with the slowness of water,
The mind outpaces the body and sees
A child falling but fails to react,
As I saw what was coming but failed to react,
Locked inside my sleeping body.
I’ll never release myself from that.
Trad. Ángel Talián
http://latribudefrida.com/poesia/un-poema-de-frances-leviston/
Scandinavia
I think I could be happy there, north of fame, in light
unbroken; blending the imagined hours’ horizons into sky, sky
through soft-heaped fields, unclaimed, their rims forever
reforming at the wind’s deft caprice. I could try
to live as a glass of water, utterly clear and somehow
restrained, a sip that tells you nothing
but perpetuates the being-there; could sit, lie, settle down, the white
of one idea entirely lost upon another, as rain is lost
in the shift of the sea, as a single consecrated face
drowns in the swell of the Saturday host, and the notion of loving
that one critically more than any other flake in a flurry
melts, flows back to folly’s pool, the lucid public dream.
Trimmings
FRANGELICO
It slops from coppery
glass Dominican cassocks
thicker than water,
thinned syrup crackling
and smoking over ice,
pale as hearts of hazelnuts
half-caramelized
or relics lit in cabinets.
Angelic alcoholic for kids,
all quickening sweetness
without the burnt palate,
it’s praline, gilt, milk chocolate.
Don’t knock it. Also,
don’t drink a lot of it.
Handy mnemonic for nuts
and Alps, the Piedmont
and Languedoc, Our Father,
fluent Occitan, Orthodox
baroque brass fixtures,
all the schmaltzy
terror of Christmas ...
Bright liqueur, maple sap,
throat’s lacquer, misnomer,
namesake — couldn’t quench
a thirst, of course,
but gives occasion for it.
LAMETTA
Fuck me, I love that stuff —
tinsel stripped
like a tarragon stalk
of its million radial tines,
nervy with static
in shredded cascades,
angle-confounding
and biddable as a fistful
of grasshoppers.
It implicates itself perpetually
in socks, hell-bent
as Japanese knotweed
on travel, and infiltrates
the kitchenette, which seems,
beside its disco stooks,
too much of a muchness,
too matter-of-fact.
Could we dress all utilities
in spangles of lametta,
revel in the vulgar
Italian TV
indestructible attention-splatter,
the cat-bewitching
twitch and dangle, the dross?
Would things be worse
or better?
PERIPTERO
Apparently
peripatetic, it pops up
wherever I go, glistening
on my shoulder, a gold epaulette,
a stuffed piñata
albatross of bubble-gum, filter tips,
and lottery tickets, glossy
cascades of laminated sleaze
difficult to care about,
much harder to reject.
Less explicably there are
sewing patterns, puzzle books,
and tiny plastic helicopters
bearing stigmata
from the molds where they were cast.
The proprietor slams
the shutters up
and locks himself inside
like a djinn in a lamp,
a night-busy, helping-hand
kobold in a kitchen,
utterly invested in the enterprise,
inseparable from it. What
is the epicenter everyone reports
but the staple through
the nipple of a centerfold?
Published in Frances Leviston's new collection, Disinformation
A Token
In the poky attic
bedroom a bit-broken
cocktail umbrella
made of blonde toothpicks
and crêpe paper
printed with bamboo
stands proud of a shut
paperback book
on the tallest shelf –
a shiny edition
of Hamlet or Othello,
incidental not symbolic –
downcasting its tiny
disc of shade
under the damp skylight.
You’d miss it at first
then find it garish,
a finch in the Dolomites
glued to a tree,
trembling in the noonday
blaze to be found
by the bird-catcher,
seized-upon,
pickled and crunched.
Somebody sentimental
kept it
close after dinner
in a Japanese restaurant
decorated just
like a joke about Japan –
waitress in kimono,
walls hung with ideograms,
an indoor pool
where fat gold carp
drift under a wooden bridge,
drifted, never swam . . .
Well, but what
is sentiment? Emotion
out of time
with its occasion?
Pocketed, then
with a flourish produced
right in the middle
of an argument, there it stands:
a wish-coin welded
to the tiles of a fountain,
a green anachronistic
needle in the head.
[Disinformation]
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