APRIL BERNARD [18.539]

APRIL BERNARD

Nació en 1956, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Estados Unidos

Educación: Universidad de Harvard

Premios: Beca Guggenheim en Artes Creativas, Estados Unidos y Canadá

PUBLICACIONES

POESÍA:

Romanticism: Poems. W.W. Norton & Co. June 1, 2009. ISBN 978-0-393-06807-8.

Swan Electric. W. W. Norton. 2002. ISBN 978-0-393-05114-8.

Psalms. W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated. 1995. ISBN 978-0-393-31304-8.

Blackbird Bye Bye. Random House. 1989.

NOVELAS:

Pirate Jenny. W. W. Norton & Company. 1990. ISBN 978-0-393-33430-2.

Miss Fuller. Steerforth Press. 2012. ISBN 978-1-58642-195-3.

ANTOLOGÍAS:

Phillis Levin, ed. (November 2001). The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-058929-0.

Molly McQuade (2000). By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry. Graywolf Press. ISBN 978-1-55597-297-4.

Las versiones al español son de Sergio Eduardo Cruz

http://circulodepoesia.com/2016/04/american-poetry-april-bernard/

Inglés como segunda lengua

Aquella voz–desde la tele–aquella voz,

de queso viejo y denso, o, no–

oscura como un flan quemado,

dulce como carne de venado en el humo

denso de una taberna, caliente como brandy.

Serví a aquella voz durante meses,

en un cine sobre la av. 13 cerca ya de la Third

donde los perdedores son los que estallan primero.

Te di horas azuladas, también noches,

y tú pusiste el alma,

bella como un ratón muerto, a mis pies.

Velas guturales hacían sonidos con la garganta, detrás

de la escena. Tu voz iba por todos lados

y no te atrevías a poner las manos.

English as a Second Language

That voice—from the tv—that voice,

thick smoky cheese, or, no—

dark as burnt flan, sweet,

venison-sweet in the heavy smoke

of a tavern hearth, and hot as brandy.

I served that voice for months,

in a theater on 13th near Third

where losers are the ones who crack first.

I gave you azured hours, nights,

and you placed your soul,

pretty as a dead mouse, at my feet.

Gutturals, the candles guttering backstage.

Your voice went everywhere

you dared not put your hands.

Beagle, o algo así

El compositor se llamaba Beagle, o algo parecido,

era uno de esos inglese que hacían divertido el mundo

con composiciones corales y cánticos y esa pieza,

un poema sinfónico o lo que a usted le parezca,

campanas tubulares y campanas rodeando, peligrosas

para alguien cuyos bordes ópticos y ojos han estado llorando.

La música ocupaba el automóvil donde yo

había aparcado para sentarme, nada más

mirando un árbol pequeño, un maple,

dorado como el fuego y maltrecho por el viento,

temblando en sí mismo,

aterrando el clarear azul de la mañana detrás de él, y luego

los camiones y los cables telefónicos y los perros

y los niños que iban tarde a la escuela por Orange Street, pero

era ese árbol lo que estaba generando caos,

era ese árbol lo que temblaba y se derramaba,

áureo como un alma zacudida, mientras yo recordaba

que debía también, por conveniencia, tener un alma

La puse en mi pecho, estando lejos el corazón,

y ahora parece que ahí se ha puesto el alma, temblorosa,

anaranjada, medio destruida pero manteniéndose

más fiel aún que la música de Beagle o que mi frente

apretándose fuertemente contra el volante, deseando salir.

Beagle or Something

The composer’s name was Beagle or something,

one of those Brits who make the world wistful

with chorales and canticles and this piece,

a tone poem or what-have-you,

chimes and strings aswirl, dangerous for one

whose eye lids and sockets have been rashing from tears.

The music occupied the car where

I had parked and then sat, staring at

a tree, a smallish maple,

fire-gold and half-undone by the wind,

shaking in itself,

shocking blue morning sky behind, and also

the trucks and telephone wires and dogs

and children late to school along Orange Street, but

it was the tree that caused an uproar,

it was the tree that shook and shed,

aureate as a shaken soul, I remembered

I was supposed to have one—for convenience

I placed it in my chest, the heart being away,

and now it seems the soul has lodged there, shaking,

golden-orange, half-spent but clanging

truer than Beagle music or my forehead pressed

hard on the steering wheel in petition for release.

The Going

The cloth edge of certainty

has shredded down to this:

God and love are real,

but very far away.

If I go to Istanbul, will I return?

That is not one of the permitted questions.

When I go to Istanbul, how will I bear to return?

I could slip into the small streets

to the high plain and the Caucasus—

It’s all alone, the returning,

the going. The cloth,

a soft holland whose blocks of blue and lemon

once cheered me in a skirt,

now dries dishes. God and love

are very far away, farther even

than the mountains in the east.

Anger

When in a farmhouse kitchen that smelled

of old rinds and wet cigarette butts 

I hoisted the shotgun to my shoulder

and aimed but did not fire it at the man 

who had just taken my virginity like a snack, 

with my collusion, but still — 

When I sat in a conference room 

in an inquisition

at the “newspaper of record,”

across from the one slurping his pipe,

the one arching her eyebrow,

and I felt the heat like a wet brand in my chest,

repaid insult for insult and left their fancy job

like a squashed bug on the floor — 

When I was twelve, too old, the last time my father 

spanked me, pants down, 

because I had “distressed” my mother

and my vision went red-black and

I did not forgive — 

When, during my travels along the Gulf Coast, 

the intruder returned in the night

and I did not call the cops again but stood

with a butcher knife facing the door, yelling, “Come in!”

although this time it was just the wind flapping 

and banging the screen door — 

When across a skating-rink-sized glistening table

I told the committee chair and her brooch I was a fan of Marx

and lost the fellowship — 

When I threw a pot of hot coffee

and it just missed a man’s head, and the black-brown spatter stains

were still there four years later long after he’d left me 

when I finally moved out of that East Village hole — 

II

I would have had to be thinking

in order to have thought — loaded, not loaded?

 — and I was not thinking, I was only dripping hot

and oh the pleasure, I can still feel its prickling,

crackle over the furnace of my rage,

to see his face go pale, his eyes widen,

his “put it down, put it down” — and I

put it down and allowed my life as well as his

to go on.

III

I miss my anger. Decades go by

when all I can muster is absent-minded invective,

you know, directed at the news;

or a brief fantasy 

of shoving someone in front of a bus. Yesterday

I slammed my fist on my desk

and then apologized, to the desk.

Consider the tapestry of the seven deadly sins, at Saint-Denis:

Anger, wild-haired and half-dressed,

picked out in blue and silver thread bunched 

against the crimson,

rough against the fingertips, she

rides a black boar dappled with blood

and waves her double-headed axe — 

Yes, I remember her.

I always lie when I always say

I didn’t know the gun was loaded.

Bloody Mary

Note who’s got to go

today, don’t fuss

about the means,

just go ahead behead,

impale, starve, strappado,

the sheer assortment

of choices enough

to make a crown

crow. They never

loved me enough.

It must be said: They

were a disappointment.

When divine mother

love wears out, I just

reverse the robe

from blue to red.

I like a flat ground

to build the next town,

city, empire of disgust.

All the waste you see,

that’s what I did,

none of that happened

to me. I did that.

I made that. I killed that. I.

Mice

.