CHRISTIANNE BALK [18.509]

Christianne Balk

Christianne Balk (nacida en 1953) es una poeta americana.

Balk se graduó con honores en Biología por la Universidad de Grinnell y enseñó en la Universidad de Columbia Británica.  Vive en Seattle, Washington, con su marido y su hija.

Premios 

1985 Walt Whitman Award

1994 Verna Emory Award

Alaska Council on the Arts travel grant

Obras 

Poesía 

Linda Svendsen, ed. (1990). "Elegy; How Stories Get Started". Words we call home. University of British Columbia Press. ISBN 978-0-7748-0367-0.

"Lauds for St. Germaine Cousin". The Atlantic Monthly. September 2002.

Bindweed. Collier Books. 1986. ISBN 978-0-02-627660-3.

Desiring Flight. Purdue University Press. 1995. ISBN 978-1-55753-062-2.

Antologías 

William J. Walsh, Jack (INT) Myers, ed. (2006). "Lauds for St. Germaine cousin; Dusk Choir; Dear Hippopotamus". Under the rock umbrella. Mercer University Press. ISBN 978-0-88146-047-6.

Old Growth

If you’re the madrone, I’m the salvaged pine.

If you’re the wetland, I’m the slope.

If you’re El Nino, I’m the solitary flicker

swooping to perch on the madrone’s scorched bark.

Christianne Balk

Versiones en español por Esteban López Arciga (1994).

http://circulodepoesia.com/2016/04/american-poetry-christianne-balk/

Partida

Miles de pequeños

puños rozando la superficie del lago

fluyendo como ola

río alocado, sudeste, noroeste

dejando que el viento lo empuje

alrededor en su cama y el casco

del bote abrazando la costa.

¿Qué otra cosa puede hacer? Incluso los árboles

están de acuerdo, sacuden

sus coronas, lanzando sus hojas como si

fueran su hijo

único. Capturada con pies fríos en pasto

Magnuson, tratando de librarse

del pillaje aceitoso profundamente

hundido en el lodo

superficial sosteniendo el agua, aguantando

su vigilia por un instante,

surco volviéndose

confusión. ¡Contracorrientes

gris cascada! ¡Remolinos de cambio afilado!

¡Bancos

inseguros! Deja al harapo alegando consigo mismo,

jadeando como niño

con el aire noqueado y el viento

pegándose al centro.

Deja que la vela, desplegada- seda verde y blanca, ahora

rompiéndose, ondulando

lenta sácala de esta playa

llena de cristal roto, rocas

tan lisas como huevos de chorlito, y pequeñas

piedras salpicadas con rojo metal

y naranja como el del cielo abriéndose.

Deja que las ventanas se enciendan

lanzando cobre del otro lado.

Deja que el agua

sea cubierta en plata de aquí a allá

batiéndose como si fuese turbia

por flancos de grandes, peces gentiles.

Departure

Thousands of tiny

fists tamping the surface of the lake

flowing like a wide

river gone crazy, southeast, westnorth

letting the wind push

it around in its bed and the boat

hull hugging the shore.

What else can she do? Even the trees

agree, shaking

their crowns, throwing down their leaves as if

she were their only

child. Caught cold-footed in Magnuson

grass, trying to cut

free of the creosote-soaked pilings sunk

deep in the shallow

mud holding the water, holding her

wake for a moment,

furrow folding back over into

confusion. Cascade

gray crosscurrents! Sharp switching eddies!

Unreliable

shoals! Let the cloth argue with itself,

gasping like a child

with the air knocked out and the wind

socking the center.

Let the sail, shot-silk green and white, now

snapping, billowing

slowly draw her away from this beach

marked with broken glass, rocks

as smooth as plovers’ eggs, and small

stones splashed iron red

and orange like the sky breaking open.

Let the windows ignite

flickering copper on the other side.

Let the water be

disked with silver from here to there

churning as if roiled

by the flanks of a great, gentle fish.

Loas para Santa Germana Cousin

Bendito aquel que levante el lento sol

sobre el crudo borde naranja de la mañana,

que mueve a la oveja para ayudarla a parir-

cordero aturdido al calor del rebaño, que

lleva a la gallina a guiar a sus polluelos tan pronto como puedan

caminar por el alto pasto,

lleno de bichos, guía a la lechuza para arrancar pichón

fresco en morcillas tan pequeñas

que puedan caber en el pico del mochuelo,

y lleva a la rata a lamer al cachorro

que no es suyo y llevarlo a su lado,

lleva al cisne al floripondio,

agitar su cabeza, y levantar sus alas, temblando

cual canoa viviente

sobre el nido hecho sin manos

por aquellos que no tienen manos, sólo alas,

alas que no pueden moverse pero deben y de alguna manera

lo hacen, tal como yo enredo hilo de lana de carnero salvaje

de la rueca, bordado, ordenado, lavado,

y llevado a montones de mecha

tenida por mala hasta que el sol se levante

lo suficientemente alto para calentar estos dedos lentos

dando vueltas rápido y más rápido, dejando

el huso como punta, enrollando

fibras al sentido del reloj para jalar el estambre

tenso y derecho, haciendo de muchos uno.

Lauds for St. Germaine Cousin 1579-1601

Blessed is the One who lifts the slow sun

above this morning’s raw orange edge,

who moves the ewe to nudge her birth-

stunned lamb into the flock’s heat, who

leads the hen to steer her keets as soon as

they can walk into the insect-

filled, high grass, guides the owl to tear fresh

pigeon into pieces small enough

to fill the owlet’s gaping bill,

and prompts the rat to lick the pup

that’s not her own and take it to her side,

directs the swan to trumpet,

bob her head, and raise her wings, quivering

into a living canopy

above the nest built without hands

by those who have no hands, just wings,

wings that cannot weave but must and somehow

do, just as I twist thread from the distaff’s

wild wether wool, skirted, sorted, scoured,

and drawn into bumps of roving

held awry until the sun lifts

high enough to warm these slow fingers

spinning fast and faster, dropping

the spindle like a top, whorling

fibers clockwise to pull the yarn

taut and straight, plying many into one.

The Breeze Nudges Junipers, Promising 

                                                                                                

cool air soon.  Forget the talk of Grandpa’s

tests, doctor this and doctor that, grown-ups

casting glances at the Atlas of the Human Body

left open on the kitchen counter all day, road

maps networked in red and blue around a place

none of us knew, broken pumps, melted casings,

forty acres left so dry the cattle lay down

motionless.  Birds panting.  Remember the dust

devils dancing in the driveway?  Their swirling

made you laugh.  Now you cry for Daddy’s-Daddy

as if he’s gone somewhere.  The branches outside

our window move between us and  the moon

pulling us together in a waving,

underwater web of shadow and light, rocking

both of us towards the man whose heart

ticks at the center of this house.  Grandpa’s

okay now, sleeping in the room

next to ours.  If you close your eyes you might

see the jagged mountains we flew above to get

here, new green softening the edges of the ash

slopes rimmed with trees laid down in rows,

polished silver by the heat.  Drift down, sleep-

winged cottonwood seed, count miles of open ditches

carrying the Deschutes to pastures filled

with sage, green rabbit brush, fescue, thistle,

bitter brush, manzanita, and wild rose.  The pig

bends her legs and slowly sinks into her wallow.

The gray-mantled ground swallow burrows deep,

curling close to cool roots.  The chickens cluck

around brimming pails.  Slow-eyed horses lower

their muzzles into troughs and the grownups stop

pacing the living room as if it were an airport.

In your sleep, see us fill your glasses with

clear water pulled from lava rock six hundred

feet below, talking lazily of water rights, as if

tonight we were any night, all of us together.

.