PAULINE STAINER [19.017]

PAULINE STAINER

Pauline Stainer es una poeta inglesa, nacida en Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. Después de asistir al Santa Ana College, Oxford, se trasladó a Essex, donde crió a cuatro hijos. Tras varios años en la isla de Orkney de Rousay, se trasladó a Suffolk, donde vive ahora. Desde la publicación de su primer libro de poemas, The Honeycomb (1989), ha publicado 7 colecciones completas adicionales, incluyendo The Wound-Dresser's Dream (1996), por la que fue nominada para el Premio de Poesía Whitbread, The Lady and the Hare: New and Selected Poems (2003), y su último volumen, Tiger Facing the Mist (2013). Ha sido galardonada con numerosos premios y becas, entre ellos el King's Lynn Award for Merit in Poetry, a Cholmondeley Award and a Hawthornden fellowship, y fue seleccionada para Poetry Book Society's New Generation Poets promotion in 1994. Es también artista.

CON LA VISIÓN DEL BARCO DE ESCLAVOS

Llegamos a latitudes nunca contempladas -

la visión del barco de esclavos

durante el servicio divino

en la cubierta.

En tempranos días de perro,

hemos cavado

entre bosques de sándalo,

cogiendo, de un salto, halcones y sulfuro.

Lo que nos perseguía, después,

no era el frío conceder

de un sacramento

en las ardientes depresiones

sino algo más exótico-

aquella sensación

de un barco de carga, ligero,

tras la llegada de la calma.

Traducciones de Carlos León Liquete

http://www.lapaginadenadie.com/

XOCHIQUETZAL

Los bomberos de Chernobyl

yacen desnudos

sobre inclinadas camas

en cuartos estériles,

sin pestañas

ni glándulas salivales

Oh muerte

llévalos levemente

como la diosa colombiana

que hace el amor

a los jóvenes guerreros

en el campo de batalla

sosteniendo una mariposa

entre sus labios.

http://inutilesmisterios.blogspot.com.es/

Conjuration 

Men conjured Blodeuwedd

from tapers of meadowsweet

Orpheus evoked Eurydice

on the body of the lyre

astronomers, tracking Pluto,

see Persephone

with mourning-jet

at the opiate of her throat

Alcestis wakes – such sugars

work the cist-grave

and Lazarus?

To what voltage

will the five wits lodge

in their living dead?

DROVERS

They came down holloways

between blue sloes.

I have come to know

that register of blue-darks

juniper berries deepening

through woodsmoke

the pungency of bruised herbs

at dusk

slow-burn

of driven beasts

blue intake of breath

at pasture beyond.

From: Crossing the Snowline

AFTER THE ARK

'How does water remain so unfamiliar?' 

Roni Horn

It’s not told

how the animals left,

but waiting to disembark

their breath formed a cloud

and fell as light rain.

It gathered in hollows

under their eyes,

the peaceable kingdom

laid down, like memory

in a library of water

and long after landing

they would watch

for the waterspouts

and that mysterious fall

of fish from the air.

From: Crossing the Snowline

THE RAVEN MASTER

Young ravens

in the White Tower,

cross-lit, conspirational.

He is teaching them to talk –

calls them

an unkindness of seven

as if remembering

their prophetic tongues

leading wolves to prey

the deer stepping

through tall blue mist

to water unseen

the speech of birds

picking memory clean.

From: Crossing the Snowline

THE BLESSING

for Peter Johnson 

There they were –

ordinary, unknowable,

beasts waiting to be blessed

at St. Luke in the Fields

some trying to break cover

as if they hear

the whizz of the biblical wind

in the mulberry trees

others, domesticated,

raising their symphony

for wild instruments

under the verve of prayer.

Over the Hudson River

the cloud puts out a paw,

skyscrapers stretch

with the heat

the bees of the invisible

are bleached in sunlight,

If anyone is in Christ

he is a new creature.

Nothing is like

the anxiety of animals

waiting for Adam

to name them

yet some lie down

in the enclosed garden

as if the tree of charity

sprang from their breasts.

From: Crossing the Snowline

HIEROGLYPH

The moon is pale

as a hare’s belly

so what trembles

the alert stillness

of this Egyptian hare

over a ripple of water

into running script?

From: Crossing the Snowline

CROSSING THE SNOW-LINE

I still see them –

the sculptors of Kilpeck

on the road

to Santiago de Compostela,

crossing the Roman bridge

in the small hours

westward,

always westward,

Finisterre referring

its azure,

the jubilation of wolves

spilling into the cloister.

But some

never made it back

through the wilderness

to chisel

a sleeping Christ

from the living tree

and lie fallow

under their larch ceiling

as if amazed

by the irrepressible light

at the burial of the stars.

From: Crossing the Snowline

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