DAN BELLM [19.688]

DAN BELLM 

(1952)

Poeta, editor y traductor que reside en Berkeley, California, EE.UU.

-Practice. San Francisco: Sixteen Rivers Press, 2008.

-Buried Treasure. Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Cleveland: Cleveland State University, 1999.

-One Hand on the Wheel. The California Poetry Series. Berkeley: Roundhouse Press, 1999.

-Terrain. With Molly Fisk and Forrest Hamer. New California Voices Series. Book 2. Orinda: Hip Pocket Press, 1998.

Morning, Beijing

Arena del desierto del norte

Y finos granos de carbón en nuestros ojos;

Dejan una delgada capa

Sobre los caminos y los puestos de mercado.

Negra y dorada lluvia de la prosperidad:

La llevamos en nuestros pulmones.

En el límite del pequeño parque,

Los Minás colgados desde ramas bajas en estrechas jaulas

Se encuentran privados de cantar.

Tomo un giro en el camino para buscar un refugio,

Paso por encima de un umbral de la misma forma que uno ahuyenta

A un inquieto fantasma. No hay pájaro alguno

En el cielo.

Ni siquiera en el jardín del Emperador.

Las casas y los autos de los banqueros y jefes políticos,

Están cubiertos de este polvo.

Morning, Beijing

Desert sand from the north

And fine coal-grit blow into our eyes;

They leave a fine layer

Over the market stalls and walks.

Gold-black rain of prosperity:

We take it into our lungs.

At the edge of the little park,

The mynahs hung in tight cages from low branches

Refrain from song.

I take a turn in the path to find shelter,

Step over a threshold the way one wards off

An unquiet ghost. No birds at all

In the upper air.

Even the Emperor’s garden,

The houses and cars of the bankers and party bosses,

Are covered in this dust.

Extraído de Dan BELLM, “Morning, Beijing” in Friends of the Ballona Wetlands, Los Angeles. Traducción de Juan Arabia, 2016. 

Foto: Yoel Kahn

 

Dan Bellm is a writer, editor, and translator living in Berkeley, California. He has published three books of poetry, most recently Practice (Sixteen Rivers Press), winner of a 2009 California Book Award and named one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of 2008 by the Virginia Quarterly Review. He is also co-editor of the newly released anthology from Sixteen Rivers Press, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (2010). He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council, and poetry residencies at Yaddo and Dorset Colony House.

Dan’s first book of poems, One Hand on the Wheel, launched the California Poetry Series from Roundhouse Press; his second, Buried Treasure, won the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize. Terrain, a collaboration with poets MollyFisk and Forrest Hamer, was published by Hip Pocket Press.

His poems have appeared in such journals and anthologies as Poetry, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, Best American Spiritual Writing, Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry, Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose About Alzheimer’s Disease, Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of Image, and Feathers from the Angel’s Wing: Poems Inspired by the Paintings of Piero della Francesca.

Dan is also a widely published translator of poetry and fiction from Spanish and French, including Sun on the Ceiling (Au soleil du plafond) by Pierre Reverdy (The American Poetry Review, July/August 2009), and Angel’s Kite (La estrella de Angel), by Alberto Blanco (Children’s Book Press, 1994). His translation of Laura Gallego García’s novel, The Legend of the Wandering King (La leyenda del Rey Errante) (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, Inc., 2005) made the American Library Association’s Notable Books for Children list and the School Library Journal’s Outstanding International Books list for 2006. Other translations of poetry and fiction have appeared in Reverdy (New York Review Books/NYRB Poets, 2013),  The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (HarperCollins, 2010), Clamor of Innocence: Stories from Central America (City Lights), Out of the Mirrored Garden: New Fiction by Latin American Women (Anchor Books), and such journals as Circumference, the Kenyon Review, Nimrod International Journal, Poetry International Poetry Northwest, Two Lines, and The Village Voice. He is also a consultant on Spanish-language books for children and youth for Scholastic, Inc.

Dan is available for poetry readings, teaching, and poetry manuscript consultation and critique. He currently teaches The Art of Translation for the Antioch University Los Angeles M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program. For more information, view the Teaching and Readings page.

Dan also works as a freelance writer and editor, with over 20 years of experience in the fields of early childhood education and social services, and is available for a variety of writing and editorial services. For more information, view the Writing and Editing page.

Psalm (Mikveh)

does a person     a soul in

a body     ever become

new     can this be     like in the

infinite small hour of an

evening in which there is no

line between the day and night

yet we discern a crossing

over     impossible to

say just when     and it’s done     I

enter the water that springs

from a cleft in the rock     here

between myself and you not

even the distance of the

name I wore on my right hand

and as for my eyes     what was

visible through a glass I

remove to see     do you then

all near to my narrow place

hear me     should I call out     and

answer from the wide expanse

motion of spirit and breath

voice over the face of the

soundless water     saying I

am who I will be     can I

rise up reborn     will you reach

across the fearful twilight

hour to me     reaching for you

Counting

What

if I

this moment

were only prayer,

not a thought or word

of one, nor even an

intention; sunlight on grass,

nothing of itself but what it

shows, or a bird that has called out, filled

with purest hearing; well, I have the prayers

in the book, and once again I have lost my

place, dreaming even past the prayer that calls on me

to listen up; must I start it all over, and where

would I begin; how far into the past would I unwind,

how far would a self have to cast itself out before it flew

beyond its reaches, to live, instead of being only lived in;

oh it’s like asking to stop breathing; in the time I’ve spent worrying

the sun turned all to shadow, it began to rain, the scent of the mown grass

lifted into the trees, and now the light and shade have returned to their places

a little further on, in accordance with the number of moments that have passed.

Rabbi Hiyyah, called the Great, once said, I have never in my life prayed with intention.

One time I tried to intend, but only wondered in my heart whether I would be received

before the king, or sent into exile. How was I to know? This, of course, started the other

rabbis talking; Rabbi Samuel admitted, with a shrug, I have been counting chickens; Rabbi

Bun the son of Hiyyah said, I have been counting the layers of stone in the wall, and his eyes lit up

with this woeful confession; Rabbi Mattaniah sighed, since there is always one who feels responsible

for the prayers of all the rest, Then let there be blessings on our heads, for I have noticed that whenever we come

to the last of the benedictions, at which we are commanded to bow down, our heads are bowed of their own accord.

But look, I must have nodded off again, enumerating, losing track of what I meant to praise, drool on my shirt, or

else have had a dream, with none to interpret it; will You not look away from me awhile, as Job cried out, and let me be,

whilst I swallow my own spit? The rain has started falling again, even in the path of the sun, as if there’s no reason to

decide which will be first or last, and a great round of song is circling among the uppermost branches of the spruces. Return to

me, O God, and I’ll return, letting the day begin again even if it’s halfway gone, extolling the One who removes the sleep from

my eyes, the slumber from my eyelids, and gives the rooster discernment to tell day from night; let me count the threads of You that I might tug at,

complicated by being many, simple by being one, and if not to arrive at wanting nothing, which is another desire, then to

yearn for what is given, including the dust and the ash, and the last moment You have counted up for me, wherefore I clap my hand unto my mouth.

de Practice Paperback – March 1, 2008

by Dan Bellm 

Jacob's Ladder 

The young man and woman waiting for the trolley 

turn, and spy me treading the Stairmaster 

two flights up, and exchange a smile, or really

a smirk, at the man who's climbing nowhere, faster 

and faster as the machine demands, death 

written on his face, and vanity, and folly.

I remember their effortless scorn—ideally 

proportioned as their bodies, gone in a breath—

both of them indestructible, both of them smoking—

but do not admire it, and they want to be admired. 

I myself was deathless; now, provoking-

ly, I'm fifty-seven, flabby, easily tired

yet easily grateful, burning calories like prayers 

to heaven, climbing the unending stairs.

                                        Vayetze, GENESIS 28:10-32:3

Practice

Every seventh year you shall practice remission of debts.

Deuteronomy 15:1

How simple it ought to be, to practice compassion

on someone gone, even love him, long as he’s not

right there in front of me, for I turned to address him,

as I do, and saw that no one’s lived in that spot

for quite some time. O turner-away of prayer—

not much of a God, but he was never meant to be.

For the seventh time I light him a candle; an entire

evening and morning it burns; not a light to see

by, more a reminder of light, a remainder, in a glass

with a prayer on the label and a bar code from the store.

How can he go on? He can’t. Then let him pass

away; he gave what light he could. What more

will I claim, what debt of grace he doesn’t owe?

If I forgive him, he is free to go.

Re’eh, Deuteronomy 11:16–16:17

First evening prayer

It is possible

even in the darkness—

no, it is

more possible—

that is when your messenger

comes to me,

who has walked unappearing beside me

like starlight in the day,

angel that lives in the dust

of the earth, and knows

the distance of time, and the terrible

space between one human

and another,

that can hardly be crossed—

in the dark the messenger

cries, lift

your eyes up—

what I am dreaming I am seeing,

it is coming to be—

and climbs a coil, a rope,

a spinning ladder

that is the way

into day

in the night,

a place of God I didn’t know,

here at the foot of it,

the root of the tree,

not for me to ascend

but to pray to you in the  dark,

that you have brought down

the infinite to me

when my head lay on a stone,

one earth wheeling

among the millions of your stars.

Vayetze, Genesis 28:10–32:3

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