Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith, poeta de EE.UU., es autora de tres libros de poesía: Weep Up (Tupelo Press, September 2017); The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo Press, 2015); and Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press, 2005).
Smith es también autora de tres chapbooks premiados. Sus poemas aparecen en Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, Guernica, Plume, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.
En 2016 su poema "Good Bones" se volvió viral a nivel internacional y ha sido traducido a casi una docena de idiomas. PRI (Public Radio International) lo llamó "el poema oficial de 2016".
Smith ha recibido becas de la Fundación Nacional para las Artes, el Consejo de Artes de Ohio, y la Fundación de Arte Sostenible, entre otros. Vive en Bexley, Ohio, y es una escritora y redactora independiente.
El poema "Good Bones" de Maggie Smith, recién publicado en el volumen de verano de la revista Waxwing, se difundió de forma viral pocos días después de la matanza en Orlando del 12 de junio. Tras la derrota del partido Demócrata en las elecciones de noviembre, el poema ha dado una segunda vuelta por las redes sociales. No recuerdo exactamente por qué vía di con él, pero como había estado leyendo a Séneca y tenía a “La brevedad de la vida” en mente, el poema me llamó mucho la atención. Una vez traducido, contacté a Maggie, quien no solo me dio permiso de publicar esta versión sino también me concedió una breve entrevista. También traduje otro poema de Maggie titulado, en inglés, "At Your Age, I Wore a Darkness", que apareció en agosto de este año en Nashville Review.
Pedro Poitevin
Buen Esqueleto
La vida es breve, aunque no se lo diga a mis hijos.
La vida es breve, y he ido acortando la mía
de mil deliciosas e insensatas maneras,
mil deliciosamente insensatas maneras
que no le fiaré a mis hijos. El mundo es al menos
cincuenta por ciento terrible, y esa estimación
es conservadora, aunque no se la fíe a mis hijos.
Por cada pájaro que vuela, hay una piedra lanzada a un pájaro.
Por cada niño amado, un niño roto, ensacado,
hundido en un lago. La vida es breve y el mundo
es al menos mitad terrible, y por cada gentil
extraño, hay uno que te rompería,
aunque no se lo diga a mis hijos. Estoy tratando
de venderles el mundo. Cualquier buen agente de bienes raíces,
mientras camina a tu lado por una pocilga, pía
sobre un buen esqueleto: Este lugar podría ser lindo,
¿no? Tú podrías hacer que este lugar sea lindo.
Versión al español de Pedro Poitevin
(Versión original en Waxwing).
Good Bones
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I've shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I'll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
*
A Tu Edad Yo Vestía una Oscuridad
varias tallas muy grande. Me colgaba
como un vestido de mamá. Y ahora,
mientras hablamos, estoy cosiendo
una oscuridad que tú tendrás que desenredar,
y desenredando otra que tu tendrás
que coser de nuevo. ¿Qué puedo darte
que puedas quedarte? Una vez me preguntaste
¿Tiene fin el cielo? No, no tiene fin,
simplemente deja de ser una cosa
y comienza a ser otra.
A veces nos tomamos de las manos
y echamos la cabeza hacia atrás
para que el azul llene todo nuestro campo
de visión y así sentir
que formamos parte. No tenemos fin,
sólo dejamos de ser lo que somos
y comenzamos a ser ¿qué?
¿Dónde? ¿Qué puedo darte
para llevar ahí? ¿Estas sombras
de hojas, ese suelo del consuelo?
¿Esta suave oscuridad de segunda
mano? ¿Qué puedo darte
que te sea útil en tu segunda vida,
esa que tendrás que vivir sin mí?
Versión al español de Pedro Poitevin
(Versión original en Nashville Review).
Pedro Poitevin (PP): Cuando leí Buen Esqueleto por primera vez, Maggie, me dije: “Este es, en parte, un poema sobre el arte de la persuasión”. Yo también he oído a agentes de bienes raíces repetir frases hechas con el propósito de tranquilizar y persuadir a un comprador en potencia. Pero en este poema las repeticiones revelan una profunda ambivalencia, ¿no?
Maggie Smith (MS): Para mí, el uso de las repeticiones en un poema es una forma de sujetar una idea y darle vuelta en las manos para ver sus distintos aspectos. Cada repetición me revela una nueva faceta, una nueva superficie. En este poema, se podría decir que el principal asunto del personaje es justamente su ambivalencia frente al mundo. El mundo es, en muchos de sus aspectos, cruel, peligroso e injusto. Pero aquí estamos. Este es nuestro hogar. ¿Cómo podemos hacerlo un mundo más benigno, menos peligroso, más justo? ¿Debemos hacerlo? ¿Cuál es la alternativa?
PP: Creo que una de las razones por las que el poema ha sido tan bien recibido es que uno se siente muy cómodo en su interior: es un hogar. ¿Hay algo que nos puedas decir acerca de la composición de este poema?
MS: Escribí el poema hace un año, y lo hice de una sentada, lo cual no pasa a menudo conmigo. Mis poemas atraviesan distintas fases de construcción, de construcción y reconstrucción que duran meses, e incluso años. Pero este poema, según constato al releer el original, ha sufrido dos mínimas alteraciones desde su primer borrador hasta la versión final. No recuerdo casi nada del proceso de escritura del poema, excepto que estaba sentada en Starbucks con un bloc de notas, y que comencé a escribir “La vida es breve, aunque no se lo diga a mis hijos.” Me sorprende cuán completo resultó el primer borrador.
PP: Cuando traduje Buen Esqueleto estaba leyendo “Sobre la brevedad de la vida”, de Séneca. No sé qué hubieran aconsejado los estoicos decirle o no a los niños, pero una de las razones por las que el poema me encantó es que me pareció una forma delicada y equilibrada de revelarle a tus hijos –quienes algún día crecerán y leerán el poema– que la brevedad de la vida es importante, que pese a la ambivalencia moral del mundo en el que vivimos, es justamente la brevedad de la vida lo que nos empuja a tener fe en la frase final del poema. Por cierto, reconozco que esta lectura mía está influida por el otro poema tuyo que traduje: A Tu Edad Yo Vestía una Oscuridad.
MS: Te agradezco esa linda lectura. A Tu Edad Yo Vestía una Oscuridad es un poema que le escribí a mi hija –o al menos con mi hija en mente– pensando no en el efecto que el mundo va a tener en ella (como en el caso de Buen Esqueleto) sino el que voy a tener yo. Es algo sobre lo que pienso muy a menudo: ¿cómo y cuánto de nuestra química cerebral, personalidad, inhibiciones, traumas, etcétera, le heredamos –ya sea por vía natural o cultural– a nuestros hijos?
PP: Muchas gracias, Maggie. Para concluir, ¿puedes recomendar algunos poetas contemporáneos?
MS: Leo mucha poesía contemporánea, así que mi lista es muy larga, pero una lista breve iría más o menos así: Brenda Shaughnessy, Jorie Graham, Natalie Diaz, Tracy K. Smith, Charles Simic, Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Carrie Fountain, Ada Limon, Dean Young, Ross Gay, Natalie Shapero.
Lamp of the Body
Button
It's the 50s. You wear your dark Levis
cuffed up six inches. You have a cowlick.
There is a birthday party you won't attend
after a bad haircut. Your mother says,
Button, it's not the end of the world.
But the weathervane says, Button,
the end is near. It says the sky's gone
yellow with twisters. Small white stars
are invisible all day, but you hear them
chatter like teeth. Button, they say, why
not play with the others? Look at them,
having a fine time. But you wish the devil
on the neighbors. You wish them nothing
to pin the tail on. You wish the children
snatched up in the funnel, paper punch
cups still in their hands. The devil won't
call you Button. He says if you must
be haunted, at least be unashamed.
(“Button” originally appeared in The Iowa Review )
Trompe l'Oeil
Once, while a man sped me down
a back road in a gray pickup,
I memorized my younger face
in the passenger side mirror,
burned the opal at my throat
and the white secondhand blouse—
tiny lilacs, puckered sleeves—
into the undersides of my eyelids.
My hair streamed
the color of hay out the window.
Lettering on the mirror told me
that despite how close
I appeared, I may have been closer.
Something lit the opal's pink fires
nearer the surface than I knew.
Things were not what they seemed.
There was nothing I could reach
out and touch. We parked
in a cloud of gravel dust. I hurled rocks
into the quarry's dark mouth,
bible black, and lied
about hearing them hit bottom.
Inside every stillness, I believed
something moved.
(“Trompe l'Oeil” originally appeared in The Florida Review )
Doubting Thomas
I was tired of the smoke
and mirrors. The loaves, the fish,
but not nearly enough time.
What could I say to him, friend
I buried, when he woke and called to me
softly from the shadows?
Go now. The business of faith
bores me. I could take it or leave it.
Understand, I touched his wounds
because I wanted to feel
his warmth on my own hands.
If I doubted anything then,
it was humanity. Disillusionment
is what happens when men
dabble in magic. Celebrity is a tree
on fire and of the thousands
standing near, none is near enough
to lick the flames from your face.
Once the embers burning
above us were enough. I believe
he doubled back from death
to breathe home's balmy air,
to stand in light among us
one last time beneath the high
heavens. For this brotherhood
I lose a brother; I spit upon the lot
we've drawn. So much for twilight
spent floating on the river, talking
of women we were not to love,
and of their skin scrubbed sweet
as tangerines. So much for nights
we passed in the desert, drunk
under the young stars whose names
were new. Once my friend
agreed: No one could recognize
each luminous body across
this broadening, eternal cleft.
(“Doubting Thomas” originally appeared in Poetry Northwest )
THE MOTHER
The mother is a weapon you load
yourself into, little bullet.
The mother is glass through which
you see, in excruciating detail, yourself.
The mother is landscape.
See how she thinks of a tree
and fills a forest with the repeated thought.
Before the invention of cursive
the mother is manuscript.
The mother is sky.
See how she wears a shawl of starlings,
how she pulls the thrumming around her shoulders.
The mother is a prism.
The mother is a gun.
See how light passes through her.
See how she fires.
LA MADRE
La madre è un'arma che metti
in carica, proiettile minuto.
La madre è un vetro attraverso
cui vedi te stessa, con straziante precisione.
La madre è paesaggio.
Guarda come pensa a un albero
e riempie la foresta con il pensiero replicativo.
La madre è manoscritto
prima dell'invenzione del corsivo
La madre è cielo.
Guarda come indossa uno scialle di storni,
come si copre le spalle col canto monocorde.
La madre è un prisma.
La madre è una pistola.
Guarda come la luce la attraversa.
Guarda come fa fuoco.
“The Mother” di Maggie Smith tradotte da Alessandra Bava.
The New Regime Is Making Itself Right at Home
in the hand-me-down clothes of the old regime,
which fit perfectly. It's commandeered the record
collection, strewed them all across the bedroom floor.
It refuses to slip them back into their paper jackets.
It turns up the volume and won't answer the phone.
You know what to do at the beep. The new regime's
wearing its hair in the old regime's style. It's using
shampoo and conditioner left in the shower.
It's driving the car around the city, in dark glasses.
It dabs the old regime's perfume on its pulse points.
In bed, the old regime's boyfriend can't even tell
the difference. The new regime pastes its face
over the old's in the yearbook. It inherits all
the same superlatives, laughs at the same jokes.
The new regime's here to stay. It's eating off
the family china, watching the TV. It's looking out
the old regime's window, and the view is the same.
Orientation
Because you're new here, you need someone,
but I'm too busy trying to keep you
in the twentieth century a while longer,
feeding logs into the woodstove's glowing mouth
while, in a house just down the street,
someone programs a thermostat.
Twentieth century? Who am I kidding?
It was never safe. In this young country,
you can trace danger farther than you can
follow it, back to fire licking the walls of caves,
back to flint skinning the animal to its source.
Nothing predates danger. A hundred years ago,
Roosevelt Avenue was not this green
tunnel of London planes, only rows of saplings
planted by someone looking toward the future
where we now live, always looking forward
or back. The twentieth century didn't
keep me, but not for lack of trying.
I made it out alive. What can I say but stay
alive? You're new, and there's too much to learn.
Future
What is the future?
Everything that hasn't happened yet, the future
is tomorrow and next year and when you're old
but also in a minute or two, when I'm through
answering. The future is nothing I imagined
as a child: no jet packs, no conveyor-belt sidewalks,
no bell-jarred cities at the bottom of the sea .
The trick of the future is that it's empty,
a cup before you pour the water. The future
is a waiting cup, and for all it knows, you'll fill it
with milk instead. You're thirsty. Every minute
carries you forward, conveys you into a space
you fill. I mean the future will be full of you.
It's one step beyond the step you're taking now.
It's what you'll say next until you say it.
Size Equals Distance
I can't walk across the lawn to enlarge a starling
like a photograph preview: 4x6, 5x7, 8x10.
If I could, the bird would be the size of a man
by the time I'm close enough to hold it,
which makes it hard to explain to my children
why airplanes look small in the air and big
at the airport, how people fit inside that toy,
how they don't shrink as they rise, then grow
as they near the ground. How can I explain
proximity sometimes but not always
transforms? Size and distance can't be set
on opposite sides of an equation, as if
when you see something grow, it's growing
because you're nearing it. Consider the man-bird.
Consider the baby I can't hold any closer
to make him grow. Consider all the things
I couldn't miniaturize by running from them.
Dear
you, you two, you who have me
in common—not-mother, mother
you weren't to have: Don't you
know each other, don't you live
in the air around me, live
being the perfectly wrong word?
Dear you, you dears, aren't you
together swimming the air,
buoyed by my son's breath
as he sleeps? You might slip
his ringlets like rings onto
your fingers if you'd had fingers.
I don't think you did. If I'd seen
inside myself, I'd have seen
what I could nearly hear:
a machine whirring, assembling
eyes, ears, limbs, rung by rung
of spine, then the grind
of metal-on-metal. Forgive me
whatever gear rusted and locked,
whatever spring sprung too soon.
It is always the same dream
but not a dream. Don't I feel you
treading the air around me
or what I feel is air rippling
in your wake, or is it wakes?
Dear you, you two—not-dears,
dears I was not to have ―
if you swim, swim here.
Clock
What kind of clockmaker
builds a clock inside a body.
What kind of clockmaker
builds a clock inside a body
then refuses to wind it.
What kind of clockmaker
winds a clock inside a body
then stops it.
What kind of body
holds a clock that refuses
winding.
What kind of body
holds a clock that is wound
but stops.
What kind of body
holds a clock that can't keep
the time.
What kind of clock
can't keep the time.
What kind of clock.
What kind of time.
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