Cecilia Woloch
Cecilia Woloch, (Pittsburgh, Estados Unidos, 1956), poeta americana, escritora y profesora, conocida por su trabajo en las comunidades en todo los EE.UU. y en todo el mundo.
Woloch nació en Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, y creció allí, en la zona rural de Kentucky. Obtuvo una licenciatura en la Universidad de Transilvania en Lexington, Kentucky, y un MFA de la Universidad de Antioquía, Los Ángeles.
Bajo la influencia de Anna Ajmátova, WS Merwin, y Walt Whitman, Woloch escribe poemas líricos. Muchos de sus poemas surgen de sus largos viajes. También escribe prosa autobiográfica y ficción y colabora de forma regular con artistas visuales, artistas de teatro, músicos y bailarines.
Woloch ha llevado a cabo talleres de escritura creativa para niños y jóvenes, ancianos, reclusos en una prisión para criminales dementes, y para las residentes en un refugio para mujeres y niños sin hogar.
Bibliografía
Sacrifice (1997)
Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem (2002)
Late (2003)
Narcissus (2008)
Carpathia (2009)
Earth (2015)
Sur la Route (2015)
La poesía de Woloch ha sido publicada en revistas como The Mississippi Review , Nimrod , Tin House , The New Ohio Review , The Indiana Review and New Letters.
Sus ensayos han aparecido en The Crab Orchard Review, New Southerner , and the Journal of Polish American Historical Association.
Premios y distinciones
Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, 2011
Indiana Review Prize in Poetry, 2014
New Ohio Review Prize in Poetry (First Prize), 2009
USC Center for Excellence in Teaching FIUT Grant, 2007–08
Tupelo Press Snowbound Series Chapbook Award, 2006
Georgia Author of the Year, Georgia Writers Association, 2004
Chicos lentos jugando
Los chicos rápidos ya han entrado, urgidos
por sus madres a date-prisa-lávate-las-manos
cariño-la-cena-se-enfría-espera-a-que-venga-tu-padre
y sólo los chicos lentos permanecen en el jardín, trazando
senderos entre las luciérnagas, haciendo ruiditos con la boca, oh,
ese resplandor, y se apaga y se enciende. Y sus lentas madres parpadean
pálidas en el crepúsculo, mirándolos girar en el aire suave, mirándolos
dar vueltas, los brazos abiertos y extendidos, mientras piensan Este es mi hijo,
¿Dónde está su cena? ¿Adónde ha ido su padre?
Good Poems for Hard Times, Penguin Books, Nueva York, 2005.
Versión de Jonio González
SLOW CHILDREN AT PLAY
All the quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honney-dinner’s-getting-cold-just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home
and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off
paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their mouths, ohs
that glow, and go out and glow. And their slow mothers flickering,
pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching them
twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, These are my children, thinking,
Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone?
Crianças lentas brincando
Todas as crianças rápidas foram para dentro, ao chamado
de suas mães para lavar-as-mãos, espere-só-até-seu-pai-chegar-em-casa
e apenas as crianças lentas permanecem fora de casa, no gramado
caminhando entre os vaga-lumes, fazendo pequenos sons suaves com suas bocas,
ohs, esse brilho e saem e brilham. E suas mães piscam lentamente,
pálidas ao entardecer, observando-os girar delicados no ar, observando-os
rodopiando, seus braços abertos, pensando, Estes são os meus filhos,
pensando: Onde está o seu jantar? Onde fora seu pai?
Traducción: Norma De Souza Lopes
Anniversary
Didn't I stand there once,
white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,
swearing I'd never go back?
And hadn't you kissed the rain from my mouth?
And weren't we gentle and awed and afraid,
knowing we'd stepped from the room of desire
into the further room of love?
And wasn't it sacred, the sweetness
we licked from each other's hands?
And were we not lovely, then, were we not
as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?
My Mother's Pillow
My mother sleeps with the Bible open on her pillow;
she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled.
She listens for her heart: each breath is shallow.
For years her hands were quick with thread and needle.
She used to sew all night when we were little;
now she sleeps with the Bible on her pillow
and believes that Jesus understands her sorrow:
her children grown, their father frail and brittle;
she stitches in her heart, her breathing shallow.
Once she even slept fast , rushed tomorrow,
mornings full of sunlight, sons and daughters.
Now she sleeps alone with the Bible on her pillow
and wakes alone and feels the house is hollow,
though my father in his blue room stirs and mutters;
she listens to him breathe: each breath is shallow.
I flutter down the darkened hallway, shadow
between their dreams, my mother and my father,
asleep in rooms I pass, my breathing shallow.
I leave the Bible open on her pillow.
The Pick
I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.
I must have sat for a very long time on the split rail fence,
just watching him.
My father's body glistened with sweat,
his arms flew like dark wings over his head.
He was turning the backyard into terraces,
breaking the hill into two flat plains.
I took for granted the power of him,
though it frightened me, too.
I watched as he swung the pick into the air
and brought it down hard
and changed the shape of the world,
and changed the shape of the world again.
From Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem
“Oh Europe is so many borders
on every border, murderers”
— Attila Josef, Hungarian Poet
All night crossing the Tatra,
Krakow to Budapest, the train
only three cars long — where is my friend?
Ken, who calls me Regina Cecylia,
Queen of the Gypsies, Carpathia.
We’ve travelled together from Berlin
but now the dining car between our cars
is locked — I can’t get through.
In these couchettes, only one other woman,
the small boy who clings to her, hiding his face,
and the porter who’s taken my ticket,
refuses in Polish to give it back.
Lie down then, let this pass:
the window a square of black glass
in which bare trees, fields appear;
forests where I could be left,
this car uncoupled —who would know?
(500,000 gypsies burned in the crematoria)
At each border (which country now?)
a clapboard shack with its plume of smoke
and the guards in their high boots,
their stink of cigar, who throw back
the door of my compartment, flick
on the lights, demand documents.
What if I had no passport, no papers
to prove I’m American?
What if I’d been born
in the tiny village my grandmother fled?
What if I had no country —
would I be no one, then, to them?
Would they drag me into the woods;
would the quiet woman hold her child
a little closer, cover his ears?
Sleeping and waking and sleeping again;
disappearing into the dream, waking into the dream
of Budapest: it’s snowing so softly
the golden domes that crown the city seem to float.
At dawn, the grim porter reappears
with black coffee, sugar, two hard rolls,
my ticket, crumpled, on the tray.
I jump off the train with my suitcase
into the station’s soot and din,
into the arms of ragged men —
gypsies everywhere, suddenly, flocks of them,
chanting like sorcerers, surrounding me,
calling out, Taxi! Taxi! Room!
I’ve read that, in caverns under these stations
— Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest —
gypsy orphans live on glue, pimped
for candy, for cigarettes.
But no children greet me here —
only these dark men I turn from, refuse,
and my tall friend, rushing toward me
down the crowded platform now:
silently, given back, at last,
my name in his throat like a jewel.
.
