RELATO SOBRE UNA PINTURA DE GUSTAVE KLIMT. (LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI)

 

Están de rodillas erguidos sobre una cama floreada

El
justo alli la toma
          y la mantiene inmóvil
Su bata
           se desliza y cae
                                 desde el hombro
El tiene un hambre urgente
                                      Su negra cabeza
                                                          se inclina a la suya
                                                           ávidamente
Y la mujer  la mujer
    aparta sus labios mandarina de los suyos
                una mano como la cabeza de un cisne muerto
                              se acomoda alrededor
                                                              de su pesado cuello
                               los dedos
                                            raramente arrugados
                                                                     prietamente juntos
su otro brazo en escorzo
                  contra sus firmes pechos
su mano una garra lánguida
                                     aferrandose a esa mano
que acerca su boca
                               a la suya
su largo vestido hecho
                               de pétalos multicolores
                                              acolchado en oro
su cabello a lo Tiziano
                   con estrellas azules
y su dorada
             túnica a cuadros negros
                                   de harlequin
Guirnaldas de oro
                      se derraman sobre
                                         sus desnudas pantorrillas
                                                             y pies tensos
Cerca debe haber
                 un árbol lleno de joyas
                                 con hojas de cristal que fulguran
                                            en el aire dorado
tiene que ser
                   por la mañana
                                         muy lejos en algún lugar distante
Ellos
      estan juntos callados
                                como en un prado que florece
                      sobre un sillon de verano
                                               que igual les pertenece
Y el la mantiene inmóvil
                                            tan apasionadamente
         apoya su cabeza sobre la suya
                    tan insistente tan gentilmente
y hace que ella vuelva
                                sus labios hacia los suyos
Los ojos de ella estan cerrados
                                                 como pétalos marchitos
Ella
       no los abrirá
                      El
                             no es el Elegido

1926, UN POEMA DE WELDON KEES

1926

Las luces del porche se encienden de nuevo

temprano en noviembre,las hojas muertas

se amontonan, chirría el columpio 

de mimbre. Por todos los solares

Un fonógrafo está tocando Ja-Da.

Una luna anaranjada. Veo las vidas

de los vecinos, planeadas y destruidas

como todas las guerras por venir. Y R.

demente, y B. con un tajo en la garganta,

quince años después, en Omaha.

No conocía a ninguno por entonces.

Mi Airdale terrier rasguña la puerta.

Regreso de visitar a Milton Sills

y Doris Kenyon. Doce años de edad.

Las luces del porche se encienden de nuevo.

Weldon Kees(1914-1955)

LA SOMBRILLA, UN POEMA DE WELDON KEES

 LA SOMBRILLA

A Conrad Aiken

Porque, en los países cálidos,
adoran los árboles; porque
debajo de los higos sagrados Gautama
se convirtió en Dios, a causa de la lluvia,
a causa de un sol de justicia,
porque cumplimos órdenes construimos una tienda:
"con diez cortinas de lino trenzado,
y azul y púrpura y escarlata". Y porque
el arca requería protección, con cuatro columnas
sosteniendo las cortinas en alto, y " el velo
debe separar para ti el lugar sagrado
del mas sagrado." Planté la semilla
de un olmo y la regué. Descanso
en el refugio de esta sombra. Negras espinas
de metal y una tienda de paño 
florecen donde el árbol se alzaba.

Discos flotan sobre las cabezas
de las imágenes 
de dioses indios. A veces
son tres, y cada uno
mas pequeño que el otro
que sigue debajo. Y a menudo
estas hileras de aureolas
se desvanecen. Las coronan
sombrillas en su lugar.

Dos mil años antes del nacimiento de Cristo
-si alguien puede creer en las leyendas chinas-
la esposa de un carpintero llamado Lou Pan

 una mañana le dijo a su esposo: "Tú y tu padre
antes de ti habeis construido bien, mi Señor. Pero vuestras casas
son rígidas, inamovibles. Ahora que la hierba
es parda en otoño, construiré techos
que uno pueda llevar encima. Construiré una pagoda
sobre un palo para tener refugio dondequiera que uno va."
Y eso es lo que se dispuso a hacer.
                                                     Cuando el Hijo
del Cielo marchaba de caza, veinticuatro sombrillas
le precedían. El Mikado progresó de igual modo
bajo un parasol rojo de seda: "emblema del poder absoluto".
Protectores de reyes y príncipes flotaban
sobre triunfales campos de batallas y procesiones,
moviéndose como un mar de olas revueltas.
y en la India, en 1877, el Príncipe de Gales,
(luego Eduardo VII)iba en procesión majestuosa
montado en un elefante,
con una sombrilla de oro. Los griegos
insinuaban sobre ritos secretos de un culto a la sombrilla.
En la Sciroforia, una sacerdotisa y un sacerdote
"iban desde la Acrópolis a un lugar llamado Scira
caminando bajo un enorme baldaquino blanco."
Y durante la Tesmoforia, esclavos
acarriaban parasoles sobre las cabezas de las mujeres
que traían regalos a Perséfone al templo,
deseando fertilidad. Y cuando dejamos cadáveres 
a la intemperie, colocamos sombrillas sobre ellos,
no para protegerlos del sol sino, más bien,
para proteger el sol contra la contaminación 
de los muertos. Al Papa lo transportaba un hombre en armadura
sobre un caballo blanco. Los ingleses y los franceses
las tapizaban con volantes, cenefas, pompones,
borlas, flequillos, chorreras de encaje, cuentas de vidrio,
lentejuelas, flores artificiales, plumas de avestruz,
solo Dios sabe que más.

Sobre el puerto vacio, gris e inmóvil,
las nubes se han ido acumulando toda la tarde, y ahora
el mar es agujereado por la lluvia. El viento sacude la casa.
Aqui, desde este ventana azotada por la espuma, observo
una sombrilla negra, hecha jirones y abierta al revés,
tambaleando salvajemente en la playa; una súbita ráfaga 
la levanta hacia arriba, al revés.
Sobre el agua, aleteando y libre,
hacia el corazón de la tormenta.


Weldon Kees(1914-1955)

LAST LETTER, BY TED HUGUES

 

What happened that night? Your final night.
Double, treble exposure
Over everything. Late afternoon, Friday,
My last sight of you alive.
Burning your letter to me, in the ashtray,
With that strange smile. Had I bungled your plan?
Had it surprised me sooner than you purposed?
Had I rushed it back to you too promptly?
One hour later--you would have been gone
Where I could not have traced you.
I would have turned from your locked red door
That nobody would open
Still holding your letter,
A thunderbolt that could not earth itself.
That would have been electric shock treatment
For me.
Repeated over and over, all weekend,
As often as I read it, or thought of it.
That would have remade my brains, and my life.
The treatment that you planned needed some time.
I cannot imagine
How I would have got through that weekend.
I cannot imagine. Had you plotted it all?
Your note reached me too soon--that same day,
Friday afternoon, posted in the morning.
The prevalent devils expedited it.
That was one more straw of ill-luck
Drawn against you by the Post-Office
And added to your load. I moved fast,
Through the snow-blue, February, London twilight.
Wept with relief when you opened the door.
A huddle of riddles in solution. Precocious tears
That failed to interpret to me, failed to divulge
Their real import. But what did you say
Over the smoking shards of that letter
So carefully annihilated, so calmly,
That let me release you, and leave you
To blow its ashes off your plan--off the ashtray
Against which you would lean for me to read
The Doctor's phone-number.
My escape
Had become such a hunted thing
Sleepless, hopeless, all its dreams exhausted,
Only wanting to be recaptured, only
Wanting to drop, out of its vacuum.
Two days of dangling nothing. Two days gratis.
Two days in no calendar, but stolen
From no world,
Beyond actuality, feeling, or name
My love-life grabbed it. My numbed love-life
With its two mad needles,
Embroidering their rose, piercing and tugging
At their tapestry, their bloody tattoo
Somewhere behind my navel,
Treading that morass of emblazon,
Two mad needles, criss-crossing their stitches,
Selecting among my nerves
For their colours, refashioning me
Inside my own skin, each refashioning the other
With their self-caricatures, Their obsessed in and out. Two women
Each with her needle.

That night
My dellarobbia Susan. I moved
With the circumspection
Of a flame in a fuse. My whole fury
Was an abandoned effort to blow up
The old globe where shadows bent over
My telltale track of ashes. I raced
From and from, face backwards, a film reversed,
Towards what? We went to Rugby St
Where you and I began.
Why did we go there? Of all places
Why did we go there? Perversity
In the artistry of our fate
Adjusted its refinements for you, for me
And for Susan. Solitaire
Played by the Minotaur of that maze
Even included Helen, in the ground-floor flat.
You had noted her--a girl for a story.
You never met her. Few ever met her,
Except across the ears and raving mask
Of her Alsatian. You had not even glimpsed her.
You had only recoiled
When her demented animal crashed its weight
Against her door, as we slipped through the hallway;
And heard it choking on infinite German hatred.
That Sunday night she eased her door open
Its few permitted inches.
Susan greeted the black eyes, the unhappy
Overweight, lovely face, that peeped out
Across the little chain. The door closed.
We heard her consoling her jailor
Inside her cell, its kennel, where, days later,
She gassed her ferocious kupo, and herself. Susan and I spent that night
In our wedding bed. I had not seen it
Since we lay there on our wedding day.
I did not take her back to my own bed.
It had occurred to me, your weekend over,
You might appear--a surprise visitation.
Did you appear, to tap at my dark window?
So I stayed with Susan, hiding from you,
In our own wedding bed--the same from which
Within three years she would be taken to die
In that same hospital where, within twelve hours,
I would find you dead.
Monday morning
I drove her to work, in the City,
Then parked my van North of Euston Road
And returned to where my telephone waited.
What happened that night, inside your hours,
Is as unknown as if it never happened.
What accumulation of your whole life,
Like effort unconscious, like birth
Pushing through the membrane of each slow second
Into the next, happened
Only as if it could not happen,
As if it was not happening. How often
Did the phone ring there in my empty room,
You hearing the ring in your receiver--
At both ends the fading memory
Of a telephone ringing, in a brain
As if already dead. I count
How often you walked to the phone-booth
At the bottom of St George's terrace.
You are there whenever I look, just turning
Out of Fitzroy Road, crossing over
Between the heaped up banks of dirty sugar.
In your long black coat,
With your plait coiled up at the back of your hair
You walk unable to move, or wake, and are
Already nobody walking
Walking by the railings under Primrose Hill
Towards the phone booth that can never be reached.
Before midnight. After midnight. Again.
Again. Again. And, near dawn, again.
At what position of the hands on my watch-face
Did your last attempt,
Already deeply past
My being able to hear it, shake the pillow
Of that empty bed? A last time
Lightly touch at my books, and my papers?
By the time I got there my phone was asleep.
The pillow innocent. My room slept,
Already filled with the snowlit morning light.
I lit my fire. I had got out my papers.
And I had started to write when the telephone
Jerked awake, in a jabbering alarm,
Remembering everything. It recovered in my hand.
Then a voice like a selected weapon
Or a measured injection,
Coolly delivered its four words
Deep into my ear: 'Your wife is dead.'