Gary Geddes
Gary Geddes nació en Canadá en 1940. Ha publicado los libros de poesía: Poemas, 1971; Ensenada de ríos, 1972; Raízdeserpiente, 1973; Carta del amo del caballo, 1973; Guerra y otras medidas, 1976; La prueba ácida, 1980; El ejército de Terracota, 1984; Cambios de estado, 1986; Hong Kong, 1987; Salida difícil, 1989; Luz de torres en llamas, 1990; Muchacha junto al agua, 1994; El perfecto guerrero frío, 1995; Comercio activo: Poemas selectos 1970-1995, 1996; Volando ciego, 1998; Skaldance, 2004; Armazón, 2007; Nadando Ginger, 2010; ¿Qué quiere una casa?; La reanudación del juego, 2016.
Otros de sus libros publicados: Lo perturbador del Occidente, 1986. En prosa: Cartas desde Managua: Meditaciones sobre política y arte, 1990; Hogar navegante: un viaje más allá de tiempo, lugar y memoria, 2001; Reino de las diez mil cosas: un viaje imposible de Kabul a Chiapas, 2005; Bebe la raíz amarga: una búsqueda de justicia y curación en África, 2010; Medicina fragmentada: Mensajes desde las vanguardias indígenas, 2017. En teatro: Los malditos ingleses, 1984.
Traducciones: No advertí la montaña creciendo oscura, 1986, poemas de Li Bai y Tu Fu, traducidos con la asistencia de George Liang. Libros de crítica: Novelas tardías de Conrad, 1980; Fuera de lo ordinario: Política, Poesía y Narrativa, 2009; Dando testimonio, 2016.
Antologías: Poesía y Poética del Siglo 20 (Oxford University Press, 1969, 1973, 1985, 1996, 2006); 15 Canadian Poets Times 3 (Oxford, 1971, 1977, 1988, 2001); Skookum Wawa: Escrituras del noroeste canadiense (Oxford, 1975); Divididos permanecemos (1977); El oído interno, 1983; Chinada: Memorias de la banda de siete, 1983; Vancouver: Alma de una ciudad, 1986; Compañeros: Escritos sobre Latinoamérica, 1990; El arte de la ficción breve: Una antología internacional, 1992; 70 poetas canadienses, 2014.
Ha recibido numerosos premios por su obra, entre ellos: Premio Nacional de Poesía de la Asociación de Autores Canadienses, 1981; Premio de Poesía de la Commonwealth (Región de las Américas), 1985; Premio de Poesía Archibald Lampman, 1990 y 1996; Premio de Poesía Guy Owen, 1994; Premio Pablo Neruda, 1995; Premio Gabriela Mistral, 1996.
https://www.festivaldepoesiademedellin.org/es/Festival/27/News/07.html
Traducciones de Arturo Fuentes
El lugar de Jimmy
Encontramos la vaca en una arboleda bajo el camino,
sostenida por un aliso, su apoyo,
su ubre hinchada, su aliento cansado y áspero
como un raspar. Yo podría haberme ahogado
en el ojo húmedo que giró hacia mí.
Su ternero, aunque muerto, estaba perfectamente posicionado,
patas delanteras y cabeza sobresaliendo del anillo ardiente
de la vulva. Demasiado grandes, quizá, o las patas traseras
al romper bolsa, dispersaron fluidos.
Por mucho que tratamos no pudimos sacarla
y la carne alrededor de las patas se empezó a despegar
por la presión de la soga. La vaca
no tenía más fuerza y se tambaleaba hacia atrás
cada vez que halábamos. Átenla al árbol,
dije, siendo el maestro obligado a tener una respuesta, incluso aquí
en el Camino Alto, cinco millas al sur del pueblo
donde la isla amontonó la mescolanza
de sus orígenes. Ya venía, por Dios,
lo juro, este ruano de malezas con su ser de sombra
salido por detrás, yendo en ambas direcciones
como una '52 Studebaker, venía por pulgadas
mientras nuestros pies se deslizaban en barro, mierda
y pasto húmedo. Levantó su cabeza y trató
de ver qué locura habíamos fraguado en su camino,
emitió un gemido tan desgarrador que rompería cualquier bolsa,
su ojo húmedo retrayéndose hacia el blanco perfecto.
Torre
Las amé, a mi manera,
suficiente para gastar efectivo por un rifle
y planear mi estrategia a lo largo de la noche.
No me quejé del viento frío
ni de la agotadora escalada hasta la torre;
la larga espera y el olor fétido de las
palomas tampoco retaron mi paciencia.
Cuando emergieron, tras un momento,
en el brillante sol de invierno al mediodía,
yo no escatimé esfuerzos para sujetar el rifle
y alinear la delicada cruz de la mira
con sus cabezas o pechos.
Y cuando empezaban a correr, después que la primera
se había posado a descansar en la blanda nieve,
nunca perdí mi frescura, pero las tomé
una por una, como un gato coleccionando gatitos.
Tierra prometida
Cuando fui a tantear el terreno
llevé espinilleras, máscara de gas,
llantas para la nieve, radar,
bazucas, aviones de reconocimiento,
talco para pies, hilo dental, rifles
FN, pasaporte falso, seguro médico
y un suspensorio con copa de metal.
En mi camino a inspeccionar la tierra
llevé comics de Batman, un walkie-talkie,
granadas y bayonetas, un yoyo,
la memoria de la madre sacudiendo calcetines limpios
y ropa interior, un seguro de vida,
la Encyclopaedia Britannica, la bendición de
Moisés, un casete, un frasco de whisky,
un antistamínico, unas cuantas direcciones,
bongós, una revista Playboy, un equipo
para chuzadas, bolsas verdes de basura,
Kleenex, un laxante, una balsa inflable,
comida seca, luces de bengala, emplastos de maíz,
tiquetes de regreso, pilas de repuesto,
anticonceptivos, un atlas.
Supe que Medellín era el lugar correcto,
vendí el lote entero el primer día.
JIMMY'S PLACE
We found the cow in a grove below the road,
leaning against an alder for support,
her udder swollen, her breath ragged and grating
as a rasp. I could have drowned
in the liquid eye she turned to me.
Her calf, though dead, was perfectly positioned,
forelegs and head protruding from the flaming ring
of vulva. Too large, perhaps, or hind legs
broken through the sac, dispersing fluids.
Much as we tried we couldn't pry it loose
and the flesh around the legs began to give
from pressure on the rope. The cow
had no more strength and staggered back
each time we pulled. Tie her to the tree,
I said, being the schoolmaster and thinking
myself obliged to have an answer, even here
on the High Road, five miles south of town
where the island bunched in the jumble
of its origins. It was coming, by God,
I swear it, this scrub roan with her shadow self
extending out behind, going in both directions
like a '52 Studebaker, coming by inches
and our feet slipping in the mud and shit
and wet grass. She raised her head and tried
to see what madness we'd concocted in her wake,
emitted a tearing gunny-sack groan,
and her liquid eye ebbed back to perfect white.
From: Changes of State, 1986
P.O.W.
He grew remote, acquired a language
I could not decipher. My airman, my high—
flyer, cryptic, hieratic, more complicated
than Linear B, or the Dresden Codex.
Demented not demotic, and no Rosetta Stone
to tap. I failed to crack his code,
its glyphs and glygers, the Dead Sea
Scroll of love I languished in. I regressed,
mute in the face of shifting vowels, lost
consonants. Tore my hair, mouthed vows,
cursed this vain enigma in his cuneiform.
Dismissed, of course, as menopause,
the rash that formed upon my belly
proof enough. And sleep, that famous
balm, exploded in my face. Other things
on his mind: war, unfinished business
in Dundee. Or was it Dunsinane? I was one
witch too many, no Orkney wood to order
wrapped as camouflage. I'd ruined his precious
furlough; the poems he'd planned to write
were out the window. I could kiss the ass
of my Italian gardener, for all he cared,
stepping into his plane. And so I did,
as well as all his other parts. One by one,
I felt my unvoiced cells rejuvenate; the itch
migrated south. I couldn't get enough
of him, his crazy grin, the ridge of dirt
beneath his nails. Even the quaint
Catholic saints he painted on his tin roof's
corrugations performed sweet ministries
—coleslaw phonemes, pasta pictographs—
till I too, earth-bound, human, got my wings.
From: Skaldance, 2004
SANDRA LEE SCHEUER
(Killed at Kent State University, May 4, 1970 by the Ohio National Guard)
'You might have met her on a Saturday night,
cutting precise circles, clockwise, at the Moon-Glo
Roller Rink, or walking with quick step
between the campus and a green two-storey house,
where the room was always tidy, the bed made,
the books in confraternity on the shelves.
She did not throw stones, major in philosophy
or set fire to buildings, though acquaintances say
she hated war, had heard of Cambodia.
In truth she wore a modicum of make-up, a brassiere,
and could no doubt more easily have married a guardsman
than cursed or put a flower in his rifle barrel.
While the armouries burned, she studied,
bent low over notes, speech therapy books, pages
open at sections on impairment, physiology.
And while they milled and shouted on the commons,
she helped a boy named Billy with his lisp, saying
Hiss, Billy, like a snake. That�s it, SSSSSSSS,
tongue well up and back behind your teeth.
Now buzz, Billy, like a bee. Feel the air
vibrating in my windpipe as I breathe?
As she walked in sunlight through the parking-lot
at noon, feeling the world a passing lovely place,
a young guardsman, who had his sights on her,
was going down on one knee, as if he might propose.
His declaration, unmistakable, articulate,
flowered within her, passed through her neck,
severed her trachea, taking her breath away.
Now who will burn the midnight oil for Billy,
ensure the perilous freedom of his speech;
and who will see her skating at the Moon-Glo
Roller Rink, the eight small wooden wheels
making their countless revolutions on the floor?
From: The Acid Test, 1980
SULLIVAN
There's a strange hush at St. Stephen's
as we wait for them to storm the College.
Nurses drift like butterflies among the injured,
offering a word, a touch, a cigarette.
When the enemy bursts through the door
I'm lying on a cot at the far end of the corridor,
my head bandaged, my leg supported in a sling.
Two soldiers proceed to bayonet the sick and wounded
in their beds, to a chorus of screams and protests.
A nurse throws herself on top of one of our boys
to protect him—it might have been the kid
from Queen's—and they are both killed
by a single thrust of the bayonet.
I suppose they were sweethearts. Pinned
at last, she does not struggle. Her hands
open and close once, like tiny wings,
and the dark stain on her white, starched uniform
spreads like a chrysanthemum, a blood-red sun.
I cut the cord supporting my leg, slip on
the nearest smock and stand foolishly at attention,
making the salute. My right index-finger
brushes the damp cotton of the bandage.
Later, the butchers are shot by their own officers;
one, apparently, had lost a brother
in the final assault.
From: Hong Kong, 1987
THE LAST CANTO
I seldom budge
from Rapallo.
Venice is no Byzantium
these final days.
Stench from the canals
worse than the cattle ship
I sailed to Europe on.
Mr. Nixon was half-right:
poetry did not pay,
but there was a future in it.
The age demanded
a scapegoat and a saint.
Being American
I applied for both jobs.
The world has been my whale-road,
wanderer and seafarer
among the lost manuscripts,
charting connections
few had even dreamed of.
I've gone about my business
like a pack-rat.
You have to do that,
have on hand ten times
what you can ever hope to use.
Tennyson was right
about being part of all he met,
but he hadn't met enough.
As the range broadened
my speech became barbarous,
that of a man who's lost contact
with the words of his fellows,
though he knows their hearts'
most intimate desires.
I once advised trashing the metronome
and composing with the music
of the speaking voice.
Now I say:
Exercise the mind
and school the heart;
voice will rejoice
in its tender chains
like a bridegroom.
While my former countrymen
have given up on ideas,
except in things,
whatever that means,
and play with themselves
like clergymen,
less out of need than habit,
I dream
of ideas in action
and of forma, even the canetto,
where the dance of ear
and intellect
draw dormant filings
into the pattern of a rose.
I wrote in an article
in T.P.'s Weekly in 1913:
The artist is always beginning.
Any work of art
which is not a beginning,
an invention, a discovery,
is of little worth.
I still hold that view
though at times, I admit,
I counted the cost.
I have spoken too much of usura,
or not enough.
Even the air we breathe
is rented for a price.
Forget my dicta:
direct treatment of the thing
and all that rot.
The thing, so-called,
has yet to be revealed.
I have found poems
to be wiser and more honest
than poets.
Remember the ideogram
from the Chinese,
the one representing truth
which shows a man
standing beside his word.
Nothing more.
The merchant's wife
dying alone
in her unkempt garden
by the river
praises
my irregular feet,
though she draws the line
at Social Credit.
Forget me too:
listen to the poems.
You see, I'm prescriptive
to the end, a weakness
acquired in Hailey, Idaho
and never shaken.
From: Changes of State, 1986
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