Alan Jude Moore
(Dublin, 1973) es ampliamente publicado en Irlanda y el extranjero. Es el autor de cuatro libros de poesía, el más reciente Zinger (Salmon Poetry, 2013). Ha leído en festivales y eventos en todo el mundo, incluyendo el Festival Internacional de Poesía de Copenhague, la Feria del Libro de Dublín, el Festival Internacional de Poesía de Estambul, el Museo Nabokov en San Petersburgo y la Biblioteca Miller en Big Sur, California. En mayo 2015 participó en el Festival de Poesía de Primavera en Vilnius, Lituania. Han aparecido traducciones recientes de su trabajo en Centrifugal (EBL-Cielo Abierto, Mexico) & Exit-Revue de poésie (Montreal). Vive en Dublin.
www.alanjudemoore.com
Sombrillas
En Abruzzo alguien seca un zapato al sol
bancos de arena ondulan al límite de la urbanización
hay cumbres ocupadas por brigadas de luciérnagas
y lejanos viaductos de luces ténues
Mirad lagartijas mirad antes de cruzar la calle
La superstrada nos arrima al prójimo
Su trayectoria taja la tierra y el mar
El anciano en calzoncillos
se tira de los montes
para buscar gelato y perlas que piensa están ocultas
en el horizonte rosa chispeante
Escucha los grandes insectos de las provincias
algo chirrían algo
más fuerte que el ruido de la parada de camiones
¿Qué pasa en la capital?
Los diarios dicen poco
Aquí los hechos de varias personas
que aguantaron un día más de lo previsto
y aquí el fallecimiento de varias otras
Una pasó 27 años cargando ladrillos en Indianapolis
Otra volvió a casa en coche para morir
no en un asilo de Stuttgart o Mannheim
No, serena en un balcón en Francavilla al Mare
sobre una pizzeria y el roncar de perros sacios
Mira
en la playa las chicas esperan
a que les digas que son especiales
Los senos les rebosan y el amor
ya les dejó la cara rellena de esperanza
Hay chicos que apuestan por pitillos
escupiendo pipas en tazitas de café
y las viejas regañan
a los que no aciertan
¿Qué hacemos pues
girasoles resecos trasplantados
en tiestos bajo el sol ardiente
para acabar en la sal y la arena?
Olvida esas cosas –
las tetas las pipas los jugadores
Túmbate en el Adriático de agotadas olas quebradas
y pregunta
qué hace la luna en el cielo de día
(Podrías preguntarle aunque no en abruzzese
al suizo que se broncea con una cerveza
o al senegalés que vende chucherías en la playa
¿Qué hace la luna en el cielo de día?
La luna ha venido para llevarte de aquí)
Siempre hay alguien vagando sin rumbo
Vuestras sonrisas se clavan en las barcas
que escapan a lo lejos bajo las sombrillas
y allá arriba los helicópteros
pasan lentos como buitres
en busca de hombres ahogándose
(Translation © Anamaría Crowe Serrano)
UMBRELLAS
In Abruzzo someone turns their shoe out to dry
sandbanks roll along the edge of the complex
the hilltops occupied by squads of fireflies
& distant viaducts of dimming lights
Look lizards look before crossing the street
The superstrada draws us closer
Its trajectory splits the land & the sea
The old man in his underwear
is diving from the mountains
for gelato & pearls he thinks are hidden
in the crackling pink horizon
Listen large insects from the provinces are chirping
something something
over the noise of the truck-stop
What’s happening in the capital?
The papers say little
Here are the deeds of several people
that lasted a day over the odds
& here are the deaths of several others
One who spent 27 years hoofing bricks in Indianapolis
Another drove home to die
not in a rest home in Stuttgart or Mannheim
No, poised on a balcony in Francavilla al Mare
over a pizzeria & the snores of satisfied dogs
See
on the beach the girls are waiting
for you to tell them they are special
Their breasts are overflowing & already
love has left their faces rounded out with hope
The boys are betting for cigarettes
spitting sunflower seeds in coffee cups
& old women scold
the ones who miss their targets
So what are we doing
desiccated heliotropes transplanted
in tubs beneath the burning sun
to come to rest in the salt & sand?
Forget things like that –
the tits the seeds the gambling kids
Lie back into the Adriatic of tired broken waves
& ask yourself
what the moon is doing out during the day?
(You could ask but not in Abruzzese
Maybe the Swiss sunning himself with a beer
or the Senegalese selling trinkets all week on the beach
What is the moon doing out during the day?
The moon has come to take you away)
There is always someone drifting
Your smiles are fixed on small boats
escaping in the distance beneath the umbrellas
& overhead the helicopters
pass like vultures slowly
seeking out drowning men
From: Zinger
CITIES REBUILT AFTER THE WAR
outside your house is a plaza now
a coffee shop
a glove boutique
and a second hand stall
selling slim volumes of poems
written for people who lived before
at the end of your street
where tanks rested
before they started into it again
there is a small plaque
to factory workers
who doused their machines in kerosene
and knowing it would end
one way or the other
refused to assemble
even one more bicycle
or whatever it was that people wanted
in industrious cities they lived in then
their children born
between rockets and death
know nothing again will be absolute
in cities where things continue on
as if they were not
cities renamed and redrawn
there are photographs of missing cats and dogs
pasted on the walls
hand-bills posted to telegraph poles
drama classes belly dancers
and television sets for sale
in cities uncovered beneath the floor
on the building sites old builders whistle
at women walking past
in high heels and low rise pants
pushing new salvaged prams
they despair the absence of men
in cities subsumed into something else
there are lighter shades on the door
where bloody handprints have faded
like the influence of magicians
carnivals and clerics
the reasons they believed disintegrated
in cities repainted up against the wall
and somewhere each day
a mother says
I will make for you a summer
her children know it’s for her not them
there is only so much she can spin from dust
in cities frozen stiff
and into all its empty spaces
who knows what lights will shine
and into the deft reconstructions
if anyone is coming back again
to trim the hedges or put up shelves
in cities dreamt of as they were back then
so we argue about our favourite songs
TV shows and cigarette brands
discuss several women
whose bodies we prefer
to see exposed on magazine covers
metaphorically fucking us
we touch on the question of our debt
to former colonial labour
having left their homes
for our nation state
they know how empty it is
in a ribcage of streets decades dead
on park benches old women weep
with the anonymous children
of headless men
the last Franciscan friar in town
walks a swan across the bridge
of a city that’s lost its image
in rooms blown out
and blackened with fire
in hallways without doors
we take on different names
grow new heads arms and legs
and raise ourselves from what went before
facing capture by new regimes
we search for flames
remaining between us
in the shallow foundations
and magnolia walls
of cities rebuilt after the war
From: Zinger
BETWEEN THE STATUES OF O’CONNELL & LARKIN
dead pigeon debris is borne on the air
bumper blows the clipped wing clean
and the body left to drain
twitches out of life
into the concrete furrows of the street
From: Zinger
CHE BURASHKA
for Alek & Mitya
I am at the airport, the security check,
wasting time in duty free and queuing at the gate.
I am getting on a plane – almost and, as a rule,
there will be distance – but I promise you
I will not be far away.
I am searching in St. Petersburg for Che Burashka.
I hear he might live across the street
from where they have me staying.
In any case, I will find him and, like I said,
bring him back to say hello.
(Your godmother, by the way,
sends love from the capital. Yesterday,
she too went looking but he has, so far,
eluded her). So, I am searching in St. Petersburg
for Che Burashka
and have tracked him down to across the street,
next door to the place where they sell
plyushki, kvas and tea. No crocodiles I’m afraid.
(Next time there might be).
The old ladies on the street, some of them
sell oranges in broken crates from Spain.
And some of them are weeping,
offering kittens up for kopeks, kneeling
on Nevsky with outstretched palms.
Beside the churches and the imperial glitter –
all impressive and useless.
Then, drinking coffee in the Singer Cafe,
I thought of my mother’s sewing machine
and the little shops (they are in every place I’ve been)
with miniature looms of various threads
and belting needles, a foot-pedal also.
I don’t know why; this may be
the proletarian piano. Made to be repaired
and stave off obsolescence.
Perhaps. There was a little girl talking
to her papa at the table next to mine
about the cartoons you watch
and he, like I do, knew all the names.
In case you go there, they spell it with a zed:
Zinger. As in Zuider. As in the zee
you should not adopt.
I am at the airport. The security check.
Singing songs with Che Burashka.
At the gate. On the plane.
Distant by definition. I promise
I will not be far away.
From: Zinger
WE SPEND OUR TIME IN GEORGIAN
ROOMS DREAMING OF THE FUTURE
We spend our time in Georgian rooms dreaming of the future
The river roams narcotics rising through the systems & the streets
We pass these statues all our lives: we do not need their names
The sound of the sky is black with thunder & sheets of cawing gulls
Searching the surf for their purpose & carrion to feed the young
They hover their bulk above the wires of our tiny electric trains
Then drift to outposts & new construction built of dereliction
Into the plain livid always leave behind imaginations –
Fishing boats tilt from side to side dredging bones from the shale
We are past the point of reclamation now we are embedded
Tearing our limbs from the concrete we think it has not set
We drag our bodies from place to place until we find a grave
A worm pit or a scattering that suits our aspiration:
We spend our time in Georgian rooms dreaming of the future
The sound of the sky is black with thunder & sheets of cawing gulls
We telephone we email we transmit some feelings
We mark time with photographs of sunshine and kittens
Or Sisyphus a smile singeing his lips
set for the last great push
From: Zinger
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