APRIL BERNARD
Nació en 1956, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Estados Unidos
Educación: Universidad de Harvard
Premios: Beca Guggenheim en Artes Creativas, Estados Unidos y Canadá
PUBLICACIONES
POESÍA:
Romanticism: Poems. W.W. Norton & Co. June 1, 2009. ISBN 978-0-393-06807-8.
Swan Electric. W. W. Norton. 2002. ISBN 978-0-393-05114-8.
Psalms. W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated. 1995. ISBN 978-0-393-31304-8.
Blackbird Bye Bye. Random House. 1989.
NOVELAS:
Pirate Jenny. W. W. Norton & Company. 1990. ISBN 978-0-393-33430-2.
Miss Fuller. Steerforth Press. 2012. ISBN 978-1-58642-195-3.
ANTOLOGÍAS:
Phillis Levin, ed. (November 2001). The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-058929-0.
Molly McQuade (2000). By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry. Graywolf Press. ISBN 978-1-55597-297-4.
Las versiones al español son de Sergio Eduardo Cruz
http://circulodepoesia.com/2016/04/american-poetry-april-bernard/
Inglés como segunda lengua
Aquella voz–desde la tele–aquella voz,
de queso viejo y denso, o, no–
oscura como un flan quemado,
dulce como carne de venado en el humo
denso de una taberna, caliente como brandy.
Serví a aquella voz durante meses,
en un cine sobre la av. 13 cerca ya de la Third
donde los perdedores son los que estallan primero.
Te di horas azuladas, también noches,
y tú pusiste el alma,
bella como un ratón muerto, a mis pies.
Velas guturales hacían sonidos con la garganta, detrás
de la escena. Tu voz iba por todos lados
y no te atrevías a poner las manos.
English as a Second Language
That voice—from the tv—that voice,
thick smoky cheese, or, no—
dark as burnt flan, sweet,
venison-sweet in the heavy smoke
of a tavern hearth, and hot as brandy.
I served that voice for months,
in a theater on 13th near Third
where losers are the ones who crack first.
I gave you azured hours, nights,
and you placed your soul,
pretty as a dead mouse, at my feet.
Gutturals, the candles guttering backstage.
Your voice went everywhere
you dared not put your hands.
Beagle, o algo así
El compositor se llamaba Beagle, o algo parecido,
era uno de esos inglese que hacían divertido el mundo
con composiciones corales y cánticos y esa pieza,
un poema sinfónico o lo que a usted le parezca,
campanas tubulares y campanas rodeando, peligrosas
para alguien cuyos bordes ópticos y ojos han estado llorando.
La música ocupaba el automóvil donde yo
había aparcado para sentarme, nada más
mirando un árbol pequeño, un maple,
dorado como el fuego y maltrecho por el viento,
temblando en sí mismo,
aterrando el clarear azul de la mañana detrás de él, y luego
los camiones y los cables telefónicos y los perros
y los niños que iban tarde a la escuela por Orange Street, pero
era ese árbol lo que estaba generando caos,
era ese árbol lo que temblaba y se derramaba,
áureo como un alma zacudida, mientras yo recordaba
que debía también, por conveniencia, tener un alma
La puse en mi pecho, estando lejos el corazón,
y ahora parece que ahí se ha puesto el alma, temblorosa,
anaranjada, medio destruida pero manteniéndose
más fiel aún que la música de Beagle o que mi frente
apretándose fuertemente contra el volante, deseando salir.
Beagle or Something
The composer’s name was Beagle or something,
one of those Brits who make the world wistful
with chorales and canticles and this piece,
a tone poem or what-have-you,
chimes and strings aswirl, dangerous for one
whose eye lids and sockets have been rashing from tears.
The music occupied the car where
I had parked and then sat, staring at
a tree, a smallish maple,
fire-gold and half-undone by the wind,
shaking in itself,
shocking blue morning sky behind, and also
the trucks and telephone wires and dogs
and children late to school along Orange Street, but
it was the tree that caused an uproar,
it was the tree that shook and shed,
aureate as a shaken soul, I remembered
I was supposed to have one—for convenience
I placed it in my chest, the heart being away,
and now it seems the soul has lodged there, shaking,
golden-orange, half-spent but clanging
truer than Beagle music or my forehead pressed
hard on the steering wheel in petition for release.
The Going
The cloth edge of certainty
has shredded down to this:
God and love are real,
but very far away.
If I go to Istanbul, will I return?
That is not one of the permitted questions.
When I go to Istanbul, how will I bear to return?
I could slip into the small streets
to the high plain and the Caucasus—
It’s all alone, the returning,
the going. The cloth,
a soft holland whose blocks of blue and lemon
once cheered me in a skirt,
now dries dishes. God and love
are very far away, farther even
than the mountains in the east.
Anger
When in a farmhouse kitchen that smelled
of old rinds and wet cigarette butts
I hoisted the shotgun to my shoulder
and aimed but did not fire it at the man
who had just taken my virginity like a snack,
with my collusion, but still —
When I sat in a conference room
in an inquisition
at the “newspaper of record,”
across from the one slurping his pipe,
the one arching her eyebrow,
and I felt the heat like a wet brand in my chest,
repaid insult for insult and left their fancy job
like a squashed bug on the floor —
When I was twelve, too old, the last time my father
spanked me, pants down,
because I had “distressed” my mother
and my vision went red-black and
I did not forgive —
When, during my travels along the Gulf Coast,
the intruder returned in the night
and I did not call the cops again but stood
with a butcher knife facing the door, yelling, “Come in!”
although this time it was just the wind flapping
and banging the screen door —
When across a skating-rink-sized glistening table
I told the committee chair and her brooch I was a fan of Marx
and lost the fellowship —
When I threw a pot of hot coffee
and it just missed a man’s head, and the black-brown spatter stains
were still there four years later long after he’d left me
when I finally moved out of that East Village hole —
II
I would have had to be thinking
in order to have thought — loaded, not loaded?
— and I was not thinking, I was only dripping hot
and oh the pleasure, I can still feel its prickling,
crackle over the furnace of my rage,
to see his face go pale, his eyes widen,
his “put it down, put it down” — and I
put it down and allowed my life as well as his
to go on.
III
I miss my anger. Decades go by
when all I can muster is absent-minded invective,
you know, directed at the news;
or a brief fantasy
of shoving someone in front of a bus. Yesterday
I slammed my fist on my desk
and then apologized, to the desk.
Consider the tapestry of the seven deadly sins, at Saint-Denis:
Anger, wild-haired and half-dressed,
picked out in blue and silver thread bunched
against the crimson,
rough against the fingertips, she
rides a black boar dappled with blood
and waves her double-headed axe —
Yes, I remember her.
I always lie when I always say
I didn’t know the gun was loaded.
Bloody Mary
Note who’s got to go
today, don’t fuss
about the means,
just go ahead behead,
impale, starve, strappado,
the sheer assortment
of choices enough
to make a crown
crow. They never
loved me enough.
It must be said: They
were a disappointment.
When divine mother
love wears out, I just
reverse the robe
from blue to red.
I like a flat ground
to build the next town,
city, empire of disgust.
All the waste you see,
that’s what I did,
none of that happened
to me. I did that.
I made that. I killed that. I.
Mice
.