CINCO POEMAS DE ROBERT GRAVES

Un buen amigo me ha dejado ‘D’amor – Trenta poemes’ de Robert Graves, publicado por edicions62 en edición bilingüe inglés-catalán. Después de leerlo he visto que había varios poemas que no estaban traducidos al castellano, al menos no están ni en el mítico ‘Cien poemas’ publicado por Lumen y traducido por Claribel Alegría, ni en el ‘Poemas’ publicado por Pre-Textos y traducido por Antonio Rivero Taravillo.

Pues aquí dejo cinco poemas que me han llamado la atención.

 

 

SICK LOVE

O Love, be fed with apples while you may,
And feel the sun and go in royal array,
A smiling innocent on the heavenly causeway,

Though in what listening horror for the cry
That soars in outer blackness dismally,
The dumb blind beast, the paranoiac fury;

Be warm, enjoy the season, lift your head,
Exquisite in the pulse of tainted blood,
That shivering glory not to be despised.

Take your delight in momentariness,
Walk between dark and dark — a shining space
With the grave’s narrowness, though not its peace.

 

 

 

 

A SLICE OF WEDDING CAKE

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
xxxMarried impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
xxxAnd missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.

Repeat ‘impossibe men’: not merrely rustic,
xxxFoul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
xxxHow well women behave, and always have behaved).

Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
xxxSelf-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
xxxExcuses must be made to casual passers-by.

Has God’s supply of tolerable husbands
xxxFallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
xxxAt the expense of man?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxDo I?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxIt might be so.

 

 

 

 

JUDGEMENT OF PARIS

What if Prince Paris, after taking thought,
Had not adjudged the apple to Aphrodite
But, instead, had favoured buxom Hera,
Divine defendress of the marriage couch?
What if Queen Helen had been left to squander
Her beauty upon the thralls of Menelaus,
Hector to die unhonoured in his bed,
Penthesileia to hunt a poorer quarry,
The bards to celebrate a meaner siege?
Could we still have found the courage, you and I,
To embark together for Cranaë
And consummate our no less fateful love?

 

 

 

 

CHANGE

‘This year she has changed greatly’—meaning you—
My sanguine friends agree,
And hope thereby to reassure me.

No, child, you never change; neither do I.
Indeed all our lives long
We are still fated to do wrong,

Too fast caufgt by care of humankind,
Easily vexed and grieved,
Foolishly flattered and deceived;

And yet each knows that the changeless other
Must love and pardon still,
Be the new error what it will:

Assured by that same glint of deathlessness
Which neither can surprise
In any other pair of eyes.

 

 

 

 

BETWEEN HYSSOP AND AXE

To know our destiny is to know the horror
Of separation, dawn oppressed by night:
Is, between hyssop and axe, boldly to prove
That gifted, each, with singular need for freedom
And haunted, both, by spectres of reproach,
We may yet house together without succumbing
To the low fever of domesticity
Or to the lunatic spin of aimless flight.

 

 

 

Graves, Robert. D’Amor Trenta Poemes. Barcelona; Edicions 62, 1991.