#12 Face It (Ryan Wilson)

Ryan Wilson es un gran poeta, de esos que además de venerar la tradición, la conocen al derecho y al revés, tiene memorizados poemas en diferentes idiomas, ha traducido a Horacio y tiene un dominio de la forma impecable. Sabe lo que es un "bref double" (a mí no me pregunten) y al parecer ha escrito uno de los pocos en inglés (sin que parezca un experimento). Es el que traigo hoy a este jardín. A mí el poema me gustaba mucho sin saber que era tal forma, pero ahí queda el dato para los curiosos. 

Wilson es el autor, además, de uno de mis ensayos favoritos sobre poesía y de la más maravillosa descripción del proceso de escribir un poema:

"What’s it like? It’s like sneaking into the king’s forest at dark and cutting down a giant Sequoia with a rusty pocket knife, then living inside the tree-trunk and whittling the tree down into tiny figurines shaped like horses. Once the whole tree has been whittled, I set the figurines down beside me in the grass so that I can worry over them and pet them and sandpaper them smooth until one of the wooden horses stands up on its own rickety little legs, whinnies, and trots off. Then I burn the other figurines to keep warm until I find a new tree." (via)

 

(amazon)

FACE IT

A silence, bodied like wing-beaten air,

Perturbs your face sometimes when parties end

And, half-drunk, you stand looking at some star

That flickers like a coin wished down a well,

Or when you hear a voice behind you whisper

Your name, and turn around, and no one’s there.

You’re in it then, once more, the stranger’s house

Perched in the mountain woods, the rot-sweet smell

Of Fall, the maples’ millions, tongues of fire, 

And there, whirl harrowing the gap, squint-far,

That unidentified fleck, approaching and

Receding at once, rapt in the wind’s spell—

Pulse, throb, winged dark that haunts the clean light’s glare—

That thing that you’re becoming, that you are.