#302 Because (Grace Schulman)

Grace Schulman es un descubrimiento reciente. Aún tengo la sensación de haberme topado con un tesoro. 

En tiempos en que el matrimonio esta más bien desprestigiado, me ha emocionado leer algunos de sus poemas celebrando su matrimonio, imperfecto y maravilloso al mismo tiempo, "una fiesta de contradicciones", diría ella, "radiance and dissatisfaction; intense loyalties and devastating treacheries; freedom and the sacrifice, albeit willing, of independence; excitement and a kind of pleasant boredom". En los años 50, Schulman era una beatnik, sin ninguna intención de "atarse" a nada ni a nada. Más de cincuenta años después, sin embargo, tras la muerte de su esposo, escribiría sus memorias, Strange Paradise: Portrait of a Marriage (2018), precisamente desde la perspectiva de la vida compartida con su esposo. 

El poema de hoy pertenece a su última colección, The Marble Bed (2020). 

(via)

BECAUSE

Because, in a wounded universe, the tufts
of grass still glisten, the first daffodil
shoots up through ice-melt, and a red-tailed hawk

perches on a cathedral spire; and because
children toss a fire-red ball in the yard
where a schoolhouse façade was scarred by vandals,

and joggers still circle a dry reservoir;
because a rainbow flaunts its painted ribbons
and slips them somewhere underneath the earth;

because in a smoky bar the trombone blares
louder than street sirens, because those
who can no longer speak of pain are singing;

and when on this wide meadow in the park
a full moon still outshines the city lights,
and on returning home, below the North Star,

I see new bricks-and-glass where the Towers fell;
and I remember my lover’s calloused hand
soften in my hand while crab apple blossoms

showered our laps, and a yellow rose
opened with its satellites of orange buds,
because I cannot lose the injured world

without losing the world, I’ll have to praise it.