Sandeep Parmar
Nottingham, Inglaterra 1979
Creció en el sur de California. Obtuvo el doctorado en Letras Inglesas por University College London en 2008, así como un máster en escritura creativa por la Universidad de East Anglia. Es editora de reseñas en la revista The Wolf, y editó The Collected Poems of Hope Mirrlees (Carcanet, 2011). Ha publicado un libro de crítica, Reading Mina Loy’s Autobiographies (Bloomsbury, 2013). Es catedrática de literatura del siglo XX y escritura creativa en la Universidad de Liverpool. Actualmente edita el libro Collected Poems of Nancy Cunard y escribe una biografía de Hope Mirrlees. Ha publicado los libros de poesía The Marble Orchard (Shearsman, 2012 ) y Eidolon (Shearsman, 2015).
Traducción de Juana Adcock (Monterrey, 1982. Es poeta y traductora).
Poemas publicados originalmente en The Marble Orchard (Shearsman, 2012).
Amanuense en el Arco Cromático
El mar y el cielo que aspiran extemporáneamente a un tinte inexplicable
de razonamiento sólido, contrario a la nostalgia tortuosa
y la metafísica de las suegras, vestidas en mantas de viento
atenuado por un siglo previo, suben
ascendentes en una espina dorsal de azul Bayer.
De pie como su dueño en acero la preferencia del exilio
—un otro lugar imaginario— flauta sus plumas en ocre
y se sonroja con notable reticencia. Retrasado aquí
el refugiado 12.5 toneladas de metal plomizo
lentamente computa sus cuentas
mientras los lugareños lo declaran un esperpento.
¿Integrar? ¿Con esta cara?
El Arco cuelga limpio sobre la costa descaducifolia.
La tierra se niega a modernizarse.
La visión se erosiona bajo la mano que la construyó.
Amanuensis at the Chromatic Gate
The sea and sky that aspire unseasonably to an unaccountable hue
of solid reasoning, averse to the long-winded nostalgia
and metaphysics of mother-in-laws, cloaked in wind
attenuated by a previous century, rise
ascendant in a spine of Bayer blue.
Footed like its master in steel the exile’s preference
– an imagined elsehwere – flutes its plumes in ochre
and blushes with notable reticence. Delayed here
the refugee 12.5 tons of leaden metal
slowly tallies its accounts
as the locals declare it an eyesore.
Integrate? With this face?
The Gate hangs clean against the undeciduous shore.
The earth refuses to modernise.
The vision erodes under the hand that built it.
Contra el caos
(después de Jagjit Singh)
El amor no pudo haberte enviado, en este sudario de canción,
para blandir contra la muerte tu flauta hueca, afinada al caos.
Sin importar lo que hayan dicho los Antiguos, la materia le exige al mundo
cumplir su acuerdo de escarcha dura. Pero la vida pronto olvida el caos.
Aquel que no ha andado a trancos por la extensión completa de la edad, ha contado
luego perdido la cuenta de los días que se tragan, como la fiebre, al caos.
Y tú, extraña compañía en el asiento trasero de la infancia,
apoyado en la balsa de la memoria como algún dios del caos,
amenazas con hundirme: viento por las calles con palmas.
Oráculo del duelo. La danza vagabunda de las figuras en caos
arrastrando basura por el pavimento. Hedor de Popeye’s Chicken,
el edificio de Capitol Records, inyectando luz y caos
en el cielo de LA. La barca de papel en agua de lluvia, corriendo, se zambulle
fuera de mi alcance y las ancianas no le dan ningún orden aquí al caos,
ni dan sosiego con sus relatos familiares. Tu voz me sigue
hacia adentro y fuera de las casas equivocadas, montando mis talones en caos
como para decir que cada elemento medio-recordado que he forjado
en vidrio es sólo la réplica, sombra moribunda del amor y su caos,
que una vez pronunciado, es como un veneno vertido en la boca
de la canción, volviéndola dolorosa y negra. Me he comido este caos,
su paroxismo de nacimiento, y lo he visto desenrollarse desde los rostros
de seres queridos, hasta la enfermedad y la distancia y la pérdida. Caos
que persigue —que golpetea sus dedos en la ventana como lluvia—
que no me olvidará y me permitirá alcanzar hasta
treinta años después al niño que mira sobre el mismo
paisaje, día tras día. Día que amarillea, el día del caos
donde estás tú aún voceando tu advertencia (aunque yo era demasiado
joven). Quedar con la amarga pesadez de la canción, su caos.
Against Chaos
(after Jagjit Singh)
Love could not have sent you, in this shroud of song,
To wield against death your hollow flute, tuned to chaos.
Whatever the Ancients said, matter holds the world
to its bargain of hard frost. But life soon forgets chaos.
He who has not strode the full length of age, has counted
then lost count of days that swallow, like fever, dark chaos.
And you, strange company in the backseat of childhood,
propped on the raft of memory like some god of chaos,
You threaten to drown me: wind through palmed streets.
Oracle of grief. The vagrant dance of figures in chaos
carting trash over tarmac. Stench of Popeye’s Chicken,
the Capitol Records building, injecting light and chaos
into the LA sky. That paper boat in rainwater, rushing, dives
out of my reach and old women give no order here to chaos,
nor calm with their familiar tales. Your voice follows me
into and out of the wrong houses, riding my heels in chaos
as if to say that every half-remembered element I’ve forged
in glass in only the replicate, dying shadow of love’s chaos
that once spoken, is like a poison dropped in the mouth
of song, turning it dolorous and black. I’ve eaten this chaos,
its paroxysm of birth, and seen it uncoil from the faces
of loved ones, into sickness and distance and loss. Chaos
that hounds – that drums its fingers on the window like rain –
who will not forget me and permit me to reach across
thirty years for the child peering out over the very same
landscape, day after day. Yellowing day, the day of chaos
where you are still sounding your warning (though I was too
young). To be left with the bitter heaviness of song, its chaos.
The Octagonal Tower
History is the love that enters us through death; its discipline is grief.
Anne Michaels
I
Whatever rage has come through these sealed doors,
And scalded us black and frayed, we have no name for.
We cannot explain the quiet, sleepless shift of whispers,
A procession of shrouds along our corridors,
Or the diverted eyes that cloud to see a row of winter oaks outside
Shocked in their dendritic fizz. And if we do know it,
It is in the blood, in this terrible synapse of sky, in the road away.
From our house we drive down through a sunken valley
Where, like a crypt, it is forever the hour of the dead.
You have always worn the wheel, pushed your hands and wrists
Through its axes, as though it were a shackle. Driven, hunched.
It is the same-the sting of yucca and eucalyptus, a vein of pink
Bougainvillea purged in hot pulses off rooftops-a fragrant massacre-
And the same steady road you drive every time afraid to speak,
Afraid to ask when I will leave you alone in that house with your wife.
I translate your favourite song in my mind: This song of mine, no one will sing.
This song of mine that I sing myself will die tomorrow with me.
An October night, 1975. A sudden rain has liquefied the earth.
Mud isn't enough. There is a word you use that means more than mud,
It is the sound of a foot, sunken to the ankle, pulling itself out-
The awful suck of uprooting. Like a scream, it is the fear of standing
So long that you might stay and sink forever. This sound trails
Behind you and your brother as you walk the fields one last time.
You will leave and not return for ten years, to marry my mother
Who you've not yet met. Your four bare feet make an agreement with the earth
To remember. The earth prints its own response in your shadows.
II
Holidays are uncertain times. The marble face of an old king's grief
Deflects the spectacle of his queen's death in each perfect tessera.
The Taj rises above the Jammuna, doubles paradise in the mastery of slaves.
Holidays are uncertain times; their hands are cut off of arms thrown up
In celebration. Now they too mourn, and skyward pray to phantom limbs
In the gardens of heaven, alone to pluck and preen.
They are carted away without ceremony, along with the remains of stone
that, like teeth, fall out of swooning heads. The funeral begins.
Mumtaz, hollow as a bride, is veiled in by her white, carved lid.
No one knows when you were born. They think it was an Autumn month. At five you asked where your mother was. Your false soot lashes pooled with fear.
Gone to your grandmother's. Later you found her picture.
A woman propped up, freshly dead, her hands emptied of the past.
And you, seated on her lap, two years old, holding her
And what held her forever in that exposure.
III
The road widens just past tracts of arched houses; you drive faster and grip the
wheel.
I say I won't leave till after the New Year, but by now it doesn't matter.
Your knuckles are bloodless, and your stoic eyes are the calm surface of a timepiece.
Shah Jehan, imprisoned in a tower by his son, was sent a gold platter
The day of the coup with the head of his chosen heir upon it.
Seeing this the old king fell, knocked the teeth out of his head.
For eight years he watched the Taj from his window, from across the river,
In a diamond mounted in the wall that reflected it a million times over.
The soft marble hands of his wife extended to him, to the empty casket beside
her.
When the river filled, he walked across it.
When the door opens, only one of us leaves. I watch your car until it is far down
Through the shadows of trees. The road receives you, and the house receives
you,
As does the galley of water, the trimmed hedge, the cold, sterile cell.
In your wallet, you carry a picture of my mother, from before my birth,
When she was only yours. Her pinks match the pinks of flowers;
She bows her head into the branch and smiles, as beautiful as a queen.
Love is incidental, time-bound. Pain is eternal, is locked to it by memory.
It is the memory of love we love. It is the memory that fattens on pain-
Of these small deaths and these stone walls. The crown that has sunken
From your ears and hangs around your neck is all that remains.
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