MARK O'CONNOR (Australia, 1945)

El hombre blanco no supo seguir la corriente de la anguila
no podía correr más que la cotorra
pero cortó el árbol,
estancó los arroyos
y atrapó en su ancha red de campos
al veloz pez de la nada.

 ----- 

Whitemen could not follow the eel-stream
could not outrun the rosella
but he cut down the tree
but he dammed the stream
but he caught in his wide net of paddocks
the swift fish of nothing.

Información                                       -----

El árbol de membrillo

LOUISE GLÜCK (Nueva York, 1947) Premio Nobel de literatura 2020
El árbol de membrillo

El tiempo era, al final, nuestro único tema.
Por suerte, vivíamos en un mundo con estaciones:
sentíamos que teníamos acceso a cierta variedad:
oscuridad, euforia, varios tipos de espera.

Supongo que, en rigor de verdad, nuestros intercambios
no se podían llamar conversaciones, porque se imponía
el acuerdo, la repetición. 

Y aún así, sería un error pensar que no teníamos
idea de lo que le pasaba al otro y que no respondíamos
en profundidad al mundo, como sería un error pensar
que vivíamos vidas limitadas o vacías.

>Teníamos gran riqueza.
Teníamos, de hecho, todo lo que veíamos
y si bien es verdad que no veíamos
ni demasiado lejos ni con mucho detalle,
lo que podíamos discernir lo absorbíamos
con un hambre que apenas se imaginan los jóvenes,
como si toda la experiencia se hubiese canalizado
en estas pocas percepciones.

Canalizado sin dejar recuerdo.
Porque para nosotros, el pasado era un referente perdido,
una imagen perdida, un relato perdido. ¿Qué contenía?
¿Había amor ahí? ¿Alguna vez
habrá habido un esfuerzo sostenido? ¿Y fama?
¿Habrá habido algo así alguna vez?

Al final, no hizo falta preguntar. Porque sentíamos
el pasado; estaba, de algún modo,
en esas cosas, el jardín de adelante y el de atrás
las impregnaba, dándole al arbolito de membrillo
un peso y un sentido casi insoportables.

Perdida por completo y a la vez extrañamente viva, la totalidad de nuestra existencia humana:
Sería un error pensar
que porque nunca salíamos del jardín
lo que sentíamos era reducido o parcial.
En su grandeza y su esplendor, el mundo
estaba al fin presente.

Y de eso conversábamos o hacíamos alusión
cuando se nos daba por hablar.
El tiempo. El árbol de membrillo.
Y vos, en tu inocencia, ¿qué sabés de este mundo?

Traducción de Ezequiel Zaidenberg

 -----

Song of the trees

MARY COLBORNE-VEEL (Nueva Zelanda, 1861-1923)
Song of the Trees

We are the Trees.
Our dark and leafy glade
Bands the bright earth with softer mysteries.
Beneath us changed and tamed the seasons run:
In burning zones, we build against the sun
Long centuries of shade.

We are the Trees,
Who grow for man’s desire,
Heat in our faithful hearts, and fruits that please.
Dwelling beneath our tents, he lightly gains
The few sufficiencies his life attains—
Shelter, and food, and fire.

We are the Trees
That by great waters stand,
By rills that murmur to our murmuring bees.
And where, in tracts all desolate and waste,
The palm-foot stays, man follows on, to taste
Springs in the desert sand.

We are the Trees
Who travel where he goes
Over the vast, inhuman, wandering seas.
His tutors we, in that adventure brave—
He launched with us upon the untried wave,
And now its mastery knows.

We are the Trees
Who bear him company
In life and death. His happy sylvan ease
He wins through us; through us, his cities spread
That like a forest guard his unfenced head
’Gainst storm and bitter sky.

We are the Trees.
On us the dying rest
Their strange, sad eyes, in farewell messages.
And we, his comrades still, since earth began,
Wave mournful boughs above the grave of man,
And coffin his cold breast.

 -----

Canción de los árboles

Somos los árboles.
Nuestro oscuro y claro arbolado
Conjunto en la Tierra brillante con misterios quedos.
Bajo nosotros cambiadas y domeñadas las estaciones corren:
En zonas incineradas, construimos contra el sol
Largos siglos de sombra.

Somos los árboles,
Que crecen por el deseo del hombre,
El calor en nuestros corazones fieles y las frutas que agradan.
Morando bajo nuestras tiendas, gana ligeramente
La poca suficiencia que en su vida alcanza-
El refugio, el alimento, y el fuego.

Somos los árboles
Aquéllos de pie, junto a muchas aguas
Por arroyuelos que murmuran a nuestras abejas susurrantes.
Y donde, en extensiones todas asoladas y desiertas,
La palma permanece de pie , el hombre continua , a gusto
Surge en la arena del desierto.

Somos los árboles
Que viajan a donde el va
A través de las vastas e inhumanas, mares errantes.
Nosotros sus tutores, en esa aventura valiente-
Se arrojó con nosotros en la ola no probada,
Y ahora su señorío lo sabe.

Somos los árboles
Quién le hace compañía
En la vida y la muerte. Su afortunada nemorosidad se aligera
Él gana a través de nosotros, a través de nosotros, sus ciudades se extienden
Que al igual que un guardia forestal su cabeza sin protección
Contra la tormenta y el cielo amargo.

Somos los árboles.
Sobre nosotros los restos moribundos
Sus extraños ojos tristes, en mensajes de despedida.
Y nosotros, sus compañeros aún, ya que la tierra comenzó,
Un agitar de ramas tristes por encima de la tumba del hombre,
Y en el féretro su pecho frío.

Traducción: JUAN DIEGO AMOROZ

-----

SANDRA MEEK (USA)
Protea lepidocarpodendron (Black-Bearded Protea)


Each outsized bloom’s a cup on the cusp
of inflorescence, flowers

held at bay: half fist, half swan’s
folded wing, each a downy clutch

of quills dampered by cream bracts
tipped a burgundy-black tattooing

fading as my father’s did from
recognition—18, shore-leave drunk, goading

shipmates, still he chose the smallest in the book
of offerings, what best to shrink

away from: his bicep mucked a flowering
he couldn’t name. To define

that day’s place is to again dissolve
in fog so thick its milky smoke

stains, breathing in; even my hands
clouded with descent that robbed

all direction but the bite of jagged cliffs
knived over sea, trail a question

I failed to answer to until late
afternoon’s clearing threaded me back

to a now abandoned lot, everything
missing where I’d

stupidly stashed it: car lock
you cracked, tires you slashed I

drove to the rims, that metallic rattle on gravel
the tin can-clatter ghost tailing me

of the day I cast off my own name
just to slip free of my father’s.

In its first painting, only the bloom’s
complete, that single specimen

Bauer, at eighteenth century’s end, detailed
down to the beaked

outer bracts, leaves and stem left a faintly
penciled gray. Unfinished

as what I’ve failed
to picture beyond descending mist

steeled in a bivalve of silver light, my purse’s
compact mirror: your face,

your appraising eye I
can’t catch as you sort camera

from lip balm, passport from lunch sack
you’ve eaten my peanut butter

sandwich from even before you test the flashlight’s
narrow beam, twisting its blue fashioned best

to betray blood’s spattered trail to the night-
vision red pitched to illumine

charts that constellate what’s missing
from Cape Town’s drained sky, what sundown disappears

with the flats you came up from—tin houses bogged
beyond the bright city grid that bleeds

even your unelectrified sky blank
as my pocket notebook you stack with the packet

of tissues, nail file, hairbrush: play,
I imagine, for your youngest.

Truth? Even my photographs fog as much as flower
what I sought that day, what Linnaeus christened

to preserve his own good name, hedging
uncertainty, species he knew solely through his period’s

penchant for florilegia, not by the dissection
of his own touch. Elusive he clouded

allusive: Protea for Proteus, for that mythic
shape-shifting, not

for knowledge, future that men kept holding
him down to. To be no one

in a country that doesn’t care to know you
is one version of home. Out of range

but for one quartered second’s
connection, a single text lit the cell

I held exploratory, morphed
aggressive, stomach liver bone brain

Dad—message I must only have read
as fragments, as crouched against

the road’s view, you must have been deep
in your own best work just then: crowbar,

knife in hand. That undocumented
night, as I braided my hair back in tangle

for the photographs that would restore me
to name and place, as I watched

from my hotel window two friendly battleships
nose into False Bay, the harbor sundowning

to a shimmer of refracted light that would spill
the dusk streets with crew-cut boys razored

toward the end days of youth, did you
picture me? Did you see

them, Protea lepidocarpodendron, that rare stand
only lost I finally found—bush

after bush, every flower head’s pearly grail
inked to what survives the poverty

of night’s slow burn: near exhausted coals
rinsed in morning to rescue what still

might warm, the crumbling black bits
at the heart. Was it you who patted them

into cakes, soft fists mapped to the tracks
in your palms a day’s winter sun

would harden? So tenuous the hold
of some Proteas, to dig the foundation

for a single house could erase them forever
from this earth. But the face you stole

was paper, not bone, and whatever limit
stamped my book, my father’s urging stay

left me to witness what I’d crossed
a world for, what I barely saw

though all I did for weeks was look:
that spectacle, spring. In one gold-

shrouded view, desiccation
and bloom; desert dunes morphed

to meadows, Namaqualand daisies’ fringed wheels
and succulents I could distinguish

only by scale: some larger than my outstretched hand,
some less than the tip of my thumb, as if

what had shifted was only the matter
of perspective, as white sand deepened

to red fields at dusk—shattered stone starred
by innumerable black eyes lashed electric

white, neon blue, magenta bright as the King
Protea, your nation’s flower

rayed across every rand in that roll surely
you pocketed first.

Truth? I made it back
for goodbye, and what I can’t let go

is what I can’t know:
how what’s held

so long as seed can suddenly
riot into bloom; how what’s stared directly down

still eludes. And that second charge to the Cape Town
McDonald’s, the last to blink through

before my card cancelled: who you went back for
to feed, your confederates, or

your children. But truth’s what we tell
when no one’s listening, and lacking

more than the most rudimentary vocabulary
for anatomy, or grace, hunger’s all

I’m holding you to: brain, heart, bone.

Fotos de la red                                                        -----

SANDRA MEEK (USA)
Quiver Tree (Aloe dichotoma)

Not the horizon’s rippling, stick-built from wind-
battered grass; not the dark

cauldron of volcanic stone, earth-
worn to crumbling

black loaves at your roots’
blazing what failed

to surface as flow —

* 

You, always
some other, your canary-yellow flower-buds said

to taste of asparagus; your name a hold

for arrows, poison-tipped tongues
long lost to the flanks

of animals long dust. Who now
scoops your marrow? Who dishes it

to the wind, to the amputated limbs
pillowed at your root?

Each dropped branch an aspiration

you abandoned to survive
the terminal rosette of sun climbing

your forked crown as morning

razored to gold scales
puzzling your trunk, candling

each stump’s bargain never

again to enter that particular
angle of air —

*

Why, then, to weather
that sun, did you marry

its mirror? Why gift
your body’s cool

to that regret,
to what wished to remain

fire?

*

Drenched in dawn’s
quickening blue, petrified across

the dolerite sill: your shadow
clawing inward until noon entirely

eclipses the dialectics
of your limbs and your ghost limbs,

what you gave up and what you
determined to.

*

Lost, that view to what stone might

have ascended to: night a sheer drop
distance starred to incarnate

beauty, what you could nearly
clasp between the clumsy rinds
of your leaves, thick as swaddled hands

fire and healing sear
to flipper, fingers forever sealed

beyond grasping —

*

But how else hold
such communal weight? Sociable Weavers thatch

half your sky, each grass blade bound
to forget how to live

in a landscape of wind was once to know always
something passing over worth

bending down to.

*

Not the evolution
of armor, that snow-white powder

blinding your limbs; not the shadow-
dusted nest

of evening’s descent, nor the ashen
wings the full moon

unfurls from your limbs. Not
the desert you rooted. Nowhere

any refuge from heat’s rising
more quickly than you could

possibly pole south toward that
retracting winter —

*

How can the rooted
migrate, except by seed, generation

by generation? Night

more prescience than reprieve: those brilliants
hung above you born

of fire, not ice. Nothing that might yet

dissolve into rain. That sky,
like a graveyard — cluttered by the dead

or the undead, anything

but the living — forecasting a world where beauty belongs
solely to stone, what even

the angels will be made of.

*

Twilight. You the very

architecture of night. The rising sun inked
to each stroke of your crown. As if you weren’t

its slave. As if by shedding its stars
sky could become

light itself, not a future with no room

for anything not fire. Not for your shallow
hold to the still-

blackened stone sill. Not for the shrinking

skeleton of your lingering, not the white lie
of your trunk against the sky’s bleaching

blue stare. Not you

at all, Quiver-tree, Kokerboom — vanishing point
of memory and mirage

tendered to the wake
of that clocked fire, what always

watched over you.

-----

 Información

SANDRA MEEK (USA)
Acacia erioloba o Vachellia erioloba
(Camel Thorn)


Burden
the body, not the beast
of light, grated
glimmer of sand, the desert’s
crowned rising: cool apron
eclipsed by noon, by tree rats
and scorpions, barbed leaves
bitter as use—fence,
knobkierie,
a place to germinate
mishearing: Kameeldoring,
Acacia of the Giraffe: 
the way I confused
tlhokafetse, died, for
tlhoafaletse,
missed, the wind no voice
without you

-----

ABEL MEEROPOL (EE.UU, 1903-1986)
BILLIE HOLIDAY (EE.UU, 1915-1959)
Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.


Extraño fruto

Los árboles del sur tienen extraños frutos,
sangre en las hojas y sangre en las raíces,
cuerpos negros se balancean con la brisa del sur,
frutos extraños cuelgan de los tuliperos.

La escena bucólica del sur galante,
los ojos fuera de órbita y la boca torcida,
el aroma de las magnolias, dulce y fresco,
entonces, de repente el olor a carne quemada.

Aquí está el fruto para que los cuervos lo desgarren,
para que la lluvia lo recoja, para que el viento lo absorba,
para que el sol lo pudra, para que los árboles lo descarguen,
aquí está la extraña y amarga cosecha.

-----

      Strange Fruit (Fruta extraña) es una pieza musical de 1939 de la cantante afroamericana Billie Holiday que se hizo mundialmente famosa. Compuesta y escrita por Abel Meeropol, la canción fue una de las obras de arte que predicó con más fuerza en contra de los linchamientos en los estados del sur de los EE. UU. y uno de los primeros lemas del movimiento por los derechos civiles estadounidenses. La expresión Strange Fruit se estableció como símbolo de los linchamientos.

-----

ADRIENNE RICH (Baltimore, 1929-2012)

The trees   

The trees inside are moving out into the forest,

the forest that was empty all these days

where no bird could sit

no insect hide

no sun bury its feet in shadow

the forest that was empty all these nights

will be full of trees by morning.

All night the roots work

to disengage themselves from the cracks

in the veranda floor.

The leaves strain toward the glass

small twigs stiff with exertion

long-cramped boughs shuffling under the roof

like newly discharged patients

half-dazed, moving

to the clinic doors.

I sit inside, doors open to the veranda

writing long letters

in wich I scarcely mention the departure

of the forest from the house.

The night is fresh, the whole moon shines

in a sky still open

the smell of leaves and lichen

still reaches like a voice into the rooms.

My head is full of whispers

which tomorrow will be silent.

Listen. The glass is breaking.

The trees are stumbling forward

into de night. Winds rush to meet them.

The moon in broken like a mirror,

its pieces flash now in the crown

of the tallest oak.

LOS ÁRBOLES

Los árboles del interior salen hacia el bosque,

el bosque que estuvo vacío todos estos días,

donde no podían posarse los pájaros

ni esconderse los insectos

ni enterrar el sol sus pies en la sombra,

el bosque que estuvo vacío todas estas noches

se llenará de árboles por la mañana.

Toda la noche se esfuerzan las raíces

por soltarse de las grietas

en el suelo de la terraza.

La hojas luchan por acercarse al cristal

pequeños tallos tensos por el esfuerzo

los largos y apretados ramajes se arrastran bajo el tejado

como pacientes a los que acaban de dar el alta

medio aturdidos, dirigiéndose

a las puertas de la clínica.

Yo me siento dentro, las puertas abiertas hacia la terraza,

escribiendo largas cartas

en las que menciono que el bosque

está abandonando la casa.

La noche es fresca, la luna llena brilla

en un cielo todavía abierto

el olor de hojas y liquen

llega aún como una voz a las habitaciones.

Mi mente se llena de susurros

que mañana habrán callado.

Escuchad. Los cristales se rompen.

Los árboles se tambalean

hacia la noche. Los vientos salen apresurados a su encuentro.

La luna se quiebra como un espejo,

sus fragmentos relampaguean ahora en la copa

del roble más alto.

Traducción: Mª Soledad Sánchez Gómez

-----

EDWARD E. CUMMINGS (USA, 1894-1962)
little tree

 

little tree

little silent Christmas tree

you are so little

you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest

and were you very sorry to come away?

see          i will comfort you

because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark

and hug you safe and tight

just as your mother would,

only don't be afraid

look          the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i'll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring

and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed

you'll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they'll stare!

oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we'll dance and sing

"Noel Noel"

-----

U2  (The Joshua Tree)

One Tree Hill

We turn away to face the cold, enduring chill


As the day begs the night for mercy, love.

A sun so bright it leaves no shadows


Only scars carved into stone on the face of earth.

The moon is up and over One Tree Hill


We see the sun go down in your eyes.

You run like a river on to the sea


You run like a river runs to the sea.

And in the world, a heart of darkness, a fire-zone


Where poets speak their heart then bleed for it

Jara sang, his song a weapon in the hands of love.


You know his blood still cries from the ground.

It runs like a river runs to the sea.


It runs like a river to the sea.

I don’t believe in painted roses or bleeding hearts


While bullets rape the night of the merciful.

I’ll see you again when the stars fall from the sky


And the moon has turned red over One Tree Hill.

We run like a river runs to the sea


We run like a river to the sea.

And when it’s rainin’, rainin’ hard


That’s when the rain will break a heart.

Rainin’, rainin’ in your heart


Rainin’ in your heart.


Rainin’, rain into your heart


Rainin’, rainin’, rainin’


Rain into your heart.


Rainin’, ooh, rain in your heart, yeah.


Feel it.

Oh great ocean


Oh great sea


Run to the ocean


Run to the sea.

-----

THE CURE
A forest

Come closer and see 


See into the trees 


Find the girl 


If you can 


Come closer and see 


See into the dark 


Just follow your eyes 


Just follow your eyes 



I hear her voice 


Calling my name 


The sound is deep 


In the dark 


I hear her voice 


And start to run 


Into the trees 


Into the trees 



Into the trees 





Suddenly I stop 


But I know it's too late 


I'm lost in a forest 


All alone 


The girl was never there 


It's always the same 


I'm running towards nothing 


Again and again and again and again

-----

Acercate y mira entre los árboles


encuentra la chica
sí puedes

acércate y mira
 en la oscuridad


sólo sigue tus ojos
, sólo sigue tus ojos



Escucho una voz


diciendo mi nombre

çel sonido se encuentra profundo


en la oscuridad
 escucho su voz


y comienzo a correr
dentro del bosque


dentro del bosque
, dentro del bosque



De repente paro


pero se que es muy tarde

estoy perdido en el bosque


solo
 la chica nunca estuvo ahí


siempre es lo mismo
yo
estoy corriendo hacia la nada


una y otra vez y otra vez y otra vez

-----

THE TWO TREES

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)  

And LOREENA MCKENNIT

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,

The holy tree is growing there; 


From joy the holy branches start, 


And all the trembling flowers they bear. 


The changing colours of its fruit 


Have dowered the stars with merry light; 


The surety of its hidden root 


Has planted quiet in the night; 


The shaking of its leafy head 


Has given the waves their melody, 


And made my lips and music wed, 


Murmuring a wizard song for thee. 


There the Loves a circle go, 


The flaming circle of our days, 


Gyring, spiring to and fro 


In those great ignorant leafy ways; 


Remembering all that shaken hair 


And how the wingèd sandals dart, 


Thine eyes grow full of tender care:

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.

Gaze no more in the bitter glass 


The demons, with their subtle guile,

Lift up before us when they pass, 


Or only gaze a little while; 


For there a fatal image grows 


That the stormy night receives, 


Roots half hidden under snows, 


Broken boughs and blackened leaves. 


For all things turn to barrenness 


In the dim glass the demons hold, 


The glass of outer weariness, 


Made when God slept in times of old. 


There, through the broken branches, go 


The ravens of unresting thought; 


Flying, crying, to and fro, 


Cruel claw and hungry throat, 


Or else they stand and sniff the wind, 


And shake their ragged wings; alas! 


Thy tender eyes grow all unkind: 


Gaze no more in the bitter glass.

-----

LOS DOS ÁRBOLES 

Amada, mira en tu propio corazón,

el árbol sagrado crece allí;

desde la alegría brotan las sagradas ramas

y todas las trémulas flores que sostienen.

Los colores cambiantes de sus frutas

han salpicado a las estrellas de luz sagrada;

la seguridad de su raíz escondida

ha plantado tranquilidad en la noche,

el vaivén de su cabeza de hojas

le ha dado a las olas su melodía.

Casados, mis labios y mi música

murmuran una mágica canción por ti.

Entonces los amores giran en círculo,

círculo llameante de nuestros días,

en espirales desde aquí para allá,

sobre ignorantes caminos de hojas;

recordando aquella cabellera suelta

y el movimiento de tus sandalias aladas.

Tus ojos crecen plenos de tierno cuidado

Amada, mira en tu propio corazón.

No mires de nuevo en el amargo espejo

que los demonios de sutiles intenciones

levantan delante de nosotros cuando pasan.

O solo míralo un poco.

Porque desde allí una imagen fatal crece

acuñada en noches tormentosas

de raíces semiescondidas en la nieve

ramas rotas y hojas ennegrecidas.

Porque todas las cosas se vuelven desierto

en el oscuro vidrio que los demonios sostienen,

el vidrio de la extenuación, creado

mientras Dios dormía en tiempos antiguos.

Allí, a través de las quebradas ramas, van

los cuervos del pensamiento constante

volando, chillando, de aquí para allá,

de crueles garras y garganta hambrienta,

y allí se paran y olfatean el viento

y sacuden sus arruinadas alas; “¡alas!”

Tus tiernos ojos crecen perversos.

No mires de nuevo en el amargo espejo.

-----

TOM SPLITT

The Tree  (song )

The calm quiet strength of a tree


Anchored deep in the earth


Reaching high in the sky


The calm quiet strength of a tree

The calm quiet strength of a tree


Full of life from its roots


To the tiniest branch


The calm quiet strength of a tree

And oh, how it comforts me


How it teaches me


Without a sound


Then I realize at once


That this tree and

I are one


In eternity

The calm quiet strength of a tree


From the weight of its trunk


To its delicate leaves


The calm quiet strength of a tree

The calm quiet strength of a tree


Showing anyone near


All the secrets of time


The calm quiet strength of a tree

-----

BRUCE COCKBURN (Canadá, 1945)

If a tree falls

Rain forest

Mist and mystery

Teeming green

Green brain facing labotomy

Climate control centre for the world

Ancient cord of coexistence

Hacked by parasitic greedhead scam -

From Sarawak to Amazonas

Costa Rica to mangy B.C. hills -

Cortege rhythm of falling timber.

What kind of currency grows in these new deserts,

These brand new flood plains?

If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?

If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?

Anybody hear the forest fall?

Cut and move on

Cut and move on

Take out trees

Take out wildlife at a rate of species every single day

Take out people who've lived with this for 100,000 years -

Inject a billion burgers worth of beef -

Grain eaters - methane dispensers.

Through thinning ozone,

Waves fall on wrinkled earth -

Gravity, light, ancient refuse of stars,

Speak of a drowning -

But this, this is something other.

Busy monster eats dark holes in the spirit world

Where wild things have to go

To disappear

Forever

If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?

If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?

Anybody hear the forest fall?

-----

Si un árbol cae

Selva tropical
Niebla y misterio
Verde intenso
Inteligencia verde frente a la lobotomía
Centro del control del clima para el mundo
Antiguo cordón de la coexistencia
Estafado por la avaricia de los parásitos
Desde Sarawak al Amazonas
Costa Rica a las pobres colinas de B.C.
Cortejo rítmico de tronco caído.

¿Qué tipo de monedas crecen el los nuevos desiertos?
¿En estas nuevas llanuras pantanosas?

Si un ábol cae en el bosque ¿alguien lo oye?
Si un ábol cae en el bosque ¿alguien lo oye?
¿Alguien oye el derrumbe del bosque?

Corta y sigue
Corta y sigue
Llévate los árboles
Llévate la vida salvaje al precio de una especie cada día
Llévate la gente que ha vivido allí durante 100.000 años
Mete el valor de un billón de hamburguesas de ternera
Comedores de grano
Dispensadores de metano.

A través de la finísima capa de ozono
Caída de olas en la tierra ajada
Gravedad, luz, estrellas de poco brillo
Hablan de un ahogamiento
Pero esto, esto es otra cosa
Ajetreado monstruo se come los agujeros del espíritu del mundo
Donde las cosas salvajes deben ir
Para desaparecer
Para siempre

Si un árbol cae en el bosque ¿alguien lo oye?
Si un árbol cae en el bosque ¿alguien lo oye?

¿Alguien oye el derrumbe del bosque?

-----

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (England 1770-1850)
Tejos

Hay un tejo, orgullo del valle Lorton,

que aún hoy, en medio de su tiniebla,

se yergue igual que en los viejos tiempos:

en dar armas no se mostró remiso

a las bandas de Percy o Umfravílle,

o a aquellos que el mar cruzaron

y el arco sonoro tensaron frente a Azincourt,

o tal vez antes, en Crecy o Poitiers.

¡Gran circunferencia y honda penumbra

de ese árbol aislado! ¡Ser viviente,

creció tan lento que morir no puede!

¡Tan magnífico en su forma y aspecto,

Indestructible!. Pero aún más notables

son los cuatro hermanos de Borrowdale,

en amplia y solemne arboleda unidos:

¡Enormes troncos! Y cada uno un muro

de entrelazadas fibras serpentinas

desde antiguo trenzadas, ascendentes;

mas no de fantasía informe, o gestos

que al profano asustan: pilar de sombras

junto a cuya basa de tonos pardos,

perennemente teñida por lánguida umbría

-y bajo cuyo techo sable de ramas adornadas,

cual en fiestas, por las bayas-,

figuras fantasmales se encuentran

(Miedo y la Esperanza trémula,

Silencio, Auspicio, el esqueleto de la Muerte,

sombra del Tiempo) para celebrar,

como en templo natural salpicado

de altares de musgo a piedra impávida,

adoración conjunta; o para, mudos,

oír el murmullo de los torrentes

de la arcana cueva de Glaramara.

 ------

Yew Trees

There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore:
Not loathe to furnish weapons for the Bands
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched
To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.
Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary Tree! -a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed. But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! -and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveteratley convolved, -
Nor uninformed with Fantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane; -a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially -beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked
With unrejoicing berries -ghostly Shapes
May meet at noontide: Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight, Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves.

-----

GEORGE MEREDITH (England 1828-1909)

The Woods Of Westermain

                              I

Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.
Only at a dread of dark
Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

                             II

Here the snake across your path
Stretches in his golden bath:
Mossy-footed squirrels leap
Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep:
Yaffles on a chuckle skim
Low to laugh from branches dim:
Up the pine, where sits the star,
Rattles deep the moth-winged jar.
Each has business of his own;
But should you distrust a tone,
Then beware.
Shudder all the haunted roods,
All the eyeballs under hoods
Shroud you in their glare.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

                            III

Open hither, open hence,
Scarce a bramble weaves a fence,
Where the strawberry runs red,
With white star-flower overhead;
Cumbered by dry twig and cone,
Shredded husks of seedlings flown,
Mine of mole and spotted flint:
Of dire wizardry no hint,
Save mayhap the print that shows
Hasty outward-tripping toes,
Heels to terror on the mould.
These, the woods of Westermain,
Are as others to behold,
Rich of wreathing sun and rain;
Foliage lustreful around
Shadowed leagues of slumbering sound.
Wavy tree-tops, yellow whins,
Shelter eager minikins,
Myriads, free to peck and pipe:
Would you better? would you worse?
You with them may gather ripe
Pleasures flowing not from purse.
Quick and far as Colour flies
Taking the delighted eyes,
You of any well that springs
May unfold the heaven of things;
Have it homely and within,
And thereof its likeness win,
Will you so in soul's desire:
This do sages grant t' the lyre.
This is being bird and more,
More than glad musician this;
Granaries you will have a store
Past the world of woe and bliss;
Sharing still its bliss and woe;
Harnessed to its hungers, no.
On the throne Success usurps,
You shall seat the joy you feel
Where a race of water chirps,
Twisting hues of flourished steel:
Or where light is caught in hoop
Up a clearing's leafy rise,
Where the crossing deerherds troop
Classic splendours, knightly dyes.
Or, where old-eyed oxen chew
Speculation with the cud,
Read their pool of vision through,
Back to hours when mind was mud;
Nigh the knot, which did untwine
Timelessly to drowsy suns;
Seeing Earth a slimy spine,
Heaven a space for winging tons.
Farther, deeper, may you read,
Have you sight for things afield,
Where peeps she, the Nurse of seed,
Cloaked, but in the peep revealed;
Showing a kind face and sweet:
Look you with the soul you see't.
Glory narrowing to grace,
Grace to glory magnified,
Following that will you embrace
Close in arms or aery wide.
Banished is the white Foam-born
Not from here, nor under ban
Phoebus lyrist, Phoebe's horn,
Pipings of the reedy Pan.
Loved of Earth of old they were,
Loving did interpret her;
And the sterner worship bars
None whom Song has made her stars.
You have seen the huntress moon
Radiantly facing dawn,
Dusky meads between them strewn
Glimmering like downy awn:
Argent Westward glows the hunt,
East the blush about to climb;
One another fair they front,
Transient, yet outshine the time;
Even as dewlight off the rose
In the mind a jewel sows.
Thus opposing grandeurs live
Here if Beauty be their dower:
Doth she of her spirit give,
Fleetingness will spare her flower.
This is in the tune we play,
Which no spring of strength would quell;
In subduing does not slay;
Guides the channel, guards the well:
Tempered holds the young blood-heat,
Yet through measured grave accord,
Hears the heart of wildness beat
Like a centaur's hoof on sward.
Drink the sense the notes infuse,
You a larger self will find:
Sweetest fellowship ensues
With the creatures of your kind.
Ay, and Love, if Love it be
Flaming over I and ME,
Love meet they who do not shove
Cravings in the van of Love.
Courtly dames are here to woo,
Knowing love if it be true.
Reverence the blossom-shoot
Fervently, they are the fruit.
Mark them stepping, hear them talk,
Goddess, is no myth inane,
You will say of those who walk
In the woods of Westermain.
Waters that from throat and thigh
Dart the sun his arrows back;
Leaves that on a woodland sigh
Chat of secret things no lack;
Shadowy branch-leaves, waters clear,
Bare or veiled they move sincere;
Not by slavish terrors tripped
Being anew in nature dipped,
Growths of what they step on, these;
With the roots the grace of trees.
Casket-breasts they give, nor hide,
For a tyrant's flattered pride,
Mind, which nourished not by light,
Lurks the shuffling trickster sprite:
Whereof are strange tales to tell;
Some in blood writ, tombed in bell.
Here the ancient battle ends,
Joining two astonished friends,
Who the kiss can give and take
With more warmth than in that world
Where the tiger claws the snake,
Snake her tiger clasps infurled,
And the issue of their fight
People lands in snarling plight.
Here her splendid beast she leads
Silken-leashed and decked with weeds
Wild as he, but breathing faint
Sweetness of unfelt constraint.
Love, the great volcano, flings
Fires of lower Earth to sky;
Love, the sole permitted, sings
Sovereignly of ME and I.
Bowers he has of sacred shade,
Spaces of superb parade,
Voiceful . . . But bring you a note
Wrangling, howsoe'er remote,
Discords out of discord spin
Round and round derisive din:
Sudden will a pallor pant
Chill at screeches miscreant;
Owls or spectres, thick they flee;
Nightmare upon horror broods;
Hooded laughter, monkish glee,
Gaps the vital air.
Enter these enchanted woods
You who dare.

                               IV

You must love the light so well
That no darkness will seem fell.
Love it so you could accost
Fellowly a livid ghost.
Whish! the phantom wisps away,
Owns him smoke to cocks of day.
In your breast the light must burn
Fed of you, like corn in quern
Ever plumping while the wheel
Speeds the mill and drains the meal.
Light to light sees little strange,
Only features heavenly new;
Then you touch the nerve of Change,
Then of Earth you have the clue;
Then her two-sexed meanings melt
Through you, wed the thought and felt.
Sameness locks no scurfy pond
Here for Custom, crazy-fond:
Change is on the wing to bud
Rose in brain from rose in blood.
Wisdom throbbing shall you see
Central in complexity;
From her pasture 'mid the beasts
Rise to her ethereal feasts,
Not, though lightnings track your wit
Starward, scorning them you quit:
For be sure the bravest wing
Preens it in our common spring,
Thence along the vault to soar,
You with others, gathering more,
Glad of more, till you reject
Your proud title of elect,
Perilous even here while few
Roam the arched greenwood with you.
Heed that snare.
Muffled by his cavern-cowl
Squats the scaly Dragon-fowl,
Who was lord ere light you drank,
And lest blood of knightly rank
Stream, let not your fair princess
Stray: he holds the leagues in stress,
Watches keenly there.
Oft has he been riven; slain
Is no force in Westermain.
Wait, and we shall forge him curbs,
Put his fangs to uses, tame,
Teach him, quick as cunning herbs,
How to cure him sick and lame.
Much restricted, much enringed,
Much he frets, the hooked and winged,
Never known to spare.
'Tis enough: the name of Sage
Hits no thing in nature, nought;
Man the least, save when grave Age
From yon Dragon guards his thought.
Eye him when you hearken dumb
To what words from Wisdom come.
When she says how few are by
Listening to her, eye his eye.
Self, his name declare.
Him shall Change, transforming late,
Wonderously renovate.
Hug himself the creature may:
What he hugs is loathed decay.
Crying, slip thy scales, and slough!
Change will strip his armour off;
Make of him who was all maw,
Inly only thrilling-shrewd,
Such a servant as none saw
Through his days of dragonhood.
Days when growling o'er his bone,
Sharpened he for mine and thine;
Sensitive within alone;
Scaly as the bark of pine.
Change, the strongest son of Life,
Has the Spirit here to wife.
Lo, their young of vivid breed,
Bear the lights that onward speed,
Threading thickets, mounting glades,
Up the verdurous colonnades,
Round the fluttered curves, and down,
Out of sight of Earth's blue crown,
Whither, in her central space,
Spouts the Fount and Lure o' the chase.
Fount unresting, Lure divine!
There meet all: too late look most.
Fire in water hued as wine,
Springs amid a shadowy host,
Circled: one close-headed mob,
Breathless, scanning divers heaps,
Where a Heart begins to throb,
Where it ceases, slow, with leaps.
And 'tis very strange, 'tis said,
How you spy in each of them
Semblance of that Dragon red,
As the oak in bracken-stem.
And, 'tis said, how each and each:
Which commences, which subsides:
First my Dragon! doth beseech
Her who food for all provides.
And she answers with no sign;
Utters neither yea nor nay;
Fires the water hued as wine;
Kneads another spark in clay.
Terror is about her hid;
Silence of the thunders locked;
Lightnings lining the shut lid;
Fixity on quaking rocked.
Lo, you look at Flow and Drought
Interflashed and interwrought:
Ended is begun, begun
Ended, quick as torrents run.
Young Impulsion spouts to sink;
Luridness and lustre link;
'Tis your come and go of breath;
Mirrored pants the Life, the Death;
Each of either reaped and sown:
Rosiest rosy wanes to crone.
See you so? your senses drift;
'Tis a shuttle weaving swift.
Look with spirit past the sense,
Spirit shines in permanence.
That is She, the view of whom
Is the dust within the tomb,
Is the inner blush above,
Look to loathe, or look to love;
Think her Lump, or know her Flame;
Dread her scourge, or read her aim;
Shoot your hungers from their nerve;
Or, in her example, serve.
Some have found her sitting grave;
Laughing, some; or, browed with sweat,
Hurling dust of fool and knave
In a hissing smithy's jet.
More it were not well to speak;
Burn to see, you need but seek.
Once beheld she gives the key
Airing every doorway, she.
Little can you stop or steer
Ere of her you are the seer.
On the surface she will witch,
Rendering Beauty yours, but gaze
Under, and the soul is rich
Past computing, past amaze.
Then is courage that endures
Even her awful tremble yours.
Then, the reflex of that Fount
Spied below, will Reason mount
Lordly and a quenchless force,
Lighting Pain to its mad source,
Scaring Fear till Fear escapes,
Shot through all its phantom shapes.
Then your spirit will perceive
Fleshly seed of fleshly sins;
Where the passions interweave,
How the serpent tangle spins
Of the sense of Earth misprised,
Brainlessly unrecognized;
She being Spirit in her clods,
Footway to the God of Gods.
Then for you are pleasures pure,
Sureties as the stars are sure:
Not the wanton beckoning flags
Which, of flattery and delight,
Wax to the grim Habit-Hags
Riding souls of men to night:
Pleasures that through blood run sane,
Quickening spirit from the brain.
Each of each in sequent birth,
Blood and brain and spirit, three,
(Say the deepest gnomes of Earth),
Join for true felicity.
Are they parted, then expect
Some one sailing will be wrecked:
Separate hunting are they sped,
Scan the morsel coveted.
Earth that Triad is: she hides
Joy from him who that divides;
Showers it when the three are one
Glassing her in union.
Earth your haven, Earth your helm,
You command a double realm;
Labouring here to pay your debt,
Till your little sun shall set;
Leaving her the future task:
Loving her too well to ask.
Eglantine that climbs the yew,
She her darkest wreathes for those
Knowing her the Ever-new,
And themselves the kin o' the rose.
Life, the chisel, axe and sword,
Wield who have her depths explored:
Life, the dream, shall be their robe
Large as air about the globe;
Life, the question, hear its cry
Echoed with concordant Why;
Life, the small self-dragon ramped,
Thrill for service to be stamped.
Ay, and over every height
Life for them shall wave a wand:
That, the last, where sits affright,
Homely shows the stream beyond.
Love the light and be its lynx,
You will track her and attain;
Read her as no cruel Sphinx
In the woods of Westermain,
Daily fresh the woods are ranged;
Glooms which otherwhere appal,
Sounded: here, their worths exchanged
Urban joins with pastoral:
Little lost, save what may drop
Husk-like, and the mind preserves.
Natural overgrowths they lop,
Yet from nature neither swerves,
Trained or savage: for this cause:
Of our Earth they ply the laws,
Have in Earth their feeding root,
Mind of man and bent of brute.
Hear that song; both wild and ruled.
Hear it: is it wail or mirth?
Ordered, bubbled, quite unschooled?
None, and all: it springs of Earth.
O but hear it! 'tis the mind;
Mind that with deep Earth unites,
Round the solid trunk to wind
Rings of clasping parasites.
Music have you there to feed
Simplest and most soaring need.
Free to wind, and in desire
Winding, they to her attached
Feel the trunk a spring of fire,
And ascend to heights unmatched,
Whence the tidal world is viewed
As a sea of windy wheat,
Momently black, barren, rude;
Golden-brown, for harvest meet,
Dragon-reaped from folly-sown;
Bride-like to the sickle-blade:
Quick it varies, while the moan,
Moan of a sad creature strayed,
Chiefly is its voice. So flesh
Conjures tempest-flails to thresh
Good from worthless. Some clear lamps
Light it; more of dead marsh-damps.
Monster is it still, and blind,
Fit but to be led by Pain.
Glance we at the paths behind,
Fruitful sight has Westermain.
There we laboured, and in turn
Forward our blown lamps discern,
As you see on the dark deep
Far the loftier billows leap,
Foam for beacon bear.
Hither, hither, if you will,
Drink instruction, or instil,
Run the woods like vernal sap,
Crying, hail to luminousness!
But have care.
In yourself may lurk the trap:
On conditions they caress.
Here you meet the light invoked
Here is never secret cloaked.
Doubt you with the monster's fry
All his orbit may exclude;
Are you of the stiff, the dry,
Cursing the not understood;
Grasp you with the monster's claws;
Govern with his truncheon-saws;
Hate, the shadow of a grain;
You are lost in Westermain:
Earthward swoops a vulture sun,
Nighted upon carrion:
Straightway venom wine-cups shout
Toasts to One whose eyes are out:
Flowers along the reeling floor
Drip henbane and hellebore:
Beauty, of her tresses shorn,
Shrieks as nature's maniac:
Hideousness on hoof and horn
Tumbles, yapping in her track:
Haggard Wisdom, stately once,
Leers fantastical and trips:
Allegory drums the sconce,
Impiousness nibblenips.
Imp that dances, imp that flits,
Imp o' the demon-growing girl,
Maddest! whirl with imp o' the pits
Round you, and with them you whirl
Fast where pours the fountain-rout
Out of Him whose eyes are out:
Multitudes on multitudes,
Drenched in wallowing devilry:
And you ask where you may be,
In what reek of a lair
Given to bones and ogre-broods:
And they yell you Where.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

 -----

 

Adéntrate en estos bosques encantados

tú que tienes miedo.

Nada te puede lastimar bajo las hojas…

Es justo que lo hagas.

Solo ante el temor del sombrío temblor,

aquietan su forma.

Junto a los cabellos

tienes mil ojos con capucha.

Adéntrate en los bosques encantados,

tú que tienes miedo....

-----