lunes, 12 de diciembre de 2011

The Fish


Bueno, hoy me será permitido apartarme de la tónica histórica de mis anteriores páginas, espero. Aún así, son las personas las que también hacen la Historia. Una mañana fría y oscura en Irlanda ("gloomy" como dicen ellos, una palabra simpática para un sentimiento oscuro), me hallaba yo en una aula gélida rodeado de adolescentes enfundados en sus uniformes y abrigos de diversos tonos azules. Se trataba de una clase de poesía inglesa contemporánea y la profesora había elegido para aquella ocasión una poeta norteamericana, Elizabeth Bishop, de la que desconocía todo. Pero...
Cuando la profesora empezó a leer con una extraordinaria voz sensual este poema, y las luces cambiantes de la tempestad que amenazaba el exterior ondulaban por ente los cristales; cuando fui desgranando cada verso y descubriendo lo que los alumnos y alumnas eran incapaces de ver, fue entonces cuando se encendió un hogar bajo la pizarra y yo mismo balanceándome en aquella silla cóncava que mis padres tenían en la casa de La Cañada; yo mismo, pequeño, débil, acurrucándome buscando el calor y temiendo las sombras. Ése era mi pez...

THE FISH 

















I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go. 




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