Poemas originales en inglés: Sharon Olds

Nuestros lectores podrán leer las versiones traducidas al español por Mori Ponsowy en la sección Traductores de la edición papel del número 9 de La balandra.

His smell

In the last days of my father’s life
I tried to name his smell—like yeast,
ochre catalyst feeding in liquid,
eating malt, excreting mash—
sour ferment, intoxicant, exaltant, the
strong drink of my father’s sweat,
I bent down over the hospital bed
and smelled it. It smelled like wet cement,
a sidewalk of crushed granite, quartz
and Jurassic shale, or the sour odor
of the hammered copper humidor
full of moist, bent, blackish
shreds of pipe tobacco; or the smelling-salts
tang of chlorine on the concrete floor of the
changing room at the pool in summer;
or the faint mold from the rug in his house
or the clouded pungence of the mouth and sputum
of a drinking man. And it was also the socket
of a man’s leather shoe, acid with
polish and basic with stale socks—
always, in his smell, the sense
of stain and the attraction of the stain,
the harmony of oil and metal,
as if the life of manufacture and
industry were using his body
as a gland for their sweat. On the last day,
it rose on his forehead, a compound disc
of sweat, I brought it off on my lips.
After his last breath, he lay there
tilted on his side, not moving,
not breathing, making no sound,
but he smelled the same, that fresh tainted
industrial domestic male smell, dark,
reflecting points of light.
I had thought the last thing between us
would be a word, a look, a pressure
of touch, not that he would be dead
and I would be bending over him
smelling him, breathing him in
as you would breathe the air, deeply, before going into exile.

The ferryer

Three years after my father’s death
he goes back to work. Unemployed
for twenty-five years, he’s very glad
to be taken on again, shows up
on time, tireless worker. He sits
in the prow of the boat, sweet cox, turned
with his back to the carried. He is dead, but able
to kneel upright, facing forward
toward the other shore. Someone has closed
his mouth, so he looks more comfortable, not
thirsty or calling out, and his eyes
are open, there under the iris the black
line that appeared there in death. He is calm,
he is happy to be hired, he’s in business again,
his new job is a joke between us and he
loves to have a joke with me, he keeps
a straight face. He waits, naked,
ivory bow figurehead,
ribs, nipples, lips, a gaunt
tall man, and when I bring people
and set them in the boat and push them off
my father poles them across the river
to the far bank. We don’t speak,
he knows that this is simply someone
I want to get rid of, who makes me feel
ugly and afraid. I do not say
the way you did. He knows the labor
and loves it. When I dump someone in
he does not look back, he takes them straight
to hell. He wants to work for me
until I die. Then, he knows, I will
come to him, get in his boat
and be taken across, then hold out my broad
hand to his, help him ashore, we will
embrace like two who were never born,
naked, not breathing then up to our chins we will
pull the dark blanket of earth and
rest together at the end of the working day.

(Poemas pertenecientes al libro The father)

(Poemas publicados en El padre, Bartleby Editores, 2004. Ed. Bilingüe. Traducción de Mori Ponsowy)