GORAN SIMIC [8759]

Photo by Don Dixon

Goran Simic, poeta bosnio , reconocido internacionalmente por sus obras de poesía, ensayos, cuentos y teatro.

Goran Simic nació en Vlasenica, Bosnia en 1952 y ha escrito once volúmenes de ficción poesía, teatro y cortos, incluyendo Sprinting from the Graveyard (Oxford, 1997), y su obra ha sido traducida a nueve idiomas y se ha publicado en varios países europeos. Uno de los escritores más destacados de la antigua Yugoslavia, Simic quedó atrapado en el asedio de Sarajevo. En 1995 él y su familia se establecieron en Canadá como resultado de un Premio of a Freedom to Write Award from PEN. Immigrant Blues was fue el segundo  volumen de poemas en Inglés, y el primero en ser publicado en Canadá. Simic ingresó en la Facultad de Artes y Ciencias de la Universidad de Guelph en septiembre de 2006.

Traducciones de Diego Alfaro Palma

Una escena, después de la guerra

Nunca me di cuenta de cuán bella es mi casa

hasta que la vi en llamas,

mi compañero de colegio me contó, el cual tenía veinte pedazos de metralla

marcadas en su piel después de la guerra.

Me escribió cómo disfrutó en el aeropuerto

haber enojado a los oficiales de aduana que no pudieron entender

por qué el detector de metales aullaba sin razón.

Nunca me di cuenta de que fui una nación

hasta que dijeron que me matarían,

mi amiga me contó,

la que había escapado de un campo de prisioneros

sólo para ser atrapada y violada por gitanos

mientras vagaba en los bosques.

Entonces la vendieron a unos proxenetas italianos

que le tatuaron la marca de su dueño y el número en su brazo.

Ella dijo que no lo podías ver cuando usaba guantes.

Los reconocí en un pueblito en Bélgica.

Estaban sentados mirando el río

que acarreaba bolsas plásticas, latas

y basura proveniente de la gran ciudad.

Ella estaba acariciando la gran cicatriz de metralleta

a través de su camisa

y él acariciaba su guante.

Quise saludar

darles una fotografía alegre de los tiempos

cuando ninguno de nosotros conocía el significado

de Casa y Nación.

Entonces comprendí que hay más significado

en la lengua del silencio

con la que ellos estaban despidiendo

las bolsas plásticas del río

que en el lenguaje

en el cual he tratado de fingir esas caras

desde la vieja fotografía

que nos muestra sonriendo hace ya tanto tiempo. 

A SCENE, AFTER THE WAR

I'd never been aware how beautiful my house is

until I saw it burning,

my schoolmate told me, who had twenty pieces of shrapnel

that remained deep under his skin after the war.

He wrote me how at the airport he enjoyed

having upset the customs officials who couldn't understand

why the checkpoint metal detector howled for no reason.

I had never been aware I was a nation

until they said they'd kill me,

my friend told me,

who'd escaped from a prison camp

only to be caught and raped by Gypsies

while she was roaming in the woods.

Then they sold her to some Italian pimps

who tattooed the owner's brand and number on her fist.

She says you cannot see it when she wears gloves.

I recognized them in a small town in Belgium.

They were sitting and watching the river

carry plastic bags, cans,

and garbage from the big city.

She was caressing the hard shrapnel lumps

through his shirt

and he was caressing her glove.

I wanted to say hello

and give them a jolly photograph from the times

when none of us knew the meaning

of House and Nation.

Then I realized that there was more meaning

in the language of silence

in which they were seeing off

the plastic bags down the river

than in the language

in which I would have tried to feign those faces

from the old photograph

that shows us all smiling long ago.

El rostro del luto

Bien conozco el rostro del luto

que el viento de Sarajevo ametralla

volteando las hojas de periódicos

pegadas junto a charcas de sangre

en la calle donde incómodo cuido

mis pasos con una pequeña hogaza de pan bajo el brazo.

Está en el río también

cuando sus olas mecen el cadáver de una mujer

en cuyo brazo noto un reloj

mientras corro a través del puente con un balde de leche.

Y, en el frío de diciembre, vi esa cara en un movimiento de mano

que metía el zapato de un niño jamás crecido

dentro de una cocina a leña.

Es un rostro que devuelve las gracias detrás de las fotografías familiares

que revolotean bajo los camiones de basura.

Y es el rostro que reprocha a un tembloroso bolígrafo

por ser incapaz de escribir un voluminoso diccionario del lamento.

Una cara que cada noche me impide dormir

por lo que observo a mi vecino

que siempre espera junto a la ventana

fijando la mirada en la ciega oscuridad. 

The Face of Mourning // Well I know mournings's face / whom the Sarajevo wind strafes /while flipping through newspaper pages / stuck together from pools of blood /on the street where I awkwardly watch /my steps with a small loaf of bread under my arm. /It's in the river too / when its waves sway a dead woman's body / on whose arm I notice a watch /as I run across the bridge with a bucket full of milk. / And, in the chill of December, I saw that face in a hand motion / that stuffed a shoe of a never grown child / into a wood-burning stove. /It's a face that returns its thanks on the back of family photographs / that flutter beneath garbage trucks. /And it is the face that rebukes a trembling pencil /for being incapable of writing a bulky dictionary of lament. /A face which nightly keeps me from sleeping /which is why I watch my neighbor /who is always awake by the window /staring into the blind darkness. 

[Trad. de C. Polony]

     

   

MY ACCENT

(for Visnja)

I love my accent, I love that wild sea

which attacks my weak tongue.

It doesn't reside in the morning radio news

as much as in the rustle of the job offer flyers

stapled to the street poles.

In my accent you can find my past,

the different me who still talks with imagined fishes

in a glass of water.

My grandfather was a fisherman

and I grew up on a dock

waiting for him to come back.

He built a gigantic aquarium when I was born

and every time he brought a fish

he named it immediately by some word I had to learn

until the next came...next came...next came.

I remember the first two were called "I am"

and after that the beauty of language came to me

through the shining scales.

I learned watching the aquarium

and recognizing the words by the silent colors.

After returning home

my grandfather would spend whole nights

making sentences by combining the fishes

who would pass each other.

It's how I learned to speak.

I left the house the day when my grandfather went

fishing for a black fish he was missing

and never came back.

Now I am sitting in the middle of my empty room

as in an aquarium

and talking with ghosts of the fishes

I used to recognize by words,

talking with the shadows floating

over the flyers ripped off street poles.

"I love my accent....

I love my accent.."

I repeat and repeat again

just not to ask myself :

Who am I now.

Am I real or just the black fish

my grandfather failed to catch.

A THICK RED LINE

for Fraser Sutherland

A lamb escaped from me

and I sent the wolf to bring it back.

such lambs loiter about the forest,

and leave droppings where I like to watch the valley.

I am afraid something might happen to the wolf.

There are many fugitive lambs

very few such faithful wolves.

Years pass before you train them

not to look you in the eyes

but at your hands.

I've read in an encyclopedia

how many people were killed in Auschwitz.

Like lambs.

Later I read a book about the same camp

but 308 victims were missing from the list.

Between those two books

my wolf treads in the deep snow

and draws a thick red line with his tail,

contentedly sniffing the air.

The spring is coming again

when the snow melts as fast as memory

and lambs feel the urge to escape.

IF

If on the subway my hand accidentally touched yours

on that merciless ride every evening back

to my cold bachelor apartment

perhaps you would look for my shy eyes

hidden under the cap

and think :

Is this the man who empties a pocket of silence into my

voice mail

a few times every day?

In the crowded train

nobody would notice me caressing a strand of your hair

that insolently smells of my pillow.

Nobody but you.

Perhaps for a moment you would think

that the world is full of lonely people

including the one

who has been sending unsigned Christmas cards

for years.

If I leaned on you tenderly

in that packed train full of tired or sleepy people

perhaps you would feel the fire in my skin

and wish to warm yourself one stop longer

on the shoulder of the shy weirdo

whose warmth reminds you of something

you have forgotten,

thinking :

The world is full of cold people with north in their bosoms

who fear touch might melt their ice.

I could have touched your hand if you hadn't got off

at the stop where you never get off.

I only needed a moment to show you

your earring

alive in my pocket all these years.

The same one I found in my bed

so long ago

before you forgot me.

But who knows if you would recognize it at all ?

You would think :

The world is full of lonely people

and lost earrings. 

IMMIGRANT TALKS WITH PICTURE RIPPED FROM PORNO MAGAZINE

(IMMIGRANT TALKS WITH PICTURE RIPPED FROM PORNO MAGAZINE

Arabic translation by Tahseen al-Khateeb)

It's Sunday, Mary Lou,

most terrible day of the week when even empty bottles

look happy keeping company with the spiders under my bed.

They know nothing about my loneliness

shaped by wet pillows and crumpled sheets,

nothing about the emptiness that attacks me

while watching night programs on TV

with one hand on a lottery ticket

and another on the glass.

It's Sunday Mary Lou,

and I'm already tired talking with ancestors

hidden in the basket full of my dirty work clothes.

She's fake, they tell me every time I kiss your photo.

As if I don't know it.

Your long blond hair is not the same color as your pubic bush

which obediently lies under somebody's hand. Like a lamb.

And your big breasts don't seem like the place where some baby

can get some sleep with a drop of milk between its lips.

Even your phone number

printed at the bottom of your widely spread legs

is a fake.

Or belongs to someone I didn't need to call.

My neighbor's wife, the house next to mine,

seems happy walking with her kids on Sunday evening

-she can be seen in the red light district every night.

Even the tiny woman next door,

holding hands with her boyfriend who just got out of jail

says "Hello" on Sunday.

And I pretend not to know she's wearing a big hat

just to cover the dark bruises under her eyes.

Even my landlady's dog,

fifth in the last year,

walks lamely before licking my hand. On Sunday.

But my ancestors don't want to see that scene

and dive into the pockets of my work clothes.

It's Sunday Mary Lou, lonely Sunday

when life seems different

and my loneliness has the shape of an empty bottle

keeping company with spiders and crumpled lottery tickets

under my bed.

It's Sunday Mary Lou,

and nobody sees the moment when I put your photo

back in my to keep company with the picture of my darling

who once promised to wait for me \

until I come back.

Nobody can see my pale eyes watching two pale photos

not able to tell which one is my darling

and which one is you, Mary Lou.

It's Sunday. Lonely Sunday.