TRACY K. SMITH [9819]

Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith (nacida el 16 de abril de 1972 en Massachusetts, EE.UU.) es afroamericana poeta y educadora. Ha publicado tres libros de poesía.  Life on Mars ganó en el año 2012 el Premio Pulitzer de Poesía . Sobre esta colección, Joel Brouwer escribió en 2011: "Smith se muestra a sí misma como una poeta de extraordinaria amplitud y ambición ..." 

OBRA.

The Body’s Question. Graywolf Press. 2003. ISBN 978-1-55597-391-9.

Duende. Graywolf Press. 2007. ISBN 978-1-55597-475-6.

Life on Mars. Graywolf Press. 2011. ISBN 978-1-55597-584-5.

Dios mío, está lleno de estrellas (fragmento)

El gran error: creer que estamos solos,

que los otros vinieron y se han ido

como un fugaz destello en un radar,

cuando es probable, en cambio, que el espacio

haya estado atestado desde siempre,

repleto hasta los bordes de energías

que no podemos ver, que no sentimos

por mucho que se acerquen a nosotros,

viviendo a nuestro lado, resolviéndose,

muriendo, conquistando otros planetas,

haciendo reverencias a sus soles

inmensos e imperiales, arrojando

pedruscos a sus lunas.  Y tampoco

cesan de preguntarse si están solos,

y lo único que saben es que quieren

saber, y que hay un pozo inmensurable

que se abre entre sus luces y las nuestras.

Versión: Juan Pablo Barragán

Pertenece al libro Life on Mars, con el que Tracy K. Smith ha ganado el Pulitzer de poesía del 2012.

No lo extraño

pero a veces me olvido dónde estoy,

me imagino a mí misma dentro de esa vida otra vez.

Mañanas recalcitrantes. El sol quizás,

o más bien una luz sin color

filtrándose a través de las nubes sin forma.

Y cuando empiezo a creer que no la dejé,

el descanso vuelve. Nuestro sillón. El humo de mi cigarrillo

trepando las paredes mientras las horas caen.

Yo lucho contra el ruido del tráfico, de la música,

de cualquier cosa viva para oír tu llave en la cerradura.

Y siento ese correteo en el corazón

como si el día, la noche, donde sea que esté

en ese momento, fuera sólo un zumbido

de alguna cosa distinta a esperar.

Escuchamos tantas cosas sobre cómo se siente el amor.

Ahora mismo, hoy, con la lluvia ahí afuera

y las hojas que quieren tanto como yo creer

en mayo, en las estaciones que vienen cuando las llamamos,

es imposible no querer

entrar al otro cuarto y dejar que vos

pases tus manos por los costados de mis piernas,

sabiendo perfectamente bien lo que ellas saben.

Versión de Tom Maver

  MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF STARS

         1.

We like to think of it as parallel to what we know,

Only bigger. One man against the authorities.

Or one man against a city of zombies. One man

Who is not, in fact, a man, sent to understand

The caravan of men now chasing him like red ants

Let loose down the pants of America. Man on the run.

Man with a ship to catch, a payload to drop,

This message going out to all of space…. Though

Maybe it's more like life below the sea: silent,

Buoyant, bizarrely benign. Relics

Of an outmoded design. Some like to imagine

A cosmic mother watching through a spray of stars,

Mouthing yes, yes as we toddle toward the light,

Biting her lip if we teeter at some ledge. Longing

To sweep us to her breast, she hopes for the best

While the father storms through adjacent rooms

Ranting with the force of Kingdom Come,

Not caring anymore what might snap us in its jaw.

Sometimes, what I see is a library in a rural community.

All the tall shelves in the big open room. And the pencils

In a cup at Circulation, gnawed on by the entire population.

The books have lived here all along, belonging

For weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence

Of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,

A pair of eyes. The most remarkable lies.

         2.

Charlton Heston is waiting to be let in. He asked once politely.

A second time with force from the diaphragm. The third time,

He did it like Moses: arms raised high, face an apocryphal white.

Shirt crisp, suit trim, he stoops a little coming in,

Then grows tall. He scans the room. He stands until I gesture,

Then he sits. Birds commence their evening chatter. Someone fires

Charcoals out below. He'll take a whiskey if I have it. Water if I don't.

I ask him to start from the beginning, but he goes only halfway back.

That was the future once, he says. Before the world went upside down.

Hero, survivor, God's right hand man, I know he sees the blank

Surface of the moon where I see a language built from brick and bone.

He sits straight in his seat, takes a long, slow high-thespian breath,

Then lets it go. For all I know, I was the last true man on this earth. And:

May I smoke? The voices outside soften. Planes jet past heading off or back.

Someone cries that she does not want to go to bed. Footsteps overhead.

A fountain in the neighbor's yard babbles to itself, and the night air

Lifts the sound indoors. It was another time, he says, picking up again.

We were pioneers. Will you fight to stay alive here, riding the earth

Toward God-knows-where? I think of Atlantis buried under ice, gone

One day from sight, the shore from which it rose now glacial and stark.

Our eyes adjust to the dark.

         3.

Perhaps the great error is believing we're alone,

That the others have come and gone-a momentary blip-

When all along, space might be chock-full of traffic,

Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel

Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,

Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere,

Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones

At whatever are their moons. They live wondering

If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know,

And the great black distance they-we-flicker in.

Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last,

Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on

At twilight. Hearing the engines flare, the horns

Not letting up, the frenzy of being. I want it to be

One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial.

Wide open, so everything floods in at once.

And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,

Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.

So that I might be sitting now beside my father

As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe

For the first time in the winter of 1959.

         4.

In those last scenes of Kubrick's "2001"

When Dave is whisked into the center of space,

Which unfurls in an aurora of orgasmic light

Before opening wide, like a jungle orchid

For a love-struck bee, then goes liquid,

Paint in water, and then gauze wafting out and off,

Before, finally, the night-tide, luminescent

And vague, swirls in, and on and on….

In those last scenes, as he floats

Above Jupiter's vast canyons and seas,

Over the lava strewn plains and mountains

Packed in ice, that whole time, he doesn't blink.

In his little ship, blind to what he rides, whisked

Across the wide screen of unparcelled time,

Who knows what blazes through his mind?

Is it still his life he moves through, or does

That end at the end of what he can name?

On the set, it's shot after shot till Kubrick is happy,

Then the costumes go back on their racks

And the great gleaming set goes black.

         5.

When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said

They operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed

In papery green, the room a clean cold, and bright white.

He'd read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks,

His eyes exhausted and pink. These were the Reagan years,

When we lived with our finger on The Button and struggled

To view our enemies as children. My father spent whole seasons

Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find.

His face lit up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise

As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending

Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons

For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died.

We learned new words for things. The decade changed.

The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed

For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. The second time,

The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is-

So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

Tracy K. Smith's two previous collections of poems, Duende and The Body's Question, won the James Laughlin Award and the Cave Cavem Poetry Prize. Life on Mars will be published by Graywolf Press in May. Smith teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.