Elizabeth (Liz) Zetlin
Artista visual, cineasta y poeta premiada. (Canadá)
Liz nació en Norfolk, Virginia, y emigró a Canadá en 1969.
Publicaciones de Liz incluyen: Addictions of a Poet Laureate (Always Press, 2008), The Thing With Feathers (BuschekBooks, 2004), Taking Root (Seraphim Editions, 2001), Said the River (Penumbra Press, 1995); Connections (Always Press, 1994), and Ghost of Glenelg (Always Press, 1995), all collaborations with visual artists.
Algunas funciones de la nieve
Para estar quieta. Para tocar
charadas con los árboles,
hacer cosquillas en la espalda de los lagos.
Para la anulación, la aliteración
y la rima. Para refrigerar
las rodillas, nos fuerza a volvernos lentos, a simplificar,
a limpiar los armarios. Para protegernos
y perder peso – el del agua
en las plantas dormidas, el de la tristeza
del resto de nosotros. Para destellar.
Para hacernos salir de abajo
de los patrones cristalizados. Para aclarar la paleta.
Para recordarnos que no tenemos el control.
Para despertar los hombros y doler las espaldas,
hacernos mirar para arriba de lo que sea que estemos haciendo,
para acercarnos a las nubes. Para ser
atmosféricos, traslúcidos, únicos en nuestra especie.
Para parar el tráfico, cerrar las escuelas, interferir las comunicaciones,
cancelar prácticamente todo mientras caemos a la tierra,
para agitar nuestros brazos como alas, convertirnos
en lo que nosotros llamamos ángeles de nieve,
entrar en la quietud, derretirnos.
Versión de Tom Maver
de: Addictions of a Poet Laureate. Always Press, 2008.
Some Functions of Snow
For quiet. To play
charades with the trees,
tickle the backs of lakes.
For obliteration, alliteration
and rhyme. To refrigerate
knees, force us to slow down, simplify,
clean out the closets. To insulate
and lessen loss — of water
from dormant plants, of sadness
from the rest of us. To sparkle.
To make us dig out from under
crystallized patterns. To clear the palette.
To remind us we're not in control.
To awaken shoulders and ache backs,
make us look up from whatever we're doing,
bring us closer to clouds. To be
atmospheric, translucent, one of a kind.
To halt traffic, close schools, disturb reception, cancel
just about everything as we fall to earth,
flail our arms like wings, become
what we like to call snow angels,
enter stillness, melt.
LIMESTONE GHAZALS : 6 POEMS
Elizabeth Zetlin
From: Limestone Ghazals . Always Press.
Lake Huron Alvar
There is a calm here. A ragged
windy, wordless, endless calm.
A cedar grows as a heart might,
low to the ground, far from its start.
Whole forests the size
of a dining room table.
"An ornament on a great teacher's head,"
say the Anishinabe of white cedar.
The dead ones linger and shine,
gesture - you too, you too.
Halfway Log Dump
How stones glow next to skin,
settle into hollow of hand.
I gather up all your greys: from
charcoal to shadow to ash.
Calcareous crush, earth's slow river.
Three turquoise hours, forty green minutes.
These word pebbles are for you. Place
not flowers but stones on my grave.
If the sound of a black hole is b-flat,
what note does limestone make ?
Little Cove
Like a heron stalking its prey, head crooked, jerking slowly forward, I take a step.
The Anishinabe have always been here. Stones, their old people.
If you chisel the word "limestone," you'll find: toe nest, lone steel stem, time, mist, eons, one tone.
I want them all. All the smooth warm ones, each wet one that gleams like a freshwater pearl.
A huddle of ladybugs turns the grey stone saffron, pumpkin, pub-orange.
What we call holy — a few days, some books, most wars, a particular land.
Suddenly the biologist calls in the raven. Such reverence in his stance, his voice.
Burnt Cape, Newfoundland
Where walking at a snail's pace is too fast.
Where tuckamore is a state of mind.
Bergy bits. Cloudberry pie. Tooth-picked
chocolate-dipped marshmallows on iridescent glass.
Not that you can't have "ways," but being set in them,
now that's old.
Lazybeds of potatoes, turnips, cabbage. Roadside
gardens pop up even before the road is paved.
Endemic & endangered, thin as a baby snake:
the barrens willow. Survival of the flattest.
Where five-year-olds hold stones to their hearts
and hockey players think Fernald's braya is cool.
Where wealth is community, not a second VCR.
Where responsibility is as long as the land.
Blast Hole Pond Road, Newfoundland
A window is her TV. One channel
and all the programs she needs.
It's a question of memory and metaphor.
How much can you embrace? Let go?
At lake's edge, back to the setting sun,
only my shadow darkens the stone.
Walking with a woman whose name means
bring into being and rhymes with meets.
I felt authentic, flowed through.
That's why I was crying.
Heathrow
Aer Lingus: seats upholstered with poem shards:
Kiss me specially . . . and with blue black a holy light.
At death, my mother's tongue
grew pale and rounded as stone.
Air Canada sign on seat cushion:
your life jacket is under your seat.
The first time my son brought home
a stone for his own kitchen table. Ah!
Give us this day
without power and glory.
