El arte de ahogarse
Me pregunto cómo empezó esto
de ver la vida pasar ante los ojos
mientras te ahogas, como si el pánico, como si el acto de hundimiento,
pudiera alterar el tiempo hacia tal presión, décadas
devastadoras en el desenfreno de tus desesperados minutos finales.
Después de caer de un barco de vapor o de ser arrastrado
por el alud de una crecida, no esperabas acaso
un repaso sin prisa, una mano invisible
que diera vuelta las hojas de un álbum de fotos-
tú subido a un petiso o soplando las velitas con un sombrero de cumpleaños.
¿Qué tal un corto animado, una presentación con diapositivas?
¿Tu vida dicha en un ensayo, o en una fotografía prototipo?
¿No sería cualquiera de estas opciones mejor que este flash repentino?
Toda tu existencia pasa estallando en tu cara
en un abrir y cerrar de ojos el estallido de tu biografía-
no los tres largos volúmenes que imaginaste.
Los sobrevivientes habrán creído en un resplandor
aquí, algún relámpago verdadero partiendo las aguas,
una última luz antes de que todas las lucen se apagaran,
iluminándote con todo su tonelaje megalítico.
Pero si algo brilla frente a tus ojos
mientras desciendes, es probable que sea un pez,
una fugaz mancha curva y plateada saliendo disparada,
que no tiene nada que ver con tu vida o tu muerte.
La marea te llevará, o el lago lo aceptará tal cual es
mientras te hundes en el musgoso desorden del fondo,
dejando atrás aquello que ya olvidaste,
la superficie, ahora invadida por un gran tránsito de nubes.
Billy Collins, Manhattan, 1941
Versión ©Silvia Camerotto
imagen de Zac Macaulay
The Art of Drowning
I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.
How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.
Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,
a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.
How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.
Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,
a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.
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