La torre rota
La cuerda de la campana que convoca a Dios al alba
me despacha como si me doblase al toque de difuntos
de un día concluido –para deambular por el césped de la catedral
del hoyo al crucifijo, pies helados en la escalera al infierno.
¿No has escuchado, no has visto ese cuerpo
de sombras en la torre, cuyos hombros mecen
carrillones antifonales lanzados antes
de que las estrellas sean capturadas y disociadas en los rayos de sol?
Las campanas, digo, las campanas rompen la torre;
y se balancean no sé hacia dónde. Sus lenguas impregnan
membranas con la médula, mi larga y diversa partitura
en intervalos rotos… Y yo, ¡su sacristán esclavo!
Llenan y levantan el coro de encíclicas ovales
los abismos vacíos. ¡Encalladas voces muertas!
los abismos vacíos. ¡Encalladas voces muertas!
Pagodas, campanarios de dianas voladoras–
¡Oh ecos en hilera que se derrumban en la tierra!...
Y así fue que entré al mundo roto
para rastrear la compañía visionaria del amor, su voz
un instante en el viento (no sé a dónde fue)
no para retener largo tiempo cada elección desesperada.
Mi palabra vertí. Pero ¿fue acaso afín, marcada
por ese tribunal monárquico del aire
cuyo muslo es el bronce de la tierra, que golpea las Palabras de cristal
en heridas prometidas una vez a la esperanza– hendido en la desesperación?
Las usurpaciones intensas de mi sangre me dejaron
sin respuesta (¿podría la sangre sostener una torre tan alta
dando con la pregunta verdadera?) –¿o es aquella cuya
dulce mortalidad provoca el poder latente? –
Y a través de su pulso escucho, contando los golpes
mis venas recuerdan y suman, encendidas y seguras
el ángelus de las guerras que mi pecho evoca:
lo que tengo sano, único ahora, y puro…
Y construye, en el interior, una torre que no es de piedra
(ninguna piedra puede tocar el cielo) –sino el deslizamiento
de piedras, – alas visibles de silencio diseminadas
en círculos azules, ampliándose mientras se hunden.
La matriz del corazón, bajen la mirada
que es santuario del lago tranquilo y eleva una torre…
el cómodo, alto decoro de ese cielo
abre su tierra, y levanta al amor con su aguacero.
Hart Crane, Garrettsville, 1899- Golfo de México, 1932
De Hart Crane: Complete Poems and Selected Letters, Langdon Hammer, New York, The Library of America, 2006
Versión © Silvia Camerotto
The Broken Tower
The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn
Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell
Of a spent day - to wander the cathedral lawn
From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.
Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps
Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway
Antiphonal carillons launched before
The stars are caught and hived in the sun's ray?
The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower;
And swing I know not where. Their tongues engrave
Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score
Of broken intervals ... And I, their sexton slave!
Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping
The impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain!
Pagodas campaniles with reveilles out leaping-
O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain! ...
And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.
My word I poured. But was it cognate, scored
Of that tribunal monarch of the air
Whose thighs embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word
In wounds pledges once to hope - cleft to despair?
The steep encroachments of my blood left me
No answer (could blood hold such a lofty tower
As flings the question true?) -or is it she
Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?-
And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes
My veins recall and add, revived and sure
The angelus of wars my chest evokes:
What I hold healed, original now, and pure ...
And builds, within, a tower that is not stone
(Not stone can jacket heaven) - but slip
Of pebbles, - visible wings of silence sown
In azure circles, widening as they dip
The matrix of the heart, lift down the eyes
That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower...
The commodious, tall decorum of that sky
Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.
Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell
Of a spent day - to wander the cathedral lawn
From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.
Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps
Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway
Antiphonal carillons launched before
The stars are caught and hived in the sun's ray?
The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower;
And swing I know not where. Their tongues engrave
Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score
Of broken intervals ... And I, their sexton slave!
Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping
The impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain!
Pagodas campaniles with reveilles out leaping-
O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain! ...
And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.
My word I poured. But was it cognate, scored
Of that tribunal monarch of the air
Whose thighs embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word
In wounds pledges once to hope - cleft to despair?
The steep encroachments of my blood left me
No answer (could blood hold such a lofty tower
As flings the question true?) -or is it she
Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?-
And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes
My veins recall and add, revived and sure
The angelus of wars my chest evokes:
What I hold healed, original now, and pure ...
And builds, within, a tower that is not stone
(Not stone can jacket heaven) - but slip
Of pebbles, - visible wings of silence sown
In azure circles, widening as they dip
The matrix of the heart, lift down the eyes
That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower...
The commodious, tall decorum of that sky
Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.
