Querer morrer
Agora que o preguntas, a meirande parte dos días non consigo recordar.
Camiño vestida, sen pegadas desa viaxe.
Logo a case innomeable luxuria regresa.
Nin sequera entón teño nada contra a vida.
Coñezo de sobra as follas de herba que mencionas
os mobles que puxeches baixo o sol.
Pero os suicidas manexan unha linguaxe especial.
Igual ca os carpinteiros, queren saber que ferramentas.
Nunca preguntan por que construír.
Dúas veces me expresei con total simpleza,
posuín o inimigo, devorei o inimigo
aceptei a súa arte, a súa maxia.
Deste xeito, pesada e pensativa,
máis cálida que o aceite ou a auga,
descansei, babexando polo burato da boca.
Xa nin penso en expor o meu corpo á agulla.
Ata a córnea e os mexos sobrantes se perderon.
Os suicidas xa traizoaron o corpo.
Nacidos sen vida, nin sempre morren,
pero, deslumbrados, non dan esquecido unha droga tan doce
que mesmo as nenas ollarían cun sorriso.
Botade toda esa vida debaixo da lingua
que, por si mesma, se torna unha paixón!
A morte é un óso triste; cheo de golpes, diríase
e, no entanto, ela estame a esperar, ano tras ano,
para sandar delicadamente unha vella ferida,
para libertar o meu alento da súa prisión cruel.
Abaneando, así se atopan ás veces os suicidas,
rabiosos ante o froito, unha lúa inflamada,
deixando atrás o pan que confundiron cun bico,
deixando a páxina do libro aberta ao azar,
algo sin dicir, o teléfono descolgado,
e o amor, calquera cousa que fose, unha infección
Anne Sexton
Vive ou morre (1966)
Tradución de Gonzalo Hermo para o Picaversos sobre textos norteamericanos e ingleses
Wanting to die
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.
In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.
I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.
Still-born, they don’t always die,
but dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.
To thrust all that life under your tongue!—
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death’s a sad bone; bruised, you’d say,
and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.
Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,
leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love whatever it was, an infection.
Anne Sexton
Live or die (1966)
Live or die (1966)
sagas 