.
Una chica de Boston 1932 que quiso morir en Londres en 1963.Era buena poeta hasta cuando escribía en prosa. Se la pudo seguir con pasos presurosos por los "desfiladeros de granito" de Nueva York, las aceleradas calles de Manhattan, en su hermosa novela La campana de cristal : "Lo miré a escondidas desde debajo de un mechón de pelo" o mirar a las gaviotas alzar el vuelo "una por una, con sus chaquetas color ceniza"; De ella son estos versos.
AMAPOLAS EN OCTUBRE
Ni siquiera las nubes solares pueden esta mañana permitirse
semejantes faldas.
Ni la mujer de la ambulancia,
cuyo rojo corazón florece a través del abrigo tan
asombrosamente...
Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart bloms trough her coat so astoundingly-
Un don, un don de amor,
jamás solicitado
ni por un cielo
A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky
que pálida y llameantemente
quema sus monóxidos de carbono, ni por unos ojos
que el embotamiento detiene bajo sombreros hongos.
Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.
Dios mío, ¿qué soy yo
para que esas bocas tardías se abran a gritos
en un bosque de escarcha, en un amanecer de flores de trigal?
O my God, what am I
That these late mounths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.
SOY VERTICAL
Mejor querría ser horizontal.
No soy un árbol con raíces hondas
en tierra, sorbiendo minerales y amor materno,
refloreciendo así de marzo a marzo,
reluciente, ni orgullo de parterre
blanco de admirativos gritos, muy repintado
y a punto, ignaro, de perder sus pétalos.
Comparado conmigo es inmortal
el árbol, y las flores más audaces:
querría la edad de uno, la temeridad de las otras.
I AM VERTICAL
But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectaculary painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is inmortal
And I want the one's longevity and the other's datting.
THE STONES
This is the city where men are mended.
I lie on a great anvil,
The flat blue sky-circle.
Flew off like the hat of a doll
When I fell out of the light. I entered
The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard.
The mother of pestles diminished me
I became a still pebble
The stones of the belly were peaceable,
The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing.
Only the mouth-hole pipel out,
Importunate criket
In a querry of silences.
The people of the city heard it.
They hunted the stones; taciturn and separate,
The mounth-hole crying their locations.
Drunk as a foetus
I suck at the paps of darkness.
The food tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss my lichens away.
The jewelmaster drives his chisel to pry
Open one stone eye.
Water mollifies the flint lip,
And daylight lays its sameness on the wall.
The grafiers are cheerful,
Hesting the pincers, hoisting the deicate hammers,
A current aqgitates the wires
Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures.
A workman walks by carrying a pink torso.
The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.
My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet at rubber.
Here they can doctor heads, or any limb.
On Fridays the little children come
To trade their hooks for hands.
Dead men leave eyes for others.
Love is the uniform of my bald nurse.
Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.
The vase, reconstructed, houses
The elusive rose.
Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows.
My mendings itch. There is nothing to do.
I shall be good as new.
[ A esta versión sin traducción se puede aplicar la frase: "No sé lo que dice, pero lo que diga me llega al alma."]
Plath,S.: Ariel, poesía Hiperión
Plath,S.:Antología, Visor de Poesía
Plath,S.: La campana de cristal. Edhasa