Robin Myers: Después de Coahuila, Del Río, San Antonio, Chicago y Janesville, en Wisconsin
Viendo una fotografía de mi abuela Estela, a quien nunca conocí
Después de Coahuila, Del Río, San Antonio, Chicago y Janesville, en Wisconsin,
después de aquel trabajo largo y almidonado que tuvo él en la compañía Parker, leyendo
sin palabras, día tras día, el periódico con una de las manos detrás que se alargaba en busca del tazón
algunos con nombres que en la lengua cambiaron de idioma y otros que hincharon
sus bordes ingleses como un mosquitero en el verano, después de los rebozos y las faldas
y los sombreros y los minúsculos violines que debieron tocarle a los vecinos, ninguno
de los cuales se parecía a ellos, cuando se presentaron,
después de la universidad, a la que ella marchó, sola y en contra de las órdenes —luego de que, como se dice
cuando las jovencitas hacen esas cosas, “huyera de su casa”—, después
de su amante egipcio y el horror de los padres de ambos, después de la guerra,
después de que mi abuelo, un filósofo alto, pelirrojo y gesticulador, fuese enviado
a una nave en mitad de un océano repleto de metal, y después de un feroz
brote de varicela que lo hubiera matado pero que en realidad lo rescató
de aquello que diezmara a los demás y en cuya compañía estaba, después de un
hermano muerto y luego otro, el que había querido morir, y antes que
sus hijos, tres de ellos —cuatro, contando al que vivió unos días
antes de que él naciera: Bruce—, mi padre era el segundo, antes de aquella casa en Denver
con jardín trasero, antes de aquellos perros cuyas caras ella tomaba entre sus manos
para lanzar insultos amorosamente en esa lengua que sus padres no hablaban ya
salvo entre ellos, antes del par de años en Lima, antes de que ella diera su permiso a los hijos
de ya no ir a esa estricta escuela católica donde les escocían las palmas de las manos,
antes de que mi padre y su hermano, en la más refulgente acción de triunfo
que puede concedernos una infancia, arrojaran al mar sus libros de texto desde un acantilado,
antes de la casa que ella y mi abuelo habían querido construir en un pueblo de Michoacán
con nombre de columpio —E-ron-ga-rí-cua-ro— y no lo hicieron nunca, antes
que a él se le parara el corazón, antes de aquellos años afligidos que mi padre pasó como asistente de hospital,
pedaleando de forma delirante bajo la nieve rumbo a sus talleres literarios al salir de su turno por las noches,
antes de la otra guerra, de las tres conscripciones de mi padre, salvado cada vez por ésta
u otra báscula, antes de que viese a mi mamá en un aeropuerto, antes de Nueva York
y los suburbios y de mí y de mi hermano y de todos los sitios donde hemos crecido,
antes de abrírsele México de nuevo, al fin, pero no como ella lo había imaginado,
recorriéndolo a solas, rentando una vieja casa en una ciudad con nubes bajas y oscuras escaleras
que subían y bajaban desde el lago —una ciudad más grande ahora, tumefacta
de tráfico a lo largo de sus calles raquíticas, una tierra arrasada en forma tal que la hubiese hecho trizas
de haber vivido como para saberlo—, antes de aquellas cartas que le escribió a mi padre
en sus dos lenguas y antes de haber estado yo al pie de la catedral de Xalapa,
desconociendo si ella había entrado alguna vez ahí —yo no—,
pero con la sospecha de que ella, al menos, había estado allí también, al pie,
mi abuela —de veintisiete, veintiocho años, quizá de treinta—
baila a solas en un vestido blanco, con los brazos ligeros y descalza,
con faldas que en torno a ella lo barrían todo en una ráfaga de gracia,
su rostro oscuro inclinado a la cámara pero sin ver hacia ella,
sonriendo un poco, como si se asombrara a sí misma en silencio,
como si ella supiera que tenía algo hermoso en su interior
y había vivido ahí todo ese tiempo,
y que había decidido,
en ese mismo instante
y con su ayuda,
hablar.
On Seeing a Photograph of My Grandmother, Estela, Whom I Never Met
After Coahuila, Del Rio, San Antonio, Chicago, and Janesville, Wisconsin,
after the revolution and its quicksand borders and her father smoldering in the shuffle,
after his long, starched-collar tenure at the Parker Pen Company, wordlessly
reading the newspaper every day, a hand drifting out behind it to feel for the bowl
of little peppers beside him, after the sister and brothers born in succession,
some with names that changed language on the tongue, some that swelled into
their English edges like a screen door in summer, after the skirts and scarves
and hats and tiny violins they were instructed to play for the neighbors, none
of whom looked very much like any of them, when they came to call,
after college, which she left for, alone and against orders —after, as people say
when young women do such things, she “ran away from home”— after
her Egyptian lover and the horror of both her parents and his, after the war,
after my grandfather, a tall, grinning, ruddy-haired philosopher, was sent
on a ship to the middle of an ocean teeming with metal, and after a ferocious
bout of chicken pox that could have killed him but actually plucked him out
of what slaughtered the others in whose company he’d gone, after one
dead brother and then another, the one who’d wanted to die, and before
her sons, three of them —four, counting the one who lived for just a few days
after he was born: Bruce— my father the second, before the house in Denver
with the garden in back, before the dogs whose faces she’d take in her hands
to lovingly insult in the language her parents had stopped speaking to everyone
but each other, before the two years in Lima, before she let her children
stop going to the steely Catholic school where their palms had smarted,
before my father and his brother flung, in the most resplendent gesture of triumph
a childhood could possibly grant, their textbooks off a cliff and into the sea,
before the house she and my grandfather had longed to build in the Michoacán town
with a name like a swing—Er-on-ga-rí-cua-ro—and never did, before his
stopped heart, before my father’s stricken years as a hospital orderly,
biking delirious in the snow to his writing workshops after the night shift,
before the other war, my father’s three drafts, each time reprieved by this
scale or that one, before he saw my mother in an airport, before New York
and the suburbs and me and my brother and everywhere that’s grown us up,
before Mexico opened itself to her again at last, but not as she’d imagined,
going it alone, renting an old house in a city with low clouds and dark stairs
clambering up and down from the lake —a larger city now, tumefied
with traffic along its skinny streets, land ravaged in ways that would have
pierced her had she lived to know— before the letters she’d write to my father
in her two tongues, and before I stood on the steps of the Xalapa cathedral,
not knowing whether she would have ever gone in —I have not—
but suspecting that she would, at least, have stood here too,
my grandmother —twenty-seven, twenty-eight, maybe thirty—
dances by herself in a white dress, soft-armed, barefoot,
her skirts sweeping up around her in the gust of her grace,
her dark face tilted toward the camera but not looking into it,
smiling a little, as if quietly astonishing herself,
as if she knew she had something beautiful inside her
that had lived there all along
and had decided,
right at that very moment,
with her help,
to speak.
reading the newspaper every day, a hand drifting out behind it to feel for the bowl
of little peppers beside him, after the sister and brothers born in succession,
some with names that changed language on the tongue, some that swelled into
their English edges like a screen door in summer, after the skirts and scarves
and hats and tiny violins they were instructed to play for the neighbors, none
of whom looked very much like any of them, when they came to call,
after college, which she left for, alone and against orders —after, as people say
when young women do such things, she “ran away from home”— after
her Egyptian lover and the horror of both her parents and his, after the war,
after my grandfather, a tall, grinning, ruddy-haired philosopher, was sent
on a ship to the middle of an ocean teeming with metal, and after a ferocious
bout of chicken pox that could have killed him but actually plucked him out
of what slaughtered the others in whose company he’d gone, after one
dead brother and then another, the one who’d wanted to die, and before
her sons, three of them —four, counting the one who lived for just a few days
after he was born: Bruce— my father the second, before the house in Denver
with the garden in back, before the dogs whose faces she’d take in her hands
to lovingly insult in the language her parents had stopped speaking to everyone
but each other, before the two years in Lima, before she let her children
stop going to the steely Catholic school where their palms had smarted,
before my father and his brother flung, in the most resplendent gesture of triumph
a childhood could possibly grant, their textbooks off a cliff and into the sea,
before the house she and my grandfather had longed to build in the Michoacán town
with a name like a swing—Er-on-ga-rí-cua-ro—and never did, before his
stopped heart, before my father’s stricken years as a hospital orderly,
biking delirious in the snow to his writing workshops after the night shift,
before the other war, my father’s three drafts, each time reprieved by this
scale or that one, before he saw my mother in an airport, before New York
and the suburbs and me and my brother and everywhere that’s grown us up,
before Mexico opened itself to her again at last, but not as she’d imagined,
going it alone, renting an old house in a city with low clouds and dark stairs
clambering up and down from the lake —a larger city now, tumefied
with traffic along its skinny streets, land ravaged in ways that would have
pierced her had she lived to know— before the letters she’d write to my father
in her two tongues, and before I stood on the steps of the Xalapa cathedral,
not knowing whether she would have ever gone in —I have not—
but suspecting that she would, at least, have stood here too,
my grandmother —twenty-seven, twenty-eight, maybe thirty—
dances by herself in a white dress, soft-armed, barefoot,
her skirts sweeping up around her in the gust of her grace,
her dark face tilted toward the camera but not looking into it,
smiling a little, as if quietly astonishing herself,
as if she knew she had something beautiful inside her
that had lived there all along
and had decided,
right at that very moment,
with her help,
to speak.
Otros poemas de ROBIN MYERS, aquí
Traducción: Hernán Bravo Varela
Fuente: https://www.revistadelauniversidad.mx/
Imagen: Youtube
Traducción: Hernán Bravo Varela
Fuente: https://www.revistadelauniversidad.mx/
Imagen: Youtube
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