20 junio 2022

Camuflajes

"El lenguado"

                                    Soy                            

lo gris contra lo gris. Mi vida
depende de copiar incansablemente
el color de la arena,
                    pero ese truco sutil                                             
que me permite comer y burlar enemigos
me ha deformado. He perdido la simetría
de los animales bellos, mis ojos
y mis narices
han virado hacia un mismo lado del rostro. Soy            
un pequeño monstruo invisible
                    tendido siempre sobre el lecho del mar.
Las breves anchovetas que pasan a mi lado
creen que las devora
una agitación de arena                                                          
y los grandes depredadores me rozan sin percibir
mi miedo. El miedo circulará siempre en mi cuerpo
como otra sangre. Mi cuerpo no es mucho. Soy
una palada de órganos enterrados en la arena
y los bordes imperceptibles de mi carne                            
no están muy lejos.
A veces sueño que me expando
y ondulo como una llanura, sereno y sin miedo, y más grande
que los más grandes. Yo soy entonces
toda la arena, todo el vasto fondo marino. 

José Watanabe en Cosas del cuerpo, 1999.

16 enero 2022

Una carta de amor XIII


"Posted in Trieste
 21 January, 1926

I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn't even feel it. And yet I believe you'll be sensible of a little gap. But you'd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this -But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don't really resent it.

However I won't bore you with any more. [...] 

Please forgive me for writing such a miserable letter.

Carta de Vita Sackville-West a Virginia Woolf (1926).