"El original es infiel a la traducción" (Borges)

luni, 12 august 2013

Frank O'Hara, "The Day Lady Died"


It is 12:20 in New York a Friday  
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine 
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner 
and I don’t know the people who will feed me 
 
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun 
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy 
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   
in Ghana are doing these days
                                   I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard) 
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life    
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do 
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or    
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine 
after practically going to sleep with quandariness 
 
and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE 
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and    
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and 
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton 
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it 

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of 
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT  
while she whispered a song along the keyboard 
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

Niciun comentariu:

Trimiteți un comentariu