Pura Lopez Colome

Nunca después/Never again

Nunca después

Oí a alguien mencionar con crudelísima ansiedad
los Apeninos
avanzando por el túnel atemporal de la anestesia,
recuerdo acorralado, aunque no mío,
una nube deshilachada entre cornisas,
un algodón de nácar en la lengua.
Ningún paisaje
surgió espontáneamente
ofreciendo elementos de un mundo bien distinto
que dejara con la boca abierta, sin habla,
sin poder describir o definir esa belleza,
su insufrible, intolerable, hórrida armonía,
su equilibrio doloroso.
Desde la cóclea intuí el mensaje en clave,
qué cumbres merecían ser
de Maltrata,
un paradigma de estrías expresivas,
un rostro carcomido entre senderos;
cuáles multiplicaban su presencia llenándola de ceros,
Mil,
surcando paso a paso el eje volcánico del norte,
cicatrizando en frío su territorio;
o si resultaría quimera tildar
de Borrascosas
alturas cortadas a la medida
para arrojarse, precipitarse
e ir rodando entero,
luego quebrado,
después poco a poco desmembrado
porque ya nada, en serio nada, tiene caso,
porque no “vale la pena vivir”,
como afirmaba el arzobispo Fulton J. Sheen,
emergiendo sin cuerpo
por las bocinas del radio en la lengua de Rambal,
a temprana hora
los domingos de mi infancia:
el son nido, en arrullo.
“Nadie sabe para quién trabaja”,
se repetía después en la cocina de la casa.
Si bien entonces no entendía esa frase,
hoy puedo salir de dudas con una equivalente:
“Ahora caigo”.
Gracias al “prelado”
y a su cursi intensidad predicatriz,
vi (aunque suene raro
que el oído impulse la visión
y además sea desquiciante)
mi trayecto pendular
del color pálido al marino
en un salón hostil
de un febrero de otro siglo.
Azul gasa de una herida
o pabellón de hamaca,
pluma de pavo real a contraluz,
envolvía mi pensamiento,
sus entrañas criminales, manta de cielo,
cabello de ángel arrogante
recién lavado y suelto:
tan apenino que sin motivo

vale la pena morir.

(Del libro Borrosa Imago Mundi, FCE, México, 2021)






















Never Again

I heard someone, with cruel anxiety, mention
the Apennines,
barreling through the timeless tunnel of anesthesia,
a cornered memory, yet not my own,
a cloud shredded between cornices,
a nacreous cotton ball on my tongue.
No landscape
arose spontaneously
to offer up the elements of a quite different world
that would leave me open-mouthed, speechless,
incapable of describing or defining that beauty,
its insufferable, intolerable, hideous harmony,
its dolorous balance.
Down in my cochlea, I intuited the coded message,
what pinnacles deserved to be
part of Maltrata,
a paradigm of expressive striations,
a gnawed face between trails;
which ones multiplied their own presence, filling up with zeros,
A Thousand,
step by step scoring the volcanic axis of the north,
scarring up that territory in the cold;
or if it turns out to be a chimera, to label
it Wuthering
Heights cut down to size
in order to leap, rush
and go rolling down the whole thing,
and later to be broken down,
then little by little dismembered
because nothing, seriously nothing, really counts,
because it’s not "worth living",
as Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen affirmed,
bodilessly emerging
from the radio speakers
in the language of Rambal,
during the early Sunday
hours of my childhood:
a nest song, a lullaby.

"Nobody knows who works for whom,”
they’d say later in the kitchen of the house.
Although I didn’t understand that phrase then,
today I can formulate a literal equivalent:
"Now I fall".

Thanks to the "prelate"
and his intensely cheesy preaching,
I saw (although it sounds weird
to say the ear leads to vision,
and it’s maddening, too)
my pendulum path
from pale to navy
in a hostile room
in the February of another century.
Blue gauze from a wound
or a pavilion of hammocks,
a backlit peacock feather,
enveloped my thought,
its criminal entrails, blanket of heaven,
the hair of an arrogant angel
freshly washed and let loose:
so Apennine that for no reason

it’s worth dying for.
Translated by Forrest Gander

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About Pura Lopez Colome

Pura López Colomé (1952, México) is a poet, essayist and translator. She has published nearly 20 books, has been translated into several languages. Among many recognitions, she has been awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in Poetry and the Inéz Arredondo Prize on Literary Trajectory. She is a member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. She lives in Cuernavaca, México.