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S I N CO MP RO ME T E RSE CO N NI NG ÚN CE NT RO I DE O L Ó GI CO
E ST A B LE , FRA NK O ´HA R A (B A LT IMO RE , 1 9 26 – LO NG I S L A ND,
1 9 66 ), SE SI NTI Ó LI B RE DE E S CRI B I R MUCHA S CLA S ES
DI FE RE NT ES DE P O E MA S . P E RT E NE CIE NTE A L G RUP O DE
P O ET A S DE L A ES CUE L A DE NUEV A YO RK , S US PO E MA S S ON
RÁ P I DO S , L IT E RA L E S , T RA NS PA RE NT E S; Y S U AMB I CI Ó N, E N
S US P RO P I A S P A L A B RA S , E RA “S E R TÚ MI S MO LA
O B RA ”. ES TO S P O E MA S PE RTENE CE N A THE CO L L E CTE D
P O E MS O F FRA NK O ’HA R A (E D. , DO NA L D A LL E N) , UNI V E RS IT Y
O F CA L I FO RNI A P RE S S , B E RKE L E Y -CA L I FO RNIA , 19 9 5; EN
T RA DUCCI Ó N DE E L E O NO RA G O NZÁ L E Z CA P RIA .
-l
–
Why I Am Not a Painter // I am not a painter, I am a poet. / Why? I think I would
rather be / a painter, but I am not. Well, // for instance, Mike Goldberg / is starting a
painting. I drop in. / “Sit down and have a drink” he / says. I drink; we drink. I look /
up. “You have sardines in it.” / “Yes, it needed something there.” / “Oh.” I go and
the days go by / and I drop in again. The painting / is going on, and I go, and the
days / go by. I drop in. The painting is / finished. “Where’s sardines?” / All that’s left
is just / letters, “It was too much,” Mike says. // But me? One day I am thinking of /
a color: orange. I write a line / about orange. Pretty soon it is a / whole page of
words, not lines. / Then another page. There should be / so much more, not of
orange, of / words, of how terrible orange is / and life. Days go by. It is even in /
prose, I am a real poet. My poem / is finished and I haven’t mentioned / orange yet.
It’s twelve poems, I call / it oranges. And one day in a gallery / I see Mike’s
painting, called sardines.
EL CRÍTICO
The Critic // I cannot possibly think of you/ other than you are: the assassin// of my
orchards. You lurk there/ in the shadows, meting out// conversations like Eve’s
first/ confusion between penises and// snakes. Oh be droll, be jolly/ and be
temperate! Do not// frighten me more than you/ have to! I must live forever.
POEMA
Ya es el 27
del mes
que habría sido mi cumpleaños
si hubiera nacido hoy
pero no
entonces sería
un Escorpión
que simboliza la plata, el dinero, la fortuna
firme en sus propósitos, despiadado en sus actos
y ama al Toro
con su aroma a sándalo
igualmente sí
en vez de
un Cangrejo
que simboliza la inestabilidad, receptividad, sensibilidad
todas las ilidades como un clavicordio
de firmeza interior nada más
dispuesto al bien y al mal por igual
y ama a la Cabra
con su búsqueda solitaria
Poem// Now it is the 27th/ of this month/ which would have been my birthday/ if I’d
been born in it/ but I wasn’t/ would have made me a/ Scorpion/ which symbolizes
silver, money, riches/ firm in aim, coldblooded in action/ loving the Bull/ smelling of
sandalwood/ I do anyway// instead of Cancer/ which symbolizes instability,
suggestibility, sensibility/ all the ilities like a clavichord/ only an interior firmness/
favoring food and evil alike/ loving Capricorn/ with its solitudinous research// but
how could I love other/ than the worldly Virgin/ my force is in mobility it’s said/ I
move/ towards you/ born in the sign which I should only like/ with love
POEMA
Poem // Light clarity avocado salad in the morning / after all the terrible things I do
how amazing it is / to find forgiveness and love, not even forgiveness / since what
is done is done and forgiveness isn’t love / and love is love nothing can ever go
wrong / though things can get irritating boring and dispensable / (in the
imagination) but not really for love / though a block away you feel distant the mere
presence / changes everything like a chemical dropped on a paper / and all
thoughts disappear in a strange quiet excitement / I am sure of nothing but this,
intensified by breathing
POEMA PERSONAL
Personal Poem // Now when I walk around at lunchtime / I have only two charms
in my pocket / an old Roman coin Mike Kanemitsu gave me / and a bolt-head that
broke off a packing case / when I was in Madrid the others never / brought me too
much luck though they did / help keep me in New York against coercion / but now
I’m happy for a time and interested // I walk through the luminous humidity /
passing the House of Seagram with its wet / and its loungers and the construction
to / the left that closed the sidewalk if / I ever get to be a construction worker / I’d
like to have a silver hat please / and get to Moriarty’s where I wait for / LeRoi and
hear who wants to be a mover and / shaker the last five years my batting average /
is .016 that’s that, and LeRoi comes in / and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12 /
times last night outside BIRDLAND by a cop / a lady asks us for a nickel for a
terrible / disease but we don’t give her one we / don’t like terrible diseases, then /
we go eat some fish and some ale it’s / cool but crowded we don’t like Lionel
Trilling / we decide, we like Don Allen we don’t like / Henry James so much we like
Herman Melville / we don’t want to be in the poets’ walk in /San Francisco even we
just want to be rich / and walk on girders in our silver hats / I wonder if one person
out of the 8,000,000 is / thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi / and buy a
strap for my wristwatch and go / back to work happy at the thought possibly so
∇ Extraído de Frank O’Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara (ed., Donald
Allen), University of California Press, Berkeley-California, 1995. Traducción:
©Eleonora González Capria