28.3.09

rabbit heads


bosch


Si no la han ido a ver, háganlo. En Brujas es una de las mejores películas del 2008, y de ya está en mi top 10 de cintas estrenadas en México en este 2009. Es difícil simplificarla: tiene la estructura de una comedia de enredos, pero su aliento es totalmente trágico, en el sentido clásico del término. Colin Farrell demuestra que sí puede actuar. Nada qué decir, el filme aún está revoloteando en mi cabeza como un sueño o una historia dolorosa ocurrida a un conocido. O como las imágenes de un cuadro del Bosch, referencia inteligente en el filme.

25.3.09

republic

Este es uno de los poemas que me acercó, hace ya varios años, a la poesía. Claro, como miles de niños mexicanos, las estrofas me repelían, los versos eran como dagas bañadas en una sustancia soporífera. Hoy pensé en Heaney y en este poema, en las balas que atemorizan hoy a mi país, donde las palabras parecen haberse esfumado.

From the Republic of Conscience
by Seamus Heaney


When I landed in the republic of conscience
it was so noiseless when the engines stopped
I could hear a curlew high above the runway.
At immigration, the clerk was an old man
who produced a wallet from his homespun coat
and showed me a photograph of my grandfather.
The woman in customs asked me to declare
the words of our traditional cures and charms
to heal dumbness and avert the evil eye.
No porters. No interpreter. No taxi.
You carried your own burden and very soon
your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.
Fog is a dreaded omen there but lightning
spells universal good and parents hang
swaddled infants in trees during thunderstorms.
Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells
are held to the ear during births and funerals.
The base of all inks and pigments is seawater.
Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat.
The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen,
the hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.
At their inauguration, public leaders
must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep
to atone for their presumption to hold office –
and to affirm their faith that all life sprang
from salt in tears which the sky-god wept
after he dreamt his solitude was endless.
I came back from that frugal republic
with my two arms the one length, the customs
woman having insisted my allowance was myself.
The old man rose and gazed into my face
and said that was official recognition
that I was now a dual citizen.
He therefore desired me when I got home
to consider myself a representative
and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.
Their embassies, he said, were everywhere
but operated independently
and no ambassador would ever be relieved.

"From the Republic of Conscience," from Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1998 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

..:: bloggear ::..

a veces es como un diario o una carta para un extraño o la manera en que tus amigos saben en qué andas o un escaparate del ego o de los vicios o de las aficiones

hoy, bloggear es, para mí, un poco como volver a ser yo mismo

k.: ya no te encabronarás cada vez que entras y ves a los "boxeadores esos" en mi última, antigua entrada

1.3.09

..:: pound for pound king ::..