'o mar das horas humanas', por Catherine Barnett

Cheguei a Catherine Barnett pelo The New Yorker. Está entre os melhores poetas actuais que conheço. Este "Human Hours" é um bom exemplo:

John Locke says children don’t understand elapsed time,
and when I was a girl it was true
and it remains true—

It’s been three hundred years and still my feelings for Locke
must pass unrequited.
I keep his book in my satchel

with other pleasures—
lipstick, Ricola, matches, binder clips, and a tiny bar of soap
stolen from the Renaissance Inn

where I sometimes cheat on Locke with another man.
At least objects endure—
see how my old sofa holds up!

Locke would look pretty good lying here
with his long face, his furrowed brow and center part,
he who too quickly flourished

and outraced this crowded place.
La duration, I said, trying to roll my “r”
when some new French friends asked

what I’d been thinking about.
John Locke et la duration.
They thought I said l’adoration,

which is also true.
Turns out duration is not a French word,
no matter how badly I pronounce it.

The correct term is la durée,
another word I mispronounce
though once I passed a lovely durée

riding my rented Vélib’ from the Seine
to the Sacré-Coeur,
where had I planned in advance

I could have spent the night in adoration.
Instead I only leaned my bike against the church
and looked out across the sea of human hours.

Catherine Barnett, "Human Hours"

Dois poemas mais antigos (2012), que me vou atrever a traduzir:

Chorus

Everyone asks what we’re afraid of
but we aren’t supposed to say.
We could put loneliness on the list.
We could put this list on the list,
its infinity. We could put infinity down.
Who knows why we’re here, it’s a “mystery.”
We’re getting older,
and when no one’s watching
we climb right into it.

Catherine Barnett, The Game of Boxes

                         Toda a gente pergunta de que é que temos medo
                         Mas é suposto não dizermos.
                         Podíamos pôr a solidão na lista
                         E podíamos pôr essa lista na lista,
                         a sua infinidade. E podíamos pôr o infinito.
                         Sabe-se lá quem somos, é um "mistério".
                         Ficamos mais velhos,
                         E quando ninguém está a ver,
                         Trepamos direitinhos para lá.

Categories of Understanding

I’m studying the unspoken.
“What?” my son asks.
“What are you looking at?”
But there is no explaining,
I can only speak the way light
falls, the way the cotton sheet
lays itself over his sleeping or resting
or dissolving body, touching him with
its ephemera, its oblivion.

Catherine Barnett, The Game of Boxes

                       Ando a estudar o indizível.
                       "O quê?" pergunta o meu filho.
                       "De que andas à procura ?".
                       Mas não tem explicação,
                       Só posso dizer do modo como a luz
                       desce, o modo como o lençol de algodão
                       se deita sobre o seu corpo que dorme ou descansa
                       ou se dissolve, tocando-o com
                       a sua efemeridade, o seu oblívio.

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Catherine Barnett nasceu (1960) em Washington, D.C., e estudou na Universidade de Princeton. Vive em S. Francisco.