#wayne dodd

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

"Of Rain and Air" by Wayne Dodd

All day I have been closed up inside rooms, speaking of trivial matters. Now at last I have come out into the night, myself a center

of darkness. Beneath the clouds the low sky glows with scattered light. I can hardly think this is happening. Here in this bright absence

of day, I feel myself opening out with contentment. All around me the soft rain is whispering of thousands of feet of air

invisible above us.

[anintimacy]

Wayne Dodd, “Of Rain and Air”

All day I have been closed up inside rooms, speaking of trivial matters. Now at last I have come out into the night, myself a center of darkness. Beneath the clouds the low sky glows with scattered light, I can hardly think this is happening. Here in this bright absence of day, I feel myself opening out with contentment. All around me the soft rain is whispering of thousands of feet of air invisible above us.

[tamsoj]

Wayne Dodd, from A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, “Of Rain and Air”

[au-dedans]

Nancy Rexroth - IOWA

Ré-édition de l’ouvrage de Nancy Rexroth, IOWA, aux éditions University of Texas Press. Un fascinant bijou d’onirisme, de poésie, de candeur et de brutalité mêlés. Son épigraphe consiste en l’extrait d’un poème de Wayne Dodd, “Looking, Late at Night“.

Dust, glare, heat - nothing else anywhere: no other houses, no trees, no one dying of cancer in some airless room out of sight. But this is the picture, this is the one scene that keeps rising at night like a summons, call me out into the white spaces beyond this narrow focus, to where I imagine I will find my self, lying darkly among the pale weeds and sunflowers, like some deep-red psyche of the tropics, just dying to blossom.

On découvre entre autres dans la préface une très belle lecture d’IOWA par Alex Soth, datée de 2016.

Photographies : Nancy Rexroth.

[ochoislas]

POEMA NOCTURNO

Siempre es de tarde en algún lugar de la mente, ese largo flujo lento del mediodía hasta la noche, sesgos de papamoscas contra el sol como ineludible dicha. Alto en los olmos gigantes, zurren cigarras entonándose tras diecisiete años para el ahora. Cierro los ojos. Todo está justo

donde debe estar: la casa, la cerca, el soto de cerezos ovillado contra el gallinero. En la cocina mi madre lleva cuencos de calor de acá para allá, sin parar, como la eterna vida. La yerba, todo a mi alrededor está pleno de movimiento, medrando hacia la perfección.

Ahora, en el oscurecido presente, escucho a mi propio hijo pequeño que vuelve a casa a cenar, la noche ya empezando a formarse en su mente, luciérnagas que atirantan la tierra y el cielo. Para ahí. Déjalo correr sin término.

*

NIGHT POEM

It's always afternoon somewhere in the mind, that long slow drift from noon to night, scissortails slanting across the sun like inevitable happiness. In the giant elms above, cicadas buzz their seventeen-year tune-up for now. I close my eyes. Everything is right

where it should be: the house, the fence, the grove of cherries snug against the henhouse. Inside the kitchen my mother carries bowls of heat back and forth, back and forth, like eternal life. The grass, everything around me is filled with motion, spreading toward perfection.

Now, in the darkening present, I hear my own small son coming home to supper, the evening already beginning to form in his mind, fireflies pulling the earth and sky together. Stop there. Let it go on forever.

Wayne Dodd

di-versión©ochoislas

[ochoislas]

SÍ

Hay días que las carreteras repinan como montañas, y de sopetón descubres algo que de nuevo

es nuevo. Aletas blanco de leche en el vientre de una trucha, cárdeno de sierra. Una corzuela presa

en el haz de los faros tal noche aquel verano feliz. Menudos pechos que la chica vecina descubría

al fosco bochorno de agosto durmiendo en el porche cuando ambos teníais quince.

O quizá un prado lleno de pequeñas flores blancas sin nombre, entrevisto por la ventanilla lateral

de algún instante. O la calina de hojas que echaban los árboles de Ohio en abril.

O también el olor conocido de la muchacha que de pronto está cerca, como un recuerdo

del futuro. Toda tu vida se abre para recibir este instante

o despedirlo. El sabor de la dulce yerba alta en tu lengua, la tierra húmeda bajo tus pies,

tu espalda: el cielo es tan azul como en la infancia, como —ah sí— sus ojos.

*

YES

Some days the roads rise up like mountains, and all at once you discover something new

again. Milk white fins on the belly of a brook trout, purpled with mountains. A young doe caught

in the glare of headlights one night that summer you were happy. Small breasts the girl next door exposed

to the dark heat of August as she slept on the porch when you were both fifteen.

Maybe it's a meadow full of small white flowers you can't name, glimpsed through the side window

of some moment. Or the haze of leaves trees first put on in April in Ohio.

Or perhaps it is the familiar smell of the girl who is suddenly beside you, like a memory

of the future. All your life opens to let this moment in

or out. The taste of long grass sweet on your tongue, the moist earth beneath your feet,

your back: the sky is as blue as in childhood, as, yes, ah, her eyes.

Wayne Dodd

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[ochoislas]

HISTORIA BREVE

Al resplandor del sol la mica chisca de las rocas

en las montañas en el desierto

parvos ojos de luz lucen cada día hacen señas

pero los hoyos que la gente abre bajo sus pies cada día se colman

de oscuridad da igual lo que metan dentro no ven nada

*

BRIEF HISTORY

In the glare of the sun’s eye mica glints out of rocks

in the mountains in the desert

tiny pools of light each day they shine they beckon

but the holes the people dig beneath their feet each day fill up

with darkness no matter what

they put inside they see nothing

Wayne Dodd

di-versión©ochoislas

[ochoislas]

LA LUZ DE LAS ESTRELLAS

Qué aprisa cruza los cielos la luz de las estrellas:

qué aprisa huyen su muerte y la nuestra,

el anónimo, desvaneciente fulgor . . .

Cómo las marcas por que nos conocemos en este mundo

son nuestro único barrunto de la eterna estancia del alma

en la amada tierra.

*

THE LIGHT THE STARS MAKE

How the light the stars make races across the sky:

How it races away from their deaths as well as ours,

the anonymous, disappearing glow . . .

How the certain places we know ourselves in the world by

are the only inkling we have the soul is forever

on the loved earth.

Wayne Dodd

di-versión©ochoislas