Tracy K. Smith - Vida en marte

Then he sits. Birds commence their evening chatter. Someone fires

Charcoals out below. He’ll take a whiskey if I have it. Water if I don’t.

I ask him to start from the beginning, but he goes only halfway back.

That was the future once , he says. Before the world went upside down .

Hero, survivor, God’s right hand man, I know he sees the blank

Surface of the moon where I see a language built from brick and bone.

He sits straight in his seat, takes a long, slow high-thespian breath,

Then lets it go. For all I know, I was the last true man on this earth And:

May I smoke? The voices outside soften. Planes jet past heading off or back.

Someone cries that she does not want to go to bed. Footsteps overhead.

A fountain in the neighbor’s yard babbles to itself, and the night air

Lifts the sound indoors. It was another time , he says, picking up again.

We were pioneers. Will you fight to stay alive here, riding the earth

Toward God-knows-where? I think of Atlantis buried under ice, gone

One day from sight, the shore from which it rose now glacial and stark.

Our eyes adjust to the dark.

Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,

That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip—

When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic,

Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel

Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,

Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere,

Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones

At whatever are their moons. They live wondering

If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know,

And the great black distance they—we—flicker in.

Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last,

Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on

At twilight. Hearing the engines flare, the horns

Not letting up, the frenzy of being. I want it to be

One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial.

Wide open, so everything floods in at once.

And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,

Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.

So that I might be sitting now beside my father

As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe

For the first time in the winter of 1959.

In those last scenes of Kubrick’s 2001

When Dave is whisked into the center of space,

Which unfurls in an aurora of orgasmic light

Before opening wide, like a jungle orchid

For a love-struck bee, then goes liquid,

Paint-in-water, and then gauze wafting out and off,

Before, finally, the night tide, luminescent

And vague, swirls in, and on and on….

In those last scenes, as he floats

Above Jupiter’s vast canyons and seas,

Over the lava strewn plains and mountains

Packed in ice, that whole time, he doesn’t blink.

In his little ship, blind to what he rides, whisked

Across the wide-screen of unparcelled time,

Who knows what blazes through his mind?

Is it still his life he moves through, or does

That end at the end of what he can name?

On set, it’s shot after shot till Kubrick is happy,

Then the costumes go back on their racks

And the great gleaming set goes black.

When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said

They operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed

In papery green, the room a clean cold, and bright white.

He’d read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks,

His eyes exhausted and pink. These were the Reagan years,

When we lived with our finger on The Button and struggled

To view our enemies as children. My father spent whole seasons

Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find.

His face lit-up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise

As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending

Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons

For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died.

We learned new words for things. The decade changed.

The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed

For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. The second time,

The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is—

So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

Nos gusta equipararlo a lo que ya conocemos,

Aunque más grande. Un hombre contra las autoridades. O un

Hombre contra una ciudad de zombis. Un hombre

Que no es, en realidad, un hombre, enviado para entender

A la ristra de estadounidenses de culo inquieto

Que ahora lo persiguen. Un hombre que huye.

Un hombre que debe coger un barco, desechar una carga,

Este mensaje lanzado al espacio … Aunque

Tal vez se parezca más a la vida debajo del mar: silenciosa,

Boyante, extrañamente benigna. Reliquias

De un diseño obsoleto. Hay a quienes les gusta imaginar

A una madre cósmica mirando a través del polvo de las estrellas,

Diciendo sí, sí, cuando nos tambaleamos hacia la luz,

Mordiéndose el labio si titubeamos al borde de algún precipicio. Anhelando

Estrecharnos contra su pecho, ella confía en que todo saldrá bien.

Mientras el padre irrumpe a través de habitaciones contiguas

Vociferando con la fuerza del Venga Tu Reino

Sin preocuparle nada lo que pudiera mordernos con su mandíbula.

A veces, lo que veo es una biblioteca en una población rural.

La amplia sala repleta de estanterías. Y los lápices

En una taza de Tráfico, mordisqueados por todo el vecindario.

Los libros han vivido aquí desde siempre, perteneciendo

Por largos periodos a uno u otro en la breve secuencia

De apellidos, hablando (sobre todo por la noche) a un rostro,

Un par de ojos. Las más extraordinarias mentiras.

Charlton Heston está esperando a que lo dejen entrar. La primera vez lo pidió

[educadamente.

La segunda vez, con fuerza desde el diafragma. La tercera,

Lo hizo como Moisés: con los brazos alzados, el rostro un blanco apócrifo

Camisa impoluta, traje de corte, se inclina un poco al llegar,

Luego se estira. Examina la habitación. Permanece de pie hasta que le hago una señal,

Entonces se sienta. Los pájaros comienzan su charla nocturna. Alguien enciende

Una hoguera afuera. Si me queda, tomará whiskey . Si no, agua.

Le pido empezar por el principio, pero empieza su narración a la mitad.

Así fue una vez el futuro , dijo. Antes de que el mundo se volviera loco .

Héroe, superviviente, la mano derecha de Dios, yo sé que él ve la blanca

Cara de la luna donde yo veo un lenguaje construido con ladrillo y hueso.

Se acomoda erguido en su asiento, toma un largo y melodramático aliento,

Después lo deja escapar. Por lo que sé, fui el último hombre verdadero en la tierra , Y:

¿Puedo fumar? Las voces de fuera se apagan. Los aviones sobrevuelan yendo y viniendo.

Alguien grita que ella no quiere irse a la cama. Pasos sobre nuestras cabezas.

Una fuente en el patio del vecino balbucea para sí, y el aire de la noche

Suena dentro. Eran otros tiempos , dice, comenzando de nuevo.

Fuimos pioneros. ¿Vas a luchar para sobrevivir aquí, cabalgando la tierra

¿Hacia Dios sabe dónde? Pienso en la Atlántida sepultada bajo el hielo,