que podemos dar forma de declaraciones de la verdad
con el barro y la pintura;
.
que podemos erigir la arquitectura sublime
de las materias de esta tierra;
.
que la grande música está empotrada
en la madera y los metales y las pieles;
.
cuando descubrimos estas cosas
tropezamos con la potencia
– no el misterio –
del arte.
. . .
El profesor McKenzie ha dado lecciones sobre la Filosofía en la Universidad del Caribe (UWI) en Mona, Jamaica. Ha escrito dos novelas y publicó dos poemarios – Contra la linealidad cronológica (Against Linearity, 1993), y La hoja del almendro (The Almond Leaf, 2008).
. . . . .
Earl McKenzie
(born 1943, Mount Charles, St. Andrew, Jamaica)
Silence is My Home
.
If hearing is the last sense to go,
as they say,
then send me home with
Pachelbel’s Canon in D
so that the last thing I hear
is sinful man’s capacity for beauty.
.
If I will cling most tenaciously
to the noises of the world,
it is because
above all else
sound is the purest consequence
of being.
.
So if I let go
of your beauty,
your perfume,
and your smooth skin,
I will cling to the sound of your voice.
.
And if sound
is death’s nearest neighbour
this lover of stillness knows
that silence is my home.
. . .
Wheels of War
.
The killing wheels of war
move army trucks and tanks
into the desert.
.
Among the stories coming out
is a photograph
of a boy refugee
playing with a wheel.
.
At his age I ran wheels
on quiet roads
slicing green hills,
without a soldier in sight.
.
But this boy,
more than the soldiers,
knows the joy
of the invention of the wheel.
. . .
Jazz and Birdsong
.
While listening
to Coltrane’s saxophone
shaping an exquisite melody
I also heard a bird
singing outside.
.
One is art,
they say,
patterns of sound
arranged by human will
and mysteriously tugging
at the heart’s experience.
.
The other is genetically programmed sound,
a mating call, perhaps,
shaped by evolution.
.
Yet, so ordered,
both are divine as grammar.
.
There is divinity, surely,
in jazz and birdsong.
. . .
The Test
.
After the blood test
I went for a walk in the mall.
.
In the store
the music was sickly sweet
as I looked at the clothes
I might wear
as a sick man.
.
In the bookshop
not a single volume
spoke to my condition.
.
In the supermarket
I bought healthy food
too late.
.
As I drove home
I told myself
that sickness is as natural
as a river in spate
or a storm at sea.
.
The result was joyfully negative.
. . .
The Power of Art
.
When we discovered
.
that our voices can become
exquisite musical instruments;
.
that our bodies can be shaped
into powerful dances;
.
that our words can be arranged
into moving poems and stories;
.
that we can form clay and paint
into statements of truth;
.
that we can raise sublime architecture
from the substances of the earth;
.
that great music is embedded
in wood, metals and skins;
.
when we discovered these things
we came upon
not the mystery
but the power of art.
. . .
Earl McKenzie has lectured at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, as Professor in Philosophy. He has written novels and philosophical essays, as well as gathering together his poems into two collections – 1993’s Against Linearity, and 2008’s The Almond Leaf (from which the above poems have been chosen).