viernes, 27 de junio de 2014

VOLVERÁS A REGIÓN, JUAN BENET (I)

Aun cuando la educación había caído en desuso en Región, desde la segunda década del siglo, aún seguían abiertas dos escuelas públicas y un instituto de enseñanza media; el patio, ciertamente, se había convertido en una cochera, los porteros habían ido, poco a poco, transformando casi todas las dependencias en corrales pero aún se daba clase y en casi todos los agujereados encerados de las aulas seguían dibujados con tiza, más indeleble que el pirograbado, hipérbolas y elipses, frases de francés y fórmulas de química del tiempo de la monarquía.

Volverás a Región, Destino, pág 24

viernes, 13 de junio de 2014

SCHOOLSVILLE, BILLY COLLINS

Glancing over my shoulder at the past,
I realize the number of students I have taught
is enough to populate a small town.
I can see it nestled in a paper landscape,
chalk dust flurrying down in winter,
nights dark as a blackboard.
The population ages but never graduates.
On hot afternoons they sweat the final in the park
and when it's cold they shiver around stoves
reading disorganized essays out loud.
A bell rings on the hour and everybody zigzags
into the streets with their books.
I forgot all their last names first and their
first names last in alphabetical order.
But the boy who always had his hand up
is an alderman and owns the haberdashery.
The girl who signed her papers in lipstick
leans against the drugstore, smoking,
brushing her hair like a machine.
Their grades are sewn into their clothes
like references to Hawthorne.
The A's stroll along with other A's.
The D's honk whenever they pass another D.
All the creative-writing students recline
on the courthouse lawn and play the lute.
Wherever they go, they form a big circle.
Needless to say, I am the mayor.
I live in the white colonial at Maple and Main.
I rarely leave the house. The car deflates
in the driveway. Vines twirl around the porch swing.
Once in a while a student knocks on the door
with a term paper fifteen years late
or a question about Yeats or double-spacing.
And sometimes one will appear in a windowpane
to watch me lecturing the wallpaper,
quizzing the chandelier, reprimanding the air
.


Navegando a solas por la habitación, DVD EDICIONES poesía, pág 46