Photo: Bart Nagel.
Donald Hall was a poet born in Handem, Connecticut, in 1928. He is considered one of the most important poets of his generation. He published his first book at the age of 16. Since then, he has published poetry, essays, theater, stories, books about baseball and a good number of works for children. He graduated from Harvard University in 1951 and continued his studies at Oxford until 1953. He worked as a university professor or poetry editor in Paris Review until he settled on the family farm at Eagle Pond in New Hampshire with his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon. His books include: Exiles and Marriages (1955), The Dark Houses (1958), The Yellow Room: Love Poems (1971), The Happy Man (1986), The One Day (1988), The Old Life (1996), Without (1998) o The Back Chamber (2011). In 2006 he was named Poet Laureate of the United States, succeeding Ted Kooser and passing the baton to Charles Simic. In 2010, President Barack Obama presented him with the National Medal of Arts. He died in Eagle Pond in 2018. His books have been published in our country such as The painted bed (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2014) or Without (Sonámbulos Ediciones, 2012) book that addresses Kenyon’s illness and treatment, both with a translation by Juan José Vélez Otero. We present a selection of his poetic work.
***
The painted bed
“Even when he danced upright
through the gardens of the Nile
built Necropolis.
Ten million industrious cells
they carried stones through my blood
to build a white museum.”
Macabre, disgusting and terrible
It is the plea of bones,
shrunken thighs and arms
in thin bags of meat
hanging from a skeleton
that held muscles, and fat.
“I rest in the painted bed
consuming me, attentive
to the journey I undertake
to rest without pain
in the palace of darkness,
my body next to your body.”
***
white apples
when my father had been dead for a week
I woke up
with your voice in my ear
I sat on the bed
and I held my breath
and I stared at the pale closed door
white apples and the taste of stone
if you called me again
I would put on my coat and rain boots.
***
The perfect life
Unicorns envy their cousins
horses have a smooth forehead.
The horses cry because their horns are missing.
The mountains maintain the desire
to become equations
partial differentials
that in turn want to be poems, or dogs,
or the Pacific Ocean,
or whiskey, or a gold ring.
The man with the gallows around his neck
envy the other who caresses
a gun in a roadside hotel room.
***
Postcard: January 22
I got stronger during the summer and fall
and now I can bear your death. I feed him,
I bathe her, rock her, and change her diapers.
It raises its small skull, calm
and trembling. Smiles, spits, poops
on the toilet, learn to read and multiply.
I see her grow, prosper, develop.
She is her mother’s favorite girl.
***
Independence Day Letter
Five in the morning. Fourth of July.
I go out to Eagle Pond to walk the dog,
I’m wearing the leather coat
to combat the cold of the morning,
I look at the water lilies that cling to each other
like cold yellow fists
as I face the new day
twelve weeks after that Tuesday
when they told us you were going to die.
This afternoon I will settle the outstanding invoices
and I will write to a friend about your book
and I’ll watch the Red Sox baseball game.
He’ll take Gussie out for a walk again.
I’ll put some Stouffer’s in the microwave.
A lady is coming from Bristol
to see your mother’s Ford
which is parked next to your Saab
in the second hand car park
of dead women.
Andover fireworks tonight
They will have to be celebrated without me,
because I’m going to go to bed soon to read
The Man Without Qualities
without much concentration
because I keep watching you die.
Tomorrow I will wake up at five
to start the tenth Wednesday
following the Wednesday that we buried you.
***
In the small cabin of the car
Passing time
on the hospital couch
between Jane’s bedroom
and the window, in this sad
room where we suffer,
I fit syllables
in prosaic verses.
William Butler Yeats
censured with anger
“the poetry
of passive suffering.”
Friends and strangers
they send us letters
talking about strength and courage.
What else can we do
But what are we doing?
Should we cry lying down?
Well we do it. Sometimes
driving the honda
with the windows closed
early this fall
from the modest motel
to Jane’s bed,
I scream and scream without stopping.
***
love poem
when I fall in love
I lead my horse
to the burning stable.
I reserve a cabin
on the shining Titanic.
Annoyance to the daring leopard.
I read the Monitor
and I look at the obituaries
looking for my name
***
summer kitchen
In the bright month of June it was placed in the sink with a glass of wine,
and listened to the thrushes,
and crushed garlic in the twilight light.
I watched him cook from my chair.
I pursed my lips
while I was walking with the pots,
and tasted the sauce with the tips of his fingers.
«It’s ready. Let’s go,” he said.
“You light the candle.”
We ate and talked, and went to bed,
and we slept. It was a miracle.
