Grace Nichols "Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman"
Авторка: Грэйс Николс (Grace Nichols)
Название: "Ленивые мысли лентяйки и другие стихотворения" ("Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman")
Год: 1989
Страна: Гайана
Грейс Николс родилась в 1950 году в Джорджтауне, закончила Университет Гайаны, работала учительницей (1967-1970), занималась журналистикой. В 1977 году переехала в Великобританию.
Этот сборник мне очень понравился! Грейс Николс смело пишет о женской сексуальности, воспевает лень, пародирует Шекспира и составляет заговор против переизбытка власти белых мужчин. Для нее нет запретных тем, она может писать и о "серьезных" вещах, и о небритых подмышках, переполненном мочевом пузыре или менструации. Много боди-позитива и юмора.
Часть стихотворений написаны на конвенциональном английском, часть - на афроамериканском диалекте. Подборка под катом (на английском).
Dust
Dust has a right to settle
Milk the right to curdle
Cheese the right to turn green
Scum and fungi are rich words
Grease
Grease steals in like a lover
over the body of my oven.
Grease kisses the knobs
of my stove.
Grease plays with the small
hands of my spoons.
Grease caresses the skin
of my table-cloth,
Getting into my every crease.
Grease reassures me that life
is naturally sticky.
Grease is obviously having an affair with me.
The Body Reclining
(With a thought for Walt)
I sing the body reclining
I sing the throwing back of self
I sing the cushioned head
The fallen arm
The lolling breast
I sing the body reclining
As an idolent continent
I sing the body reclining
I sing the easy breathing ribs
I sing the horizontal neck
I sing the slow-moving blood
Sluggish as a river
In its lower course
I sing the weighing thighs
The idle toes
The liming knees
I sing the body reclining
As a wayward tree
I sing the restful nerve
Those who scrub and scrub
incessantly
corrupt the body
Those who dust and dust
incessantly
also corrupt the body
And are caught in the asylum
Of their own making
Therefore
I sing the body reclining
(liming - West Indian expression for standing aroundd, idling away the time.)
Who Was It?
Who was it I wonder
introduced the hairless habit?
I have an interest
though I will not shave the armpit
No Gilette
I will not defoliage my forests
Also, let the hairline of the bikini
Be fringed with indecency
Let 'unwanted body hair' straggle free
O Mary Grant
O Estee Laud
O Helena Frankinstein
With Apologies to Hamlet
To pee or not to pee
That is the question
Whether it's sensibler in the mind
To suffer for sake of verse
The discomforting slings
Of a full and pressing bladder
Or to break poetic thought for loo
As a course of matter
And by apee-sing end it.
The Decision
In restaurants he fed her
In bed said how he loved her
but she decided to leave him
because he was squeamish
Now she has a new lover
who doesn't feed her
or tell her he loves her
but who buries his face
in plain curiosity of her taste
And tells her how good she is O
And tells her how good she is.
Eve
Of all the women haunting
the thin pages of the Bible
I would have to give it to Eve.
Virgin Mary got stuck with a permanent halo
and an inconceivable bundle.
Other Mary followed Christ about
too much like a refugee.
Cooking Martha should have tossed the salad
in the direction of the beatific pair.
Veiled Salome danced the head off the baptist
but couldn't have been very bright.
Wily Delilah managed to get herself unwiled.
Reaping Ruth was far too obliging.
Lot's wife... what can I say about her?
No, of all the women haunting
the thin pages of the Bible,
it would have to be Eve - indigenuous Eve
who not only came back with the apple
but also with the eel of the first menses.
Newly hatched. Coyly clasped.
Winter-Widow
The winter-widow's at it again.
Screwing her icicle heels
down to the bone.
Tossing back her icy veil,
Planting her burning kisses,
Leaving a rake of frosty finger-blades.
O pity the winter-widow whose autumn-husband
Has died a brown and leafy death.
On stars
Stars are the nipples
of angels
pressed against the face
of heaven.
On Lucy
A bundle of bones
A bundle of premises
The archeologist
Who unearths our first little African Mother
Unearths me, and you too.
Люси
Spell Against Too Much Male White Power
There is too much male white power at loose in the world
There is too much male white power at loose in the world
The smell of Pretoria
The breath of Pentagon
The eye of the Kremlin
How can I trap it
How can I embalm it
How can I roll it up
like a burial shroud
and put it away
Or at least
How can I persuade it
How can I dissuade it
How can I dissipate it
and spread it thin thin
across my loaf
which of course
would have to be eaten
There is too much male white power at loose in the world
There is too much male white power at loose in the world
How can I cull it
How can I curb it
How can I muzzle the hound
Or at least
How can I bemuse it
How can I confuse it
and like the tower of Babel
bring it all down
O I am a cutter of cataracts
A salter of tongues
There is too much male white power at loose in the world
There is too much male white power at loose in the world
How can I rebound
the missiles and rockets
How can I confound
multinational octopuses
Or at least
How can I remove the 'Big Chiefs'
from the helm
How can I put them to sit on beaches
quiet, sea-gazing, retired old men.
Even Tho
Man I love
But won't let you devour
even tho
I'm all watermelon
and starapple and plum
when you touch me
even tho
I'm all seamoss
and jellyfish
and tongue
Come
leh we go to de carnival
You be banana
I be avocado
Come
leh we hug up
and brace-up
and sweet one another up
But then
leh we break free
yes, leh we break free
And keep to de motion
of we own personality
Ode to My Bleed
Red warm
or livery
Shocking pink
or autumny
I will not part
with my cyclic bleed
my soft seed
Month after month
it tells me who I am
reclaiming me
Even as the tides
reclaim the sands
It reminds me of birth
It reminds me of death
It reminds me of the birth in death
of seasons
The moon's bright pull
The first primeval fire
lit in the forest temple
Where I watched
O so long ago.
My Black Triangle
My black triangle
sandwiched between the geography of my thighs
is a bermuda
of tiny atoms
forever seizing
and releasing
the world
My black triangle
is so rich
that it flows over
on to the dry crotch
of the world
My black triangle
is black light
sitting on the threshold of the world
overlooking
all my deep probabilities
And though
it spares a thought for history
my black triangle
has spread beyond his story
beyond the dry fears of parch-ri-archy.
Spreading and growing
trusting and flowing
my black triangle
carries the seal of approval
of my deepest self.
Emerald Heart
But I have journeyed deep
into the emerald heart
of my country
Slept at mountaintop
with the curled knowledge
that Kanaima* could devour my sleep
I ate labba
drank creek water**
waded up to my knees
through all the vast harshness
the irredeemable beauty
Like a simple peasant woman
I weep
for all the harvests
that could have been
(Kanaima - Amerindian figure of death.
There's an old Guyanese belief that if you eat labba (wild meat) and drink creek water, you will return to Guyana.)
A Poem for Us
Today I'm going to make a poem for us
I get out the big ware bowl
and wooden spoon
I reach for the flour in the box
that says: GARDEN OF EDEN
(Before the advent of the Serpent)
I add the simple awara-seed ring you gave
the granite and rainbow miracle
still amazing me
I add our butter love
I add your chain
(it makes a hell of a rattle)
I find the tightly screwed down bottle
with my woman howl
The container with your man pain
Now I'm a dealed in mud and water
Now I'm a dealed in mud and water
Giving shape
Giving shape to our unborn
The child who watches us from some place.
Who is both happy and sad. Watching us