Mick Imlah
Michael Ogilvie Imlah
(26 septiembre 1956 a 12 enero 2009), más conocido como Mick Imla, fue un poeta escocés y editor.
Imla se crió en Milngavie cerca de Glasgow, antes de trasladarse a Beckenham, Kent, en 1966 fue educado en Magdalen College, Oxford, donde posteriormente enseñó como Junior Fellow.
Imla murió en enero de 2009 a los 52 años como consecuencia de la enfermedad de motor neurone disease. Fue diagnosticado con esta enfermedad en diciembre de 2007.
Bibliografía:
The Zoologist's Bath (Oxford: Sycamore Press, 1982), 15 pages, ISBN 978-0-906003-04-6
Birthmarks , the first full book of his poetry (Chatto Windus, 1988), 56 pages, ISBN 978-0-7011-3358-0
Penguin New Poets 3: Glyn Maxwell , Mick Imlah, Peter Reading (1994), ISBN 978-0-14-058742-5
Diehard , booklet ( Clutag Press , 2006) ISBN 978-0-9547275-9-8
The Lost Leader , the second full book of his poetry before his death ( Faber and Faber , 2008), ISBN 978-0-571-24307-5
Medallas de plata
Aquí en la última vuelta del maratón un cruel
muro invisible o alambrada o foso
ha detenido al campeón de Bavaria, que yace
inconsciente, a cincuenta yardas del champán...
—A la medida de su novia, quien a los dieciséis
ganó el salto alto femenil en los juegos de Munich
(donde masacraron a doce atletas israelíes)
como lo hizo aquí— ¿qué nos dice ella de su caída?
Detengan la repetición, algo anda mal; ella se atraganta;
cubre el monitor con su chándal; gime
y al fin dice: "Es que... (al fondo sobre la barra
alguien curva su espalda), es que está muerto"
(y en ese espasmo vemos un campo lleno de él,
de veras masacrado: habitantes de la villa olímpica,
tratando de atrapar con cucharas los huevos que se riegan)
"...como en su última carrera en Helsinki".
Y nos sentimos aliviados de que haya medallas de plata,
que haya resurrecciones fáciles, y regresos
de las resacas más negras; felices de compartir
la mentira de que lo que cuenta es hacer tu mejor esfuerzo;
de saber que los débiles, perdidos, olvidados,
y hasta el más insignificante de los germanos muertos,
pueden tropezarse con los instrumentos de la gloria
y ganar su minuto sin cortes en la cinta magnética;
de saber que pronto iremos rumbo a casa, manejando
al atardecer, por habituales caminos de castaños,
a unirnos a los muchos en los que confiamos
que no se darán por aludidos —es sólo otro día fallido;
de que la joven y alta alemana usó la licencia
de decir "está muerto" en el más suave
sentido atlético, para decir que a su amigo
(no un inmortal de pista y campo) se le acabó el gas.
Antología de la poesía actual en las Islas Británicas (Trilce Ediciones, México, 2000, selec. y trad. de Carlos López Beltrán y Pedro Serrano).
Iona
Where are you taking us, sir?
the crew needed to know;
but since by the final day
my guiding star,
instinct and purpose both, had strayed so far
off the monitor – I found I couldn't stay
for fear of the answer.
To tell the truth
I had given up on youth; would only stew
in the chemical toilet, the door half-
open, a 'cry for help', till out of the blue
a nurse ducked
from the cockpit holding you, and I
was face to face with my pilot!
*
In the weeks before you were born
the head did warn
me not to give over the stage at once
to baby talk: and so we stood our ground
when from among your breathings-out were told
two voluntary sounds,
a rudimentary yes and no.
But now, when all the words
we care about are yours, I have to tender
our deep surrender;
as in a suit of dungarees you go
groping your way to sense
like Milton, blind before he felt
the wall's resistance.
*
Already you discern what the artist meant
in an old poster of mine, the 'Mars'
of Velazquez: the war god in his afterprime
released too soon
from that perpetual service; sat
in his demob nakedness and gloom,
only his helmet on, almost
a souvenir, muscles smoking away,
until you up and say
– Poor tin soldier man!
He's thinking about things!
*
My right hand is Nessie's head,
her neck my dripping arm. How old
is the dinosaur? Forty
or fifty million years.
Can the dinosaur sing? No,
too old; but likes to be soothed
by others singing.
I open her thumb–
and-finger beak
at least to let her speak
in her quavery Triassic,
'Take me to your leader!'
– to which you instantly,
I haven't got any leader.
*
What, meanwhile, are my own terms?
Darling – 'little' – Mädchen – the same
Suspicious argot I used to spy on.
*
Strange, that we dwell so much
sometimes, on self and such,
that we can spend an age without
a clear view out:
when, if I asked the mirror once
in the way of an old queen,
to frame how things might look
twenty or thirty visits thence,
all it reflected back was white
and unrefracted light, the mean
prophetics of a closed book.
Of course, it was not allowed to show
or we to know
that you were coming all the time,
my perfect rhyme;
how you would seize the reins, Iona,
riding my shoulders over the hill
or rarely sitting still,
your hands spread on my knees, my jeans
the sidelines of your throne.
Succession is easy: first it was them,
then me for a bit; and now it's you.
*
Granted your repertoire
has lumps in it,
of Shrek and Cinderella;
but there’s prodigious poetry too,
a magic spring
in the sweet Cordelia thing
you once undid me with –
Let’s laugh through all the days, till the water
comes over our eyes …
or, which is more my line – not
mawkish, I think, or maudlin:
In Oxford Church, there are two Marys;
one of them has got a baby
and one of them hasn’t got a baby.
Mick Imlah
from Selected Poems edited by Mark Ford (London: Faber, 2010)
London Scottish
April, the last full fixture of the spring:
'Feet, Scottish, feet!' – they rucked the fear of God
Into Blackheath. Their club was everything:
And of the four sides playing that afternoon,
The stars, but also those from the back pitches,
All sixty volunteered for the touring squad,
And swapped their Richmond turf for Belgian ditches.
October: mad for a fight, they broke too soon
On the Ypres Salient, rushing the ridge between
'Witshit' and Messines. Three-quarters died.
Of that ill-balanced and fatigued fifteen
The ass selectors favoured to survive,
Just one, Brodie the prop, resumed his post.
The others sometimes drank to 'The Forty-Five':
Neither a humorous nor an idle toast.
Mick Imlah
from The Lost Leader (Faber and Faber, 2008)
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