BAJAS

¿Quién iba a pensar que la guerra de España

brillaría como una estrella nueva,

al modo de nuestras rimas y poemas?

Que Hilliard derramara su sangre de púgil

por la nieve y el barro de Albacete

y sonriera a la camarada muerte. ¡Salud!

 

Que Charlie Donnelly, pequeño, frágil,

lleno de juventud, palideciera

y  no de miedo;

de qué miserable manera

su vigoroso valor fue abatido,

aquel ritmo, aquel temple de acero,

aquella paz poética, para bendecir

ideas discordantes de hombres diversos…

Ojos azules que quemaban la suciedad y la mentira

apagados por la muerte.

 

Contengo mi aliento;

tantos versos salen de mi tronco

que no puedo extraer su  savia.

 

Quiero ser justo

en este áspero infierno de odios:

la verdad de mi verso

no es otra cosa

que ruido de artillería ligera

y  de fogueo;

puesto que los muchachos de Dublín han luchado

y  se han fundido en aquel suelo extranjero,

donde la guerra arde

como el nacimiento de una estrella.

 

Blanaid Salked.  En Poesía Anglo …  Traducción de Aníbal Nuñez

Blanaid Salkeld (1880–1959), a published poet, actress, writer of verse plays, reviewer, and publisher, is fascinating both as an active participant in literary and artistic circles of early and mid-twentieth century Ireland and as a poet in her own right. In terms not just of style but also of politics, Salkeld is considered neither postcolonial nor properly modernist. Salkeld’s class and access to international influences would appear to disqualify her from subalternity, given the relatively privileged metropolitan circles in which she moved. And yet her metropolis, Dublin, while incubating much powerful creativity, was not a centre for the radical avant-garde experimentalism that had characterized high modernism. Her family had been part of the colonial machinery in India yet she had close working and personal friendships with Dorothy Macardle and other republicans. In this essay, I consider how the transnational poetics elaborated by Jahan Ramazani can re-situate Salkeld’s seemingly anomalous work, moving it from the margins of Irish literature, to the centre of a ‘cross-hemispheric and transhistorical common terrain’, postulated by Ramanzani. I go on to argue that reading Salkeld’s work across modernist and postcolonial discourses enlarges the possibilities for exploring her poetry’s concern with issues of gender and genesis.