John Ashbery: Three Poems from "Some Trees" in English and Catalan

THREE POEMS FROM SOME TREES
by John Ashbery

In 1956 the Yale University Press published the collection Some Trees in their Yale Younger Poets Series. This first-published book by 28-year-old John Ashbery didn’t immediately take the poetry world by storm but that was soon to come. The now classic Some Trees continues to be regularly reprinted in English. Melcion Mateu Adrover, winner of the prestigious Octavio Paz Poetry Award (1998) and a contributing editor to TBR, recently translated Some Trees into Catalan, the first-ever translation of Ashbery’s poetry to appear in Catalan. The bilingual editon, published by Edicions 62, is due out early in 2001. TBR is pleased to present three selections from the collection.

Some Trees

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

The Painter

Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea's portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

So there was never any paint on his canvas
Until the people who lived in the buildings
Put him to work: "Tryusing the brush
As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,
Something less angry and large, and more subject
To a painter's moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer."

How could he explain to them his prayer
That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
He chose his wife for a new subject,
Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
As it forgetting itself, the portrait
Had expressed itself without a brush.

Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush
In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
"My soul, when I paint this next portrait
Let it be you who wrecks the canvas."
The news spread like wildfire through the building'
He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
To malicious mirth: "We haven't a prayer
Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!"

Others declared it a self-portrait.
Finally all indications of a subject
Began to fade, leaving the canvas
Perfectly white. He put down the brush.
At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush
As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.

Grand Abacus

Perhaps this valley too leads into the head of long-ago days.
What, if not its commercial and etiolated visage, could break through the
     meadow wires?
It placed a chair in the meadow and then went far away.
People come to visit in summer, they do not think about the head.
Soldiers come down to see the head. The stick hides from them.
The heavens say, "Here I am, boys and girls!"
The stick tries to hide in the noise. The leaves, happy, drift over the dusty
     meadow.
"I'd like to see it," someone said about the head, which has stopped
     pretending to be a town.
Look! A ghastly change has come over it. The ears fall off - they are
     laughing people.
The skin is perhaps children, they say, "We children," and are vague near the
     sea. The eyes-
Wait! What large raindrops! The eyes-
Wait, can't you see them pattering, in the meadow, like a dog?
The eyes are all glorious! And now the river comes to sweep away the last of
     us.
Who knew it, at the beginning of the day?
It is best to travel like a comet, with the others, though one does not see
     them.
How far that bridle flashed! "Hurry up, children!" The birds fly back, they
     say, "We were lying,
We do not want to fly away." But it is already too late. The children have
     vanished.

Author bio:

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. He is the author of nineteen books of poetry, including, most recently, Girls on the Run: A Poem (1999) and Wakefulnes (1998), Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He has received innumerable awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award for Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975). Ashbery was also the first English-language poet to win the Grand Prix de Biennales Internationales de Poésie (Brussels). He is a former Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and is currently the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He divides his time between New York City and Hudson, New York.

Two on-line interviews with John Ashbery (from 1985 and 1988) by Jacket’s John Tranter are well worth a look and both touch on the publication of Some Trees.
See Jacket magazine #2: Special Ashbery Issue (1998)

See also on-line: John Ashbery: The Academy of American Poets

índex | navegació cat original en anglès

TRES POEMES D’ALGUNS ARBRES
John Ashbery

John Ashbery (Rochester, Nova York, 1927) té ja diversos llibres traduïts al castellà (a part d’altres llengües): Autorretrato en espejo convexo, (traduït per Javier Marías, Madrid: Visor, 1990), Galeones de abril (Madrid: Visor, 1994), ¿Oyes, pájaro? (Madrid: Cátedra, 1999), Diagrama del flujo (Madrid: Cátedra 1996), però aquest és el primer cop que es tradueix en llengua catalana. Ell és el màxim representant de l’anomenada "Escola de Nova York", acompanyat dels poetes Frank O’Hara i Barbara Guest, i probablement, el poeta nord-americà viu més important dels nostres temps i el més reconegut des que el 1975 va rebre els premis Pulitzer, National Book Award i National Book Critics. L’historiador i crític Harold Bloom ha considerat el seu paper en la literatura de la segona meitat del segle XX comparable al de poetes com T.S. Eliot i Wallace Stevens durant la primera, i també el valora com un dels poetes nord-americans més importants des de Walt Whitman.

Alguns arbres (1956) fou el volum que el donà a conèixer al públic, i es publicarà properament a Edicions 62 en format bilingue i amb la traducció de Melcion Mateu i Adrover que aquí presentem.

ALGUNS ARBRES

Són sorprenents: s’uneix
Cadascun amb el seu veí, com si parlar
Fos una acció estàtica.
Disposats casualment

Per trobar-se tan lluny, aquest matí,
Del món com si estiguéssim d’acord
Amb ell, tu i jo
De sobte som allò que els arbres proven

De dir-nos que som:
Que el simple fet que siguin allà
Vol dir alguna cosa; que aviat
Podrem tocar, estimar, explicar.
I contents de no haver creat

Aquesta placidesa, sentim el que ens envolta:
Un silenci que és ple de sorolls,
Una tela en la qual apareix

Un cor de somriures, un matí d’hivern.
Amb una llum misteriosa, bellugant-se,
Els nostres dies mostren tal reserva
Que aquests accents ja semblen la seva pròpia defensa.

EL PINTOR

Assegut entre el mar i els edificis,
Li agradava de fer-ne el retrat.
Però igual que els infants creuen que la pregària
És tan sols el silenci, esperava que el tema
Emergís de la sorra, i agafant un pinzell,
Es retratés ell mateix a la tela.

Així que mai no hi hagué pintura a la tela
Fins que els que vivien als edificis
L’animaren a treballar: "Prova amb el pinzell
Com a mitjà per a la teva fi. Escull, per a un retrat,
Alguna cosa menys vasta i furiosa, un tema
Més adient per als estats d’ànim d’un pintor, o potser una pregària."

Com podia explicar-los la seva pregària
Perquè la natura —i no l’art— usurpés la tela?
Prengué la seva dona com a tema,
La va fer enorme, com edificis
En runes, com si oblidant-se d’ell mateix, el retrat
S’hagués expressat sense un pinzell.

Amb pocs ànims, mullà el pinzell
Al mar, mentre murmurava, sincer, una pregària:
"Ànima meva, quan pinti aquest retrat,
Vull que siguis tu qui malmeti la tela."
Les notícies s’escamparen com foc entre els edificis.
Havia tornat al mar per cercar-hi tema.

Imagineu-vos un pintor crucificat pel seu tema!
Massa cansat, fins i tot per alçar el pinzell,
Provocà alguns artistes que guaitaven des dels edificis
A la burla malèvola: "Ara no tenim cap pregària
Per posar-nos sobre una tela
O fer que el mar segui perquè li facin un retrat."

D’altres ho consideraren un autorretrat.
Finalment tot el que hi havia de tema
Es començà a esvair, deixant la tela
Totalment blanca. Deixà estar el pinzell.
De sobte, un udol, que també era una pregària,
Sortí de l’aglomeració dels edificis.

El llençaren a ell, el retrat, des del més alt dels edificis,
I el mar devorà la tela i el pinzell
Com si el tema hagués decidit quedar-se en una pregària.

GRAN ÀBAC

Potser també aquesta vall porta al cap de dies passats.
Què, apart del seu rostre comercial i pàl·lid, passaria entre els filferros del
        prat?
Hi col·locà una cadira enmig i se’n anà ben lluny.
L’estiu, la gent ve de visita, no pensen en el cap.
Els soldats davallen per veure el cap. El pal s’amaga.
Els cels proclamen: "Nois i noies, sóc aquí!"
El pal prova d’amagar-se entre el soroll. Les fulles, felices, cauen sobre el
        prat polsós.
"M’agradaria veure’l", diu algú referint-se al cap, que s’ha aturat i pretén
        ser una ciutat.
Mireu! S’ha produït un canvi horrible. Se li cauen les orelles: són gent que riu.
La pell potser són infants que diuen: "Nosaltres, els nois", i resulten vagues
        a prop del mar. Els ulls...
Espereu! Quines gotes de pluja més grans! Els ulls...
Espereu, no els veieu xerrant pel prat, com un gos?
Tots els ulls són gloriosos! I ara ve el riu per endur-se el darrer dels nostres.
Qui ho sabia, en començar el dia?
És millor viatjar com un cometa, amb els altres, encara que no se’ls vegi.
Què lluny que llampegaren les brides! "De pressa, nois!" Els ocells se’n
        tornen, diuen: "Mentíem,
no volem anar-nos-en". Però és massa tard. Els infants s’han esvaït.

SOBRE EL TRADUCTOR:

MELCION MATEU ADROVER (Barcelona, 1971) és graduat per Cornell University en Literatura Comparada i Llicenciat en Filologia Hispànica per la Universitat de Barcelona. És autor de Vula evident (Premi Octavio Paz de Poesia, 1998) i traductor, entre d'altres, de Michael Ondaatje i David Guterson.

© John Ashbery
© 2000 Melcion Mateu Adrover

These poems are reproduced by TBR with kind permission from the author and Georges Borchardt Agency.

These poems and their translations may not be archived or distributed further without the author's express permission. Please see our conditions of use.

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