POESIA
A mi també em desplau això. Hi ha coses
que són importants més enllà d’aquestes ximpleries. Llegint-ho,
però, amb un perfecte menyspreu,
hom descobreix que, malgrat tot, conté quelcom de veritable:
mans que estrenyen, ulls que s’esbatanen, cabells que,
si cal, poden eriçar-se.
El rat-penat que segueix esbategant,
un elefant que empeny, un incansable llop sota un arbre,
un immutable crític que contrau la pell
com un cavall quan se sent una mosca a sobre, el fanàtic
del base-ball, l’estadístic –no ens oposem als documents mercantils, als llibres
escolars, als informes comercials- aquests fenòmens
són importants. Però estrafets conscientment
per mig poetes, el resultat no és poesia.
Ho sabem. L’afició a la tosca matèria primera,
a tot allò que és veritable, és amor a la poesia.
Trad. Agustí Bartra. (Antologia de la lírica nord-americana)
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all / this fiddle./ Reading it, however, with a / perfect contempt for it, one / discovers in / it after all, a place for the genuine./ Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise/ if it must, these things are important not because a / high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because / they areuseful. When they become so derivative as to / become unintelligible, / the same thing may be said for all of us, that we/ do not admire what / we cannot understand: the bat / holding on upside down or in quest of something to / eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf / under a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that /
feels a flea, the base-ball fan, the statistician--/ nor is it valid to discriminate against 'business documents and /school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must / make a distinction however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the / result is not poetry,/ nor till the poets among us can be /
'literalists of the imagination'—above insolence and triviality and can present / for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall / we have it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,/
the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and / that which is on the other hand / genuine, you are interested in poetry.
http://american-poetry.suite101.com/article.cfm/marianne_moores_poetry