Photography: Clara Janes. RAE
Clara Janés is a poet, novelist, essayist and translator and was born in Barcelona on a day like today in 1940. She is the daughter of the publisher and poet Josep Janés, and also has a degree in Philosophy and Letters, as well as Maître dès Lettres from the Sorbonne University in Comparative Literature. She is too member of the Royal Spanish Academy.
As a translator in 1997 she obtained the National Translation Award. And his poetic work has also received important awards such as the City of Barcelona Award, City of Melilla Award or the Gil de Biedma Poetry Award. It has been translated into more than twenty languages. Among his titles are the vanquished stars, human limit, Looking for Cordelia, personal anthology o parallaxes. To discover it there goes one selection of poems.
Clara Janés — selection of poems
I will wait patient
I will wait patiently
stalking, like a dog, the moment.
Or I will go through the jungle of your verses
slowly making my way
through hidden paths,
for small gaps
that you have left ajar.
It was at dawn
It was at dawn
sorry for the hour.
Your dream eyelids were silent
under my pillow
and when the first light breaks
was drawn on white
your frown
and your voice murmured a few words.
in the lamp
you left a gesture of fatigue
and then
your look called me
from the roses.
I ran to hug them
and I sat at the table
and on the empty paper
I followed the lines
that your hand slipped
disentangled from fear
the hidden meaning,
from the fear of no longer being to be with,
from the fear of not knowing
if one can embrace that divine mutation
to be in one two,
being ripped
and thus snatching the other from the dead.
and on the page
made vivid sense
the word resurrection.
hurt the tree
hurt the tree,
its fragrance covers me,
oh kind rave
while the stars turn
a flame seduces
the smoke of dreams that cradle me.
Watch over my heart even if I sleep.
suicide island
suicide island
apparently dumb,
start the smile
of your face.
shows the ambiguity
of your aromas,
of your old
whose eyes turn their backs,
of your beautiful young people with the drugged grimace.
In your silence, island,
you talk and talk,
but the option is not limited
to your proposal
Between the past, nothingness or distance
No,
you can't get out, says Holan,
through doors
that on the walls
are
only
painted.
I will let myself die in your silence
I will let myself die in your silence,
that at night you fed me
the fruits of the cherry tree
in your bedroom of shadows
perfume bleeders
and nothing more I wish.
I will let myself die in your silence.
Eyes
you cornered me
and with hatred grabbed my lapels,
you pushed me into a corner
and you hit me
until leaving red blood
the air itself,
and so and everything,
lo and behold i still get up
and looking at you I say:
right now,
At this moment I decide
I will donate my eyes
even if i have to take them
my killer
Step by step
Step by step
distrust those
that they have never considered
suicide.
They are making step by step the way,
blinding himself to the abyss that always haunts man
Enter the math wheel
Of the mattery.
They make themselves invulnerable to despair.
They even tell, coldly,
with the heart.
hands are coming
Hands are reaching out
countless hands,
black hands,
to blind my eyes,
to stop my legs,
to dry my veins,
to perch insistently
along the body
and leave it plunged into black.
They will make their tongues stick out,
teeth,
heart and kidneys,
gut and brain...
Close friend, so far away,
come a moment
and with your games
distract this terrible darkness.
Give me a river of strength
from the womb,
as before.
even enough
to drive away
hands.
these hands
how black
and undaunted
They surround me
I ask
Prisoner of an invincible panic,
and although I know of the futility of all dreams,
from that torturous prison that is life,
I ask for the total autonomy of man
and the right not to justify at all
his existence.