Margaret Atwood's birthday. selected poems

Margaret Atwood birthday

Margaret Atwood is one of the authors most representative —not to say the most— of contemporary literature company and was born on a day like today in 1939 in Ottawa. Also a screenwriter and literary critic, perhaps his facet as a poet is the least known or followed, eclipsed by the enormous recent popularity of her narrative works, which bear the imprint of her defense of women's rights, social protest and her dystopian plots.

The adaptations that have been made for television as series of titles such as The Handmaid's Tale o Alias ​​Grace They have earned the favor of critics and the public in equal measure. She has been awarded several prizes including the Prince of Asturias of Letters in 2008. But today we bring this selection of poems selected from his work. To discover it and celebrate this birthday.

Margaret Atwood—Poems

Hotels

I wake up in the dark
in a strange room
There's a voice on the ceiling
with a message for me.

repeat over and over
the same absence of words,

the sound that love makes
when it reaches the ground,

forced into a body,
cornered. there is a woman upstairs

faceless and with an animal
stranger who trembles inside her.

He bares his teeth and sobs;
the voice whispers through the walls and the floor;
now she's loose, free and running
downhill to the sea, like water.

Examine the air around you and find
space. In the end, I

penetrates and becomes mine.

Flashbacks to the War of 1837

One of the
things i discovered
in it, and since then:

that the story (that list
of inflated desires and strokes of luck,
setbacks, falls and mistakes that stick
like parachute)

it messes with your mind
on the one hand, and on the other it slides

that this war will soon be between those
tiny ancient figures
that cloud you and dilute you
from the back of the head,
confused, restless, insecure
what are they doing there

and that from time to time they appear with a face
idiot and a bunch of banana hands;
with flags,
with weapons, going into trees
brown stroke and green scribble

or, in deep gray pencil drawing
from a fortress, they hide by shooting
each other, smoke and red fire
that in the hand of a child come true.

Other possible thoughts from below the ground

Down. buried. I can hear
light laughter and footsteps; the stridency
of glass and steel

the invaders of those who had
the forest for refuge
and the fire for terror and something sacred

the heirs, those who raised
fragile structures.

My heart buried for decades
From previous thoughts, still pray

Ah tear down this crystal pride, babylon
cemented without fire, through the subsoil
Pray to my deadpan fossil God.

But they stay. Extinct. I feel
contempt and yet pity: what the bones
of the great reptiles

disintegrated by something
(let's say for him
weather) out of scope
that its simple meaning
of what was good he traced them

felt when they were
persecuted, buried among the soft immoral
insensitive mammals undone.

In front of a mirror

it was like waking up
after sleeping seven years

and find myself with a stiff ribbon,
of a rigorous black
rotten by the earth and the torrents

but instead my skin hardened
of bark and roots like white hair

My inherited face I brought with me
a crushed eggshell
among other waste:
the shattered earthenware plate
on the forest path, the shawl
from India torn apart, fragments of letters

and the sun here has impressed me
its barbaric color

My hands have become stiff, my fingers
brittle as branches
and perplexed eyes after
seven years and almost
blind/buds, who only see
wind
the mouth that opens
and it cracks like a rock on fire
when trying to say

What is this

(you only find
the way you already are,
but what
if you have already forgotten what it consisted of
or you discover that
you've never known)

the man who was

In the field with snow my husband is opening
an X, concept defined before a void;
walks away until it remains
hidden by the forest

When I don't see him anymore
what has become
what other way
mixes in the
weeds, wavers through puddles
hides from alert
presence of swamp animals

To return to
at noon; or maybe the idea
what do I have of him
whatever finds me back
and with him sheltering behind her.

It might transform me too
if he arrives with the eyes of the fox or those of the owl
or with the eight
spider eyes

i can't imagine
what will you see
when i open the door

Source: A low voice


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