16. Looking at Them Asleep (Sharon Olds)
“What do you know?”
Si alguien nos pregunta qué sabemos pensamos en datos, información, conocimiento del tipo proposicional, el que cabe en una frase que bien puede ser verdadera o falsa.
Pero ya se sabe que el “saber” y el “conocer” son más que esto, y que hay un montón de habilidades que se saben, que son como el respirar, pero que no son fáciles de articular o que si se articulan, no expresan bien lo que son. Las virtudes también “se saben” pero porque “se viven”. O el amor, la más forma más alta de saber, da las mejores entendederas porque es un conocimiento “desde dentro” de lo que se ama.
Hoy he tenido reunión con alguien que sabe muchas cosas. Es coronel, graduado de la U.S Air Force y Harvard, doctor en filosofía, y un largo etcétera. Pero nada de esto me impresiona tanto como lo que comunica con su sola presencia. Me han vuelto asombrar su caballerosidad y su sabiduría. No me apetecía nada la reunión y he salido agradecida. Si de algo me sirve llevar ese mini-diario, espero que sea para recordar su generosidad y el apoyo que ha sido en los últimos meses.
Las madres, expertas en el amor, sí que saben muchas cosas. Es la asignatura definitiva, la que determinará si lo que sabemos es paja o materia resistente al fuego.
Que nos pregunten, “What do you know?” y podamos responder con unos cuantos nombres propios.
LOOKING AT THEM ASLEEP
Sharon Olds
When I come home late at night and go in to kiss them,
I see my girl with her arm curled around her head,
her mouth a little puffed, like one sated, but
slightly pouted like one who hasn't had enough,
her eyes so closed you would think they have rolled the
iris around to face the back of her head,
the eyeball marble-naked under that
thick satisfied desiring lid,
she lies on her back in abandon and sealed completion,
and the son in his room, oh the son he is sideways in his bed,
one knee up as if he is climbing
sharp stairs, up into the night,
and under his thin quivering eyelids you
know his eyes are wide open and
staring and glazed, the blue in them so
anxious and crystally in all this darkness, and his
mouth is open, he is breathing hard from the climb
and panting a bit, his brow is crumpled
and pale, his fine fingers curved,
his hand open, and in the center of each hand
the dry dirty boyish palm
resting like a cookie. I look at him in his
quest, the thin muscles of his arms
passionate and tense, I look at her with her
face like the face of a snake who has swallowed a deer,
content, content—and I know if I wake her she'll
smile and turn her face toward me though
half asleep and open her eyes and I
know if I wake him he'll jerk and say Don't and sit
up and stare about him in blue
unrecognition, oh my Lord how I
know these two. When love comes to me and says
What do you know, I say This girl, this boy.
Excelente!