Languido e rubato

No podía sentarme ocho o diez horas diarias al piano. Vivía para cada segundo. Piensen en Godowsky. Me apabullaba. Me llevaría quinientos años adquirir un mecanismo igual. ¿Pero qué consiguió con eso? Fue un hombre desgraciado y compulsivo, que no se sentía feliz si no estaba sentado al piano. ¿Gozó la vida? Me dio qué pensar.

-Arthur Rubinstein

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I’m dead.

As the processes of earth
strip off the colour of the skin:
take the brown hair and blue eye

and leave me simpler than at birth,
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon entered the cold sky.

Of my skeleton perhaps,
so stripped, a learned man will say
“He was of such a type and intelligence,” no more.

Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore

the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.

Time’s wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.

Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion,

not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled,
leisurely arrive at an opinion.

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I’m dead.

Keith Douglas (England, 1920-1944)