Los bosques son sistemas complejos que los científicos aún no terminan de descifrar. Los árboles se comunican a través de la red que forman sus raíces y se ayudan a sobrevivir compartiendo nutrientes. Pareciera, a veces, que los árboles tienen una gran sabiduría.
Es difícil saber si son en esencia misteriosos o si el imaginario colectivo ha representado a los árboles de esa manera. En todo caso, eso es irrelevante. Lo que importa es la experiencia que cada persona tiene con ellos, y cómo los dota de significado.
Cada uno de los siguientes poemas no sólo ofrece una forma de conectar con los árboles sino que también desdobla un nuevo universo interpretativo. Y lo más hermoso de todo es que por cada persona que lea uno de estos poemas, existirá una nueva forma de pensarse en (y con) el mundo.
Tree At My Window
Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963)
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.
No llamo a los muertos por su nombre
Reza Mohammadi
NO LLAMO a los muertos por su nombre
pero uno a uno los voy poniendo
en el árbol del difunto:
hacia dentro crece,
el sol dora sus raíces
y sus frutos son un limbo fértil
de añejas palabras.
Song of the Trees
Mary Colborne-Veel (1861-1923)
We are the Trees.
Our dark and leafy glade
Bands the bright earth with softer mysteries.
Beneath us changed and tamed the seasons run:
In burning zones, we build against the sun
Long centuries of shade.
We are the Trees,
Who grow for man’s desire,
Heat in our faithful hearts, and fruits that please.
Dwelling beneath our tents, he lightly gains
The few sufficiencies his life attains—
Shelter, and food, and fire.
We are the Trees
That by great waters stand,
By rills that murmur to our murmuring bees.
And where, in tracts all desolate and waste,
The palm-foot stays, man follows on, to taste
Springs in the desert sand.
We are the Trees
Who travel where he goes
Over the vast, inhuman, wandering seas.
His tutors we, in that adventure brave—
He launched with us upon the untried wave,
And now its mastery knows.
We are the Trees
Who bear him company
In life and death. His happy sylvan ease
He wins through us; through us, his cities spread
That like a forest guard his unfenced head
’Gainst storm and bitter sky.
We are the Trees.
On us the dying rest
Their strange, sad eyes, in farewell messages.
And we, his comrades still, since earth began,
Wave mournful boughs above the grave of man,
And coffin his cold breast.
El caminante-fragmento
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)
Los árboles son santuarios. Quien sabe hablar con ellos y sabe escucharlos, descubre la verdad. Ellos no predican doctrinas ni recetas. Predican, indiferentes al detalle, la originaria ley de la vida.
El árbol dice: en mí hay escondido un núcleo, una luz, un pensamiento. Soy vida de la vida eterna. Único es el propósito y el experimento que la madre eterna ha hecho conmigo. Únicos son mi forma y los pliegues de mi piel, así como único es el más humilde juego de hojas de mis ramas y la más pequeña herida de mi corteza. Fui hecho para formar y revelar lo eterno en mis más pequeñas marcas.
El árbol dice: mi fuerza es la confianza. No sé nada de mis padres y no sé nada de los miles de hijos que cada año nacen de mí. Vivo, hasta el final, el secreto de mi semilla y de nada más me ocupo. Confío que Dios está en mí. Confío que mi misión es sagrada. Y de esta confianza vivo.
Faithful Forest
Alberto Ríos
I will wait, said wood, and it did.
Ten years, a hundred, a thousand, a million—
It did not matter. Time was not its measure,
Not its keeper, nor its master.
Wood was trees in those first days.
And when wood sang, it was leaves,
Which took flight and became birds.
It is still forest here, the forest of used-to-be.
Its trees are the trees of memory.
Their branches—so many tongues, so many hands—
They still speak a story to those who will listen.
By only looking without listening, you will not hear the trees.
You will see only hard stone and flattened landscape,
But if you’re quiet, you will hear it.
The leaves liked the wind, and went with it.
The trees grew more leaves, but wind took them all.
And then the bare trees were branches, which in their frenzy
Made people think of so many ideas—
Branches were lines on the paper of sky,
Drawing shapes on the shifting clouds
Until everyone agreed that they saw horses.
Wood was also the keeper of fires.
So many people lived from what wood gave them.
The cousins of wood went so many places
Until almost nobody was left—that is the way
Of so many families. But wood was steadfast
Even though it was hard from loneliness. Still,
I will wait, said wood, and it did.
