AND ABOVE ALL
A BURNT GARDEN
IN A CHILDHOOD COUNTRY
MISTS
SOLITUDE
NOVEMBER SYMPHONY
THE BRIDGE
THE HYMN OF THE WINE
DAYS OF FEVER
PEACE
SPEAK TO YOU
THE LEPERS’ CAVE
THE OLD WOMAN OF THE MOON
THE PATH OF SAND
VIRGIN VINE OF AUTUMN
WHEN I’M CURED
DARK ALCOVE
HAVE YOU KEPT A MEMORY
IN THE VAST AND RAVAGED BED
PARIS AT NIGHT
FIRST DAY
QUICKSANDS
RED AND IMMENSE
THIS LOVE
YOU’RE GOING TO SEE WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO SEE
HELENE
IT RAINS
JOY
THE DEAD
NIGHT TIDE
PYRENEES
THE GALLEY
THE LOVER
THE DEPRAVED GARDENER
LIGHT
BUT THERE EXISTS
THE PROWLER
THE OLD AUTUMN APPLE
I EAT THE SAND
ACCEPTANCE
STRANGE FLOWERS
A FAMILY OF TREES
COUPLE OF THE BLACK WATER
DOWNPOUR
FOUNTAINS OF TIME
IN THE FOREST OF SHADOWS
LEAVEN OF PAIN
MEMORY OF YVES CHAMMAH
NEW HOUSE
NO RETURN
O COUNTRY OF SILENCERETURN TO OURSELVES
SHADOWSLAUGHTER OF TIME
SON OF THE NIGHT
TESTAMENT
THE POINT OF CONVERGENCE
IN FRONT OF THE BEECH WOOD
IN THE MOUTH OF THE DEAD
THE WOODS THIS MORNING
VOTIVE
YORICK
FIRM FIG
AT THE PROPER TIME
AT THE LIMIT
BEAUTIFUL AS UNIVERSES
CAME A BRIEF FLASH
THE DRY LAND CRACKS
THE WHITE FLOWER
YOUR SMILE
WHERE ARE YOU GOING ?
WRITE TO BE FOR THE WORLD
SNOW
YES, SPEAK
THROUGH THE WINDOW
EMPTY KEYBOARD
QUIET COUNTRY
SOME EXERCISES OBSERVING THE SKY
THE CUCKOO
GOATS, CENTURIES, KINGS
SEASON OF LIFE OR DEATH
FUGUE TO FIND A SINGLE MOMENT
WOMAN IN GREEN ON THE BEACH
IN THE ETERNAL
PATHWAY
THE ONE WHO SPEAKS TO THIS MOUTH
LONG-WAITED DELIVERANCE
IN THE LONELY QUARTER
I NEED NO MIRROR
A FISTFUL OF AIR
A BEING OF CHANGE AND FIRE
THE LAND WHERE THE POEM IS BORN
I SAY
I RAISE AGAIN
THE NIGHT IN BLOOM
THE DESERT’S SAVAGE ANGEL
REGARDLESS OF LANDSCAPES
ALHAMBRA
IMAGINE
TO BE THERE
CAIRN DE BARNENEZ
PALIMPSEST
CRY
DANGEROUS SPOON
STRANGE JOURNEY
EVERYONE CARRIES IN THEMSELVES A POEM
MIRACLE
MORE FAITHFUL THAN THE BREEZE
GLOOMY NIGHT
THE PLINTHS
I FEEL THE WIND
I WILL WRITE FOR YOU
PIGMENTS
POETRY IMMANENT LIKE GOD
MEMORY
POETS AND PROPHETS
THE EYE AT THE WINDOWPANE
SMOOTH
THE CROSSROADS OF DESIRE
THE DARKNESS OF SUMMER
GREAT SCHISM
UNDER THE GREAT LADDER
THE WALLS DON’T MOVE
TORR-BENN
TURNING ROAD
CANTILENA FOR A BLIND FLAUTIST
THE POEM OF THE YOKE
THE KEY
THEN THE TIME WITHERS
PLAINT
WISDOM
THE TRUMPETS
HAVEN’T YOU HAD ENOUGH
AND ABOVE ALL
And above all that Tomorrow may not learn where I am –
the woods, the woods are full of black berries –
the sound of your voice is like moonlight in the old wells
where the echo, the echo of June comes to drink.
And that nothing pronounce my name down there, in a dream,
the times, the times are fully accomplished –
as a very small tree suffering its first rise of sap
is your pallor in an uncreased robe.
And that the brambles close behind us,
for I am afraid, am afraid of the return.
The great white flowers caress your soft knees
and the shade, the shade is pale with love.
And do not tell the water of the forest who I am;
let my name be as dead as it is now.
Your eyes are the colour of young raindrops,
the young drops on the sleeping pond.
And tell nothing to the wind from the old graveyard:
he would be able to order me to follow him.
Your hair feels the summer, the moon and the earth.
One must live, live, nothing but live ...
Oscar Milosz
A BURNT GARDEN
The garden slopes towards the sea.
Poor garden, blind, flowerless.
From its bench an old woman dressed
in glossy mourning, yellowed with memory and the portrait
watches the boats of time fade.
The nettle in the great emptiness
of two hours, hairy and black with thirst, old.
As at the bottom of the heart of the most lost of days, the bird
of the deaf region chirps in the ashen bush.
It is the terrible peace of men without love.
And I,
I am there also, because this is my shadow; and in the sad and low
heat she has let fall again her empty head on
the breast of the light; but
I, body and soul, I am like the moorings
ready to snap. What is it therefore that vibrates thus in me,
but what is it that vibrates thus and groans I don’t know where
in me, like the rope around the capstan
of the sailboats about to leave? Mother
too wise, eternity, ah, let me live my day!
And no longer call me, Lemuel; for over there
in a night of sun, the idlers
hail, the isles of youth singing and veiled! The soft,
heavy murmur of mourning of the wasps of midday
floats down on the wine and there is folly
in the glance of pink on my dear shady hills.
In the religious darkness, the brambles
have seized sleep by its girl’s hair.
Yellow in the shadow
the water breathes with difficulty under a sky
low and heavy with myosotis.
That other suffers also, wounded by wood
in the side, like the king
of the world; whose heart pours pure, thirst-quenching.
And there is the crystal bird, its songs like seed from its soft throat
in the old, sleepwalking jasmine of infancy.
I will go there, gently lifting up the rainbow
and go right to the tree where the eternal spouse
waits in the mists of the homeland.
And in the fires of time will appear
the unexpected archipelagoes, the ringing galleys.
Peace, peace. All that is no longer.
All that is no longer here, my son Lemuel.
The voices which you hear no longer come from things.
That which has dwelt a long time dark in you
calls you from the garden on the mountain!
From the kingdom
of the other sun! And here, it is the wise fortieth
beloved, Lemuel.
The time poor and long.
A water hot and grey.
A burnt garden.
Oscar Milosz
IN A CHILDHOOD COUNTRY
In a childhood country rediscovered in tears
in a town of beatings of dead hearts
(beatings of flight in a soothing din,
beatings of wings of the birds of death,
black wings lapping on the waters of death).
In a past out of time, sick with charm,
the dear eyes of grief for love still burn
with soft fire of red mineral, of a sad charm,
in a childhood country rediscovered in tears ...
but the day rains on the emptiness of all.
Why have you smiled at me in the old light
and why and how have you recognised me,
strange girl with archangelic eyelids,
ground ivy of summer night on the moon of the stones;
and why and how,
never having known
my face, nor my grief, nor the misery
of my days, have you so suddenly recognised me,
lukewarm, musical, misty, pale, dear,
to die for in the great night of your eyelids?
But the day rains on the emptiness of all.
What words, what terribly old musics
shiver in me from your unreal presence,
dark dove of far-off days, lukewarm, beautiful,
what musics echoing in sleep?
Under what undergrowths of very old solitude,
in what silence, what melody or what
voice of a sick child to find you again, O beautiful,
O chaste, O music heard in sleep?
But the day rains on the emptiness of all.
Oscar Milosz
MISTS
In a great garden of November, a tearful garden
where shiver the abandoned ones of the old suburbs
where the dreary colours of the mists say: always!
Where the beating of the fountains is the word: never …
around a ridiculous bust which meditates,
(Marie, you sleep, your mill goes too quickly)
turns the round of the desperate ones of the old suburbs.
Do you hear the round which cries, in the garden drowned
With blind mist, at the end of the old suburb?
Poor dead amities, burlesque forgotten loves,
O you, falsehoods of an evening, illusions of a day,
around a ridiculous bust which meditates
(Marie, you sleep, your mill goes too quickly)
come dance the black round of the old suburb.
The fog has eaten everything, nothing is merry, nothing irritates
the dream is quite as hollow as the reality.
But in the park where you have known summer
the round, the immense round turns, turns always
friends whom one replaces, lovers whom one leaves …
(Marie, you sleep, your mill goes too quickly …)
I am a great garden of November, at the end of an old suburb.
Oscar Milosz
SOLITUDE
I have woken under the blue of absence,
in the immense midday of melancholy.
The nettle of the collapsing walls drinks the sun of the dead.
Silence.
Where have you led me, blind Mother, O my life?
Into what inferno of memory where the grass thinks,
where the ocean of the times searches by groping its shores?
Silence.
Echo of the precipice, call me! Dementia,
drench your yellow flowers in the spring where I drink,
but that the days passed detach themselves from me!
Silence.
You who have created me, who have dealt me a blow,
you towards whom the aloes, hearts of the chasms, throw themselves,
Father! at your wounded feet will I find peace?
Silence.
Oscar Milosz
NOVEMBER SYMPHONY
It will be exactly as in this life. The same room.
- yes, my child, the same. At the daybreak the bird of the times in the leafage
pale as the dead: now the servants are getting up
and one hears the frozen, hollow sound of the buckets
in the fountain. O terrible, terrible youth! Empty heart!
It will be exactly as in this life. There will be
the poor voices, the voices of winter of the old suburbs,
the glazier with his alternate song
the broken grandmother who under the dirty bonnet
cries out the names of fish, the man with the blue apron
who spits in the hand worn by the stretcher
and howls one knows not what like the Angel of judgement.
It will be exactly as in this life.The same table,
the Bible, Goethe, the ink and its odour of time,
the paper, white woman who reads in the thought,
the pen, the portrait; my child, my child!
It will be exactly as in this life – the same garden
deep, deep, dense, dark. And towards midday
the people will rejoice to be reunited there
who have never met and do not know
one nor the other but this: that it will be necessary to dress up
as for a feast and go into the night
of the vanished, all alone, without love, without lamp.
It will be exactly as in this life. The same alley;
and in the autumn afternoon at the bend of the alley
there where the beautiful road goes down fearfully like the woman
who goes to collect flowers for the sick – listen my child, -
we will meet each other, as in times past here;
and you, you have forgotten the colour of your robe then
but I, I have known only few instants of happiness.
You will be clothed in pale violet, beautiful worried one!
And the flowers of your hat will be sad and little
and I will not know their name: for I haven’t known in life
but the name of a lone sad and little flower, the myosotis,
old sleeper of the gullies of the land of hide-and-seek,
orphan flower. Yes, yes, deep heart! as in this life.
And the obscure path will be there, completely damp
from an echo of waterfalls – and I will talk to you
of the city on the water and of the Rabbi of Baccarach
and of the Nights of Florence. There will also be
the wall crumbling and low where drowsed the odour
of the old, old rains, and a peeling herb
cold and greasy will shake there its hollow flowers
in the mute stream.
Oscar Milosz
THE BRIDGE
The dead leaves fall in the sleping air.
See, my heart, what autumn has done to your cherished isle:
how pale it is!
Such an orphan in the tranquil heart!
The bells ring at St. Louis en l’Isle
for the bargewoman’s dead fuchsia.
Heads lowered, two old and very humble horses, drowsy, take their last bath.
A big black dog barks and threatens from afar.
On the bridge there is only me and my child:
robe faded, weak-shouldered, white-faced,
A bouquet in his hands.
O my child! This time to come!
For them! For us! O my child!
This time to come!
Oscar Milosz
THE HYMN OF THE WINE
Let us empty the cups three times, for the birth of Vesper;
because all sadness is preferable to Tedium.
Already, the Night spreads her wings on the sea
on the sea coloured by carnage and fire and madness!
Let us empty the cups, three times, for the death of Bacchus
and of the Ages which, it appears, have existed.
We have seen float, drifting in the moonlight
the old breast of the god of wines on the putrid water of Lethe.
Let us empty the cups, three times, for the sick
of an abominable century between us; let us water
our despairs so heavy, with glassfuls, heavy,
very dear, whose names, thanks to wine, I no longer know!
Let us empty of all their blood, by three blows of a blade, our hearts,
and Night lie down on our dignified corpses,
and the heart’s wine mingle with the blood of the vines,
for the shame of living is immense in our hearts!
Oscar Milosz
THE VAGUE TERRAINS
How have you come to me, O you so humble, so worried? I no longer know.
Without doubt like the thought of death even in life
but from my ashen Lithuania to the gates of hell of the Rummel
from Bow Street to the Marais and from childhood to old age
I love (as I love mankind with an old love
worn out by pity, anger and solitude), those forgotten terrains
where drops, here too slowly and there too fast
like the white children in the sunless streets, a plant
urban, cold and dirty, without sleep, like the fixed idea,
come with the wind from the cemetery, maybe
in one of those bundles of black fabric, smooth and shiny, the pillows
of the old sleeping women of the riverbanks, in the terrible twilights.
Of all my youth consumed in the south
and in the north, I have above all retained this: my soul
is sick, passing, as the changed grass of the walls:
one has forgotten it, has left it here.
I know one such which obscures a cedar of Lebanon! Vestige
of some beautiful garden of virginal love. And I know, I, that the holy tree
was planted there, formerly, in its soft weather, so as to
bear witness; and the oath fell into the mute eternity;
and man and woman without name are dead, and their love
is dead, and who therefore remembers? Who? You perhaps,
you, sad, sad sound of rain on rain,
or you, my stranger soul. But soon you will forget that and the rest.
And the other, where the great wind, the rain and fog are their church.
When used come the winter of the suburbs; when the barge
used travel in the mists of France, then, Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre,
it was sweet to me to make the tour
of your garden! I used live in the bitterest dissipation
but the heart of the land was already enticing me
and I knew that it strikes not under the cherished
rose-garden; but there where grows my sister nettle, dark, neglected.
Thus, so, if you want to please me – after! Far from here! You
O garden, murmuring, streaming with resurrected flowers,
where every solitude will have a face and a name
and will be a wife,
keep at the foot of the mossy wall from which the lizards
show Ariel the town in the chaste vapours,
for my bitter love a kindly corner of the cold and the mould
and of silence; and when the virgin at the breast of Thumin and of Urim
will take me by the hand and conduct me there, that the sad earthbound ones
remember, recognise me, greet me; the thistle and the tall
nettle and the belladonna, enemy of childhood.
They, they know, they know.
Oscar Milosz
DAYS OF FEVER
What do I want? A jug of ice-cold water,
no more than that. Night and day, that water, in my thought,
trickles gently like a fountain.
It is white, is blue by dint of being fresh,
it comes from a spring or from a full pitcher,
it has that soft silver which blurs the outlines of fish
and the sparkling of a cut glass.
It is of a fine frost, of mist, of pink,
gushing from each bowl in iridescent showers,
sliding from each branch in round droplets.
At the heart of the pitcher, it laughs. It forms a pearl
on its polished belly, like a gay sweat.
In a thousand little waves, for nothing, it breaks
where there only a point like a brightness in a hedge.
It dances on the ceiling, takes pleasure in the ice,
beats against the tiles with its rain. Ah! Those cascades...
it is Niagara, blue-green, Nile-green, jade-green
it is the miraculous water in a river of grace
All the water of the firns, the lakes, the Nordic seas
all the water of Moses’ Rock, the pure water
of an oasis lost in the middle of Africa,
all the water which roars, all the water which murmurs,
all the water, all the water of earth and sky,
all the water concentrated on the chilled hollow of a glass!
I only ask a glass of ice-cold water...
You don’t see then my fingers burning with fever,
my fingers stretched towards the fleeing water,
dry like a plant with a broken stem?
The thirst which torments me is that of the great sands
where the simoon always swirls. I think of nothing
but that trickle of marvellous water, inexhaustible,
where happy fish circulate. Transparency,
freshness... Do I beg for anything else in the world?
Alcarazes, alcarazes, a Moorish coffee
and, in the blue torpor where the drinkers linger,
a glass overflowing among the other glasses,
a glass without subtle colours which adorn it
but filled with that water so cold, clean, clear...
Ah! Take for that water what is left to me to live,
but let it flow in me, tears of frost
gift of winter to this brazier which consumes me.
Do you remember those clear noises, in the foam,
on the banks of a mad stream? I’m thirsty for all those streams,
the hooves of the mules, you remember, washed there,
the feet of the vagabond relaxed there. Dear God,
can’t I drink at least like the meadow, the small shrub,
the mountain dog following the running water?
That water... that water which escapes me always,
which, night and day, obsesses my thoughts...
just let me have two drops of ice-cold water.
Sabine Sicaud
PEACE
How do I imagine it?
Well, I don’t know...
A child maybe, very blonde, and holding in her arms
branches of wisteria?
Maybe smaller still, and knowing only
to smile and babble in a crib tilted
under the fingers of an old woman who hums
Sometimes I think her old too...Beautiful, nevertheless
with the beauty of those Madonnas
which one sees on old stain glass windows. Long ago,
well before the time of windows – it was the face
bent over a spring, in a blue landscape
where of an evening, Greek gods played the lyre.
But only for a moment did she come to sit
at the foot of the olive trees, among the violets.
Bellona had drawn back her bow. It was necessary to flee
and so she fled, the gentle form which one stops only
to menace her again and betray her!
Ever since the earth has been the earth
she flees... I think her old therefore, and no longer dare
To touch the veil which lends her that mystery.
Is she human? I have wished
to see an infant with such tender eyes!
Where? When? On what path must we wait for her
and by what features will they recognise her,
those who have always clothed her with their dream?
Is she in the blue of that day which comes to an end
or in the pink dawn of April?
Drawing further off, the wheat ripe, a peasant with tanned hands,
does she smile on the wounded soldier?
How do you see her, poor harassed people,
you, mothers who weep, and you, who fish by the moon?
Has she returned to the sacred Woods,
to the illuminated missals of legends?
Does she sleep, old Corot, in the golden mists?
in yours, lavender-coloured,
gentle Puvis de Chavannes? In yours,
mysterious Carriere, painter of the grey Dreams?
Or does she blossom, Henri Martin, in your light?
And then, I remember...
a sound of a pure flute, so fresh, ethereal
among the slow and solemn harmonies; the muted tone
of humming cellos rocking you
like a calm ocean; a passing bell,
a bird’s song, divine music,
that music of a rain which played
one night, in the warm silence of a town;
Mozart giving you his great soul, fragile peace...
I remember... but it is perhaps, in truth, who knows,
even simpler...and you who knows it,
without doubting yourself, old man in your loose greatcoat,
old shepherd of footpaths yellow with broom,
that peace of solitary hills and marshy places,
the peace which needs only a cricket to express itself.
Far off, the glimmer of a lamp or a star;
before the door, a little fragrant air
see how simple it is! Who speaks of your veils,
and why so many words to describe you? See,
what does it matter about images: white house,
oasis, rainbow, angelus, blue Sundays!
Or what matter the way each one carries within himself,
even without knowing, your reflection which calms him,
sweetness promised to hearts of goodwill...
Ah! So many verbs, adjectives, parentheses!
- I who sense it sometimes, in the summer garden,
so near to letting myself be convinced and remain
when men grow silent...
Sabine Sicaud
SPEAK TO YOU
Speak to you? No. I can’t.
I prefer to suffer like a plant,
like the bird on the lime tree saying nothing.
They wait: that’s good. Since they are not tired
of waiting, I will wait, with that same attentiveness.
They suffer alone. One must learn to suffer alone.
I do not want indifferent faces ready to smile
nor sighing friends. Let no one come.
The plant says nothing. The bird stays silent.
What is there to say?
This sadness is alone in the world, whatever we wish.
It is not others’, it is mine.
A leaf in its sickness ignores the other leaves.
And that of a bird, the other bird knows nothing.
We don’t know. We don’t know. What is like it?
And what does it matter? It is better for me
to hear this evening not a single empty word
I wait – like the fountain behind the window,
the old tree without a gesture and the mute chaffinch...
a drop of pure water, a little wind, who knows?
What are they waiting on? We will all wait together,
the sun has told them it will return, perhaps...
Sabine Sicaud
THE LEPERS’ CAVE
Don’t talk to me either of the tower
or the beautiful reddish ruins
nor of that living cover
of foliage in half-light
The gorge is too cool and too green
the river, like a serpent
twists itself, barely glimpsed under
so much grass where rests suspended
the mystery of the virgin forests.
Don’t talk to me either of the inn
nor of the crayfish which one takes
in the foam and the tendrils.
I haven’t seen, from this corner of the earth
either the peace of the clear evening
or that of the deserted ridges.
But, blocking the sky, two rocks
suddenly so bare, scratched
with several open mouths!
Towards these black mouths, shouting out
one knows not what ancient horror
how can we know if, furtively,
the poor souls don’t return?
Where are they, my God, where are they,
those pariahs dressed in red
who, up there, watch intently the blue evenings
through the gaping holes of that hovel?
Leper’s Cave, cursed threshold
at the side of the ochre cliff
why is it no one’s spoken to me
of whatever shiver formerly moved
across this setting of happy leaves…
Sabine Sicaud
THE OLD WOMAN OF THE MOON
One has spoken much in the room this evening.
Hidden, hemmed, the moon entering through the window
evokes perhaps a sleeper crossing it:
the old woman who, up there, carries her black bundle of sticks.
She must be weary; we would like to know
the crime for which we can all see her,
the length of the clear nights walking without hope!
Poor old woman, so old, is it a theft of dead wood
which bends her old back on the round planet?
She’s very cold, who knows, when the wind blows hard.?
Is she going to walk thus until the end of the world?
and why drag her through until the day!
We sleep. We close and double-lock our eyes.
Moon, let her at least sit down a second.
Sabine Sicaud
THE PATH OF SAND
Do not recall following this path,
do not recall… I gave you my hand.
Our steps were alike,
our shadows merged before us on the sand,
we gazed very far or very close, simple as that,
the air smelt of whatever it smelt of at that moment.
The wind did not come from the ocean. Neither from there
nor elsewhere. No wind. No cloud. A pine tree
whose twin was cut in a distant time
was alone. We spoke or we didn’t speak.
We passed by, but so sure of the beautiful, steady hour!
Do not look back on the path of sand.
Sabine Sicaud
VIRGIN VINE OF AUTUMN
You let your red hands fall,
virgin vine, you let them fall
as if all the blood of the world was on them.
With their shiver the balustrade moves
all the wall bleeds
O virgin vine… all the sky is soaked
with the same red light.
It is like a trembling of red, falling wings
wings of the island birds, wings
which bleed. It is the end of a reign -
or something infinitely simpler.
They are the webbed feet of tall flamingos
or fragile feet of doves
who walk in the alley
(where do they go, so red?)
Their starry traces
rejoin the other vine, where the grapes are harvested
so red,
is it already the blood of the full vats
Ah! Simply the feast of the wine harvest
isn’t it simply so?
And moreover, how your hands are shaking! Their veins
rupture one by one… so much blood
and that odour so bland, strange.
Those hands which fall with a weak air,
O virgin vine, an air weak and as if absent,
those abandoned hands…
Didn’t Lady Macbeth have that gesture
after having rubbed the stain for so long?)
Hands which clench, hands which rest,
in red rags on quivering October;
Say! Oh say each year
are you the deadly hands of autumn?
or every year
with nothing or no one moved by them,
the murdered hands
which float in the red stream of autumn?
Sabine Sicaud
WHEN I’M CURED
Mum, when I’m cured
I want to see only very beautiful things…
sumptuous flowers, always in bloom;
landscapes which always renew themselves
miraculous sunsets, towns
full of white palaces, bridges, bell-towers
and sparkling lights… faces,
very beautiful, very gay; dances
like the ballets of which I think,
interpreted by Jean Borlin. I want beaches
adorned for a spectacle
with foreign sportsmen with the names of princes
strangers in shoes of precious stones
and splendid dogs snow-covered, slender limbs.
I wish for long pavements of pale velvet,
lightly skimmed by a silent Rolls,
terraces, orchestras humming with happy musics…
Do you see, Mum, the passing Carnival?
The Riviera overflowing with roses?
I need to see for an instant only these things
when I am cured!
I will have that shawl of bursting embroideries
which makes one dream of Spanish races,
small horses circling like a halo,
laughing eyes, Like Mae Murray,
a tint of copper
and the air, not cured
but never having known sickness!
I will have all the perfumes, ‘the rarest there are’
a modern room with bold shades,
a red swimming pool with silken cushions
slightly cubist. I need fantasy…,
I need sorbets and iced drinks,
crunchy fruits, sweet raisins, fresh almonds,
ambrosia perhaps…
or simply to bite to the new heart of a peach?
I need to forget all sombre thoughts,
so many bowls of herbal tea and oppressive hours.
These are necessary for me, you see, these things so alive
and so beautiful, Mum, so beautiful – or so gay!
,
No one knows when we become worn out,
both with this grey of the wallpaper
the immobile wardrobe and those black openings
which the laurel holds tight for us behind the window.
Such voyages, I say, countries to know,
things we’ve dreamed, which will come to be
when I’m cured…
Sabine Sicaud
DARK ALCOVE
The first colds warmed up with vineshoots,
the long moaning of the golden planes,
and that alcove for the black bed from King Henry’s time;
your undressed body there in random shadow,
lit at times with the red of the hearth,
when you spurred me on with your pointed knee,
Love’s horsewoman, so sad and so frolicsome.
And that abyss for the falling: remember that?
Jean-Paul-Toulet
HAVE YOU KEPT A MEMORY
Girl, have you kept a memory
of the Pantheon-Place Courcelle
which rolled with a screech and rattle
without ever reaching the end
Of the day where the breeze sculpted you
under your black-and-cherry skirt
Of the double-decker bus on the upper bank
where the slide and the jolt
chanted like an iamb
And of the old man who peered at your legs?
Paul-Jean Toulet
IN THE VAST AND RAVAGED BED
In the vast and ravaged bed
I open my eyes beside her;
I brush her lightly: an unfaithful dream
at my side embraces her.
A glimmer sharp and thin
arrows across my ceiling.
On the far depths of cobblestones
I hear a bucket squealing.
Paul-Jean Toulet
YOU COME DOWN
You come down, if you dare
from the top of the terrace
to the doorstep and the embarrassment
of steps in the rosebushes.
Of the dash of a kingfisher
the light has barely passed.
And the spring; with its icy tear
black silence alternates.
The Angelus in the red sunset
like a perfume fades.
Lilith turning her face
has pulled the bolts on the doors.
Paul-Jean Toulet
PARIS AT NIGHT
Three lights one by one lit in the night
the first to see your face entirely
the second to see your eyes
the last to see your mouth
and total darkness to remind me of all this
while I hold you in my arms.
Jacques Prévert
FIRST DAY
White sheets in a wardrobe
red sheets in a bed
an infant in its mother
its mother in distress
the father on the landing
the landing in the house
the house in the town
the town in the night
death in a cry
and the infant in life.
Jacques Prévert
QUICKSANDS
Demons and wonders
winds and tides
already the sea has withdrawn in the distance
and you
like a seaweed gently caressed by the wind
in the sands of the bed you stir while dreaming
Demons and wonders
already the sea has withdrawn in the distance
but in your introverted eyes
two small waves have remained
Demons and wonders
winds and tides
two little waves to drown me.
Jacques Prévert
RED AND IMMENSE
Red and immense
above the Grand Palais
the winter sun appears
and disappears
like it my heart is going to disappear
and all my blood will be gone
gone to look for you
my love
my beauty
and find you
there where you are
Jacques Prévert
THIS LOVE
This love
so violent
so fragile
so tender
so desperate
this love
beautiful as the day
and bad as the weather
when the weather is bad
this love so true
this love so beautiful
so happy
so joyful
and so derisory
shaking with fear like a child in the dark
and so sure of itself
as a man calm in the middle of the night
this love which makes others afraid
which makes them talk
which makes them turn pale
this watched-for love
because we’ve watched for it
tracked down wounded trampled completed denied forgotten
because we’ve tracked wounded trampled completed denied forgotten it
this love whole
still so alive
and completely sunny
it’s yours
it’s mine
everyone who has been
this thing always new
and which hasn’t changed
as true as a plant
shivering like a bird
as hot and alive as the summer
we can both of us
come and go
we can forget
and then go back to sleep
waken suffer grow old
sleep again
dream of death
waken with smile and laughter
and grow young
our love remains there
stubborn as a mule
alive as desire
cruel as memory
stupid as regrets
tender as memory
cold as marble
lovely as the day
fragile as a child
it looks at us smiling
and it speaks to us without saying anything
and I listen to it trembling
and I cry
I cry for you
I cry for me
I beg you
for you
for me
for all those who love
and who are loved
yes I cry to it
for you for me and for all the others
whom I do not know
stay there
there where you are
there where you were in the past
stay there
don’t move
don’t go away
we who are loved
have forgotten you
don’t you forget us
you are all we have on the earth
don’t let us become cold
much farther off always
it doesn’t matter where
give us a sign of life
much later in a corner of a wood
in the forest of memory
rise up suddenly
give us your hand
and save us.
Jacques Prévert
YOU’RE GOING TO SEE WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO SEE
A naked girl is swimming in the sea,
a bearded man is walking on water.
Where is the wonder of wonders,
the miracle announced from on high?
Jacques Prévert
HELENE
How beautiful you are now you are no more
death’s dust has undressed you to the very soul
how desired your are now we’ve parted
the waves, the waves replenish the heart of the desert
the palest of women
The weather is fine on the cresting water of that land
the countryside dead of hunger
which runs alongside yesterday’s town, the misunderstandings
It is fine on the unexpected green circles
transformed into churches
Fine on the plateau disastrous naked and overturned
because you are so dead
spilling suns through the tracks of your eyes
and the shadows of the great trees rooted
in your terrible hair which me made me delirious
Pierre Jean Jouve
IT RAINS
It rains. Evening passes in the leaning of the planes.
It rains. The shower is heavy on the old woolen coats
stowed under the hedges, in the falling of the beech nuts.
The oxen which made furrows in the yellowed slopes
have returned. The hairs swell up under the rain
while man, in waiting for a sunny interval,
his back turned to the wind in order to light his pipe,
squashes, in the vague mud where they sputter,
puddles of water like a sod which crumbles.
It is the evening of wordless returnings in the carts,
of wearied hands which, when the ass stops, will knock
against the wind like a fardel which one throws.
It rains. All the paths go to the fields. It is the evening
of the crucifixes suddenly appearing at the side of the dark paths
and stretched out among the ruts;
the anguish of the rain hangs about the end of a damp evening,
in the barking of dogs which cling onto you,
a long misery come from who knows where.
René Bichet
JOY
I have felt the joy of the wind and the wheat greeting me.
I have felt the joy of the wheat. I have felt the joy of the water
and in that water I have felt the joy of the sky.
Take from me the joy of the wind. And that of the wheat
and that of the water. Take from me the joy of the sky,
and now see all the harvests of the world
sing in your arms,
the wind speaks only to you,
the water reflects you,
the sky opens up in your eyes.
Renée Chandeleur
THE DEAD
The beloved dead are discreet hosts
who demand their daily bread without fuss,
they never come to trouble us at our feasts
but wish to share the anguish of our nights.
Isabelle Kayser
NIGHT TIDE
My room keeps in its heart an icy virtue.
This winter evening I am its harshest enemy,
taking hunger from victory
and cries from the silence of breaking.
Fearless, joyless, with measured voice
ripened like fruit, I declare my poem is
happy with the night. It frees itself and rises
with the noise of an army.
For this reverberating god of excessive hunger,
I raise my hand and unchain from the shadow
a studious and ardent celebration:
That’s good. I put out the lamp and clench my teeth.
The room rises; the dawn winds will swell the sail.
And we depart in the storm!
Odilon-Jean Périer
PYRENEES
Mountain of the great abused,
at the summit of your feverish towns
the last light grows feeble.
Nothing but the emptiness and the avalanche,
distress and regret!
All the unloved troubadors
have seen whiten in a summer
their gentle pessimistic kingdom.
Ah! The snow is inexorable
which loves that one suffers at its feet,
which wishes that one dies frozen
when one has lived in the sands.
Rene Char
THE GALLEY
Heart, desolate heart, I said, leave
this tower of bedlam, be lost
in teeming life; be, in this beginning,
among the reapers, among the other
griefs: where the word of our shared predicament
too great for a singular grasp,
is hidden in hearts beyond reach.
Louis Duchosal
THE LOVER
She is standing on my eyelids
and her hair in mine,
she has the shape of my hands,
she has the colour of my eyes,
she in engulfed in my shadow
as a stone on the sky.
Her eyes forever open
won’t let me sleep.
her dreams in full flight
make the suns evaporate,
make me laugh, cry and laugh,
speak having nothing to say.
Paul Eluard
THE DEPRAVED GARDENER
In the gardens of winter, weird flower-growers
furtively sow plants full of hatred
whose stems soon swarm like the coils of snakes
drowsing at the muddy margins of ponds.
Their dreadful flowers, magnificent, rare,
where flow heavy, heavy, dizzying scents,
open with pride their poisonous bowls.
Death spreads out in their barbaric splendours.
Their sumptuous scents ruin health.
And for having too much loved its beauty
one sees in the palaces the pale queens languishing.
And I, I resemble you, depraved gardeners!
In the minds where I have cast my grains,
I watch flourishing the poison of my verses.
Iwan Gilkin
LIGHT
I have espoused the light
it follows me like a shadow
like a famished dog
and its nocturnal pallor
has the sharpness of a sliver of metal.
The room where I rest
has neither window nor balcony
no key unlocks the living-room.
Nicolas Rouzet
BUT THERE EXISTS...
(for Anna Akhmatova)
But there exists around beings
a frontier, insurmountable,
with no word of deliverance
This secret line
snakes with us:
nets of silence.
Nicolas Rouzet
THE PROWLER
The prowler
is walking on our heads
her steps are sharper
than the floor of words.
Her footsteps are sentries
which guard the shadows
in their empty house the
mis-named night.
Under her talons
her rainbows rear up
finer than vertebrae
more alive than all the macabre singing
of the renowned
She gathers the scattered dreams
impossible to say
that they don’t exist
that she doesn’t exist
Her caress is a claw
her mouth tastes of sand
every needle of her steps
sows the whirlwind of my destiny.
Nicolas Rouzet
THE OLD AUTUMN APPLE
I have fallen asleep
like an old autumn apple
completely spent, stupefied
and the leaves covering
the dull remains
Thomas Chaline
I EAT THE SAND
I eat the sand, I drink the wind
I feel the fish which swim in my blood.
My house is in the middle of the sea,
it floats near the horizon.
Head down, I find my balance.
During the day, dispersed, I am many,
in the evening, in your arms, I am unique
at the hour when sky and sea
become one, for better or worse
Eric Jacquelin
ACCEPTANCE
I accept the seasons
the frozen ponds
the April rain
I accept the ferns
and the creaking in the forest
when the tree scatters
its alphabet to the skies,
and that the skylark's cry
will not be in vain.
Jean-Luc Pouliquen
STRANGE FLOWERS
Autumn places among the lilacs
strange flowers no one sees,
flowers with tones so transparent
that one must have kept
one’s soul as a little child’s
to see them among the paths
and be able to gather them
in a single bouquet of light
as at dawn the angels do,
their hands full of white stars.
Maurice Careme
A FAMILY OF TREES
Having crossed a sun-baked plain we meet
Where they live, not at side of a noise-filled road, but in uncultivated fields, a place
of rising streams and lone birds
Where, impenetrable from a distance, their trunks relax at my approach; and
I’m welcomed cautiously: I can relax, cool down, but I see they watch me with an air of mistrust.
They live en famille, the elders in the middle, the youngsters, first leaves little more
than down here and there, unmoving,
Dying long, keeping the dead standing until they fall in dust.
Their long branches feeling, like the blind, that everything is there; gesture in anger
as an uprooting blows itself out. But between them, no discord: the only sound
a murmur of agreement.
I sense that this must be my real family: the other will quickly be forgotten.
These trees will adopt me by and by. And to deserve it I know what must be done:
I already know how to watch the passing clouds.
I know how to stay in place.
And I know the almost silence.
Jules Renard
COUPLE OF THE BLACK WATER
She had become the bread of every day and the wine of my nights
we always stretched out in a huge storm-bed where the rain rocked us
every word between us was an elk breaking the dyke of lies
for a moment I was lodging in the heart of deep water
just as a grain of wheat invaded her
in the silence and the shade we were married
but always morning came to divide us
we waited for evening to shipwreck us again
to find in dark water the corn we could share
Georges Haldas
DOWNPOUR
It rains, when you're here,
with the sweetest rain
on tree on flower
it rains on what dies and does not. It rains
on every absence and even
on this light wound called presence.
It rains on our Sundays
on the bare foliage
it rains on what was
ashes and courage
on the wine on the dawn
on everything we share
you are the sweet rain
and I am the shore
Georges Haldas
FOUNTAINS OF TIME
Here near the fountains
I will live my life again
Here near the fountains
we will leave at dawn
like the workers
The house will be beautiful
And the bridge will sing
under the oldest trams
The coots will be heard
We will hear soft water
tell us about happiness
of which all had dreamed
That no one had known
And nothing will persist
But the chime of the hours
on the sodden docks
and bare gardens
Georges Haldas
IN THE FOREST OF SHADOWS
In the Forest of Shadows
step by step I advance
A secret staircase
leads to the waters
of sleep where I see
in a light fog
a pink facade
shutters closed and silent
I had to dream one day
of such a residence
where my double goes
beyond death
and yet living
And in my solitary bed
I look at him
move away step by step
go downstairs
towards the waters of sleep
where voices are lost
Georges Haldas
LEAVEN OF PAIN
So that rest calls me
that the voices disappear
we will say nothing more
we will be the simple wind on our backs in the morning
and our eyes will live scattered and distant
none of us will hear the laments the refrains
no one will retain a memory
the forest will be long
a pebble will mark the place where this strange destiny was sealed
only a flight of silence
an endless march
a perpetual day without cries or tomorrows
and the horse will come to graze in our hand the salt of the pain that was our leaven
I am the sweet lamp and I am the unity
the night in the foliage and difficulties
which carry me away
so that I stand out cured at every moment
do not let this ever-latent fire go out
give to it your life as food
let this fire be for all a child
that in return it illuminates the snow of the parents
Horsemen at three o’ clock
riders borne by sadness sleep on the spot where the battle once raged
and now on the waters it is evening come again between the lone reeds
here was a city
here the swallows fled among the tiles
one has only a confused memory of soft limbs touched by the fog
one has only one memory of bodies shredded in the autumn grasses
a naked breast
shoes belonging now to nobody
George Haldas
MEMORY OF YVES CHAMMAH
Peaceful is the home where death has taken him back as a fragile swimmer
the forehead still marked with a black worry
no one knows where the boat has passed
the window is forever closed
birds continue to ignore the shipwreck
and the mountain is blue
as his bed travels on
and we the rowers of the years we watch solitary
without a lantern in the night of his bitter absence
without anything that gives us back what once was him
Georges Haldas
NEW HOUSE
I clothed in dark gold
old memories
I painted the walls in white
Of course the house has passed
to other hands
other voices have sung
in turn and cried
and always unfaithful
the dead have left us
leaving the painted house
and the astonished walls
Georges Haldas
NO RETURN
All rest forbidden
and the absence is a bed
of black and white pebbles.
Everything dissolves. One sleeps
harassed by the winds
in a space where nothing
penetrates, where the words
fall without echo.
And the abyss is here
my most faithful dog
too late to call
all signs disappear
death’s sigh itself is extinct.
No forgiveness will come
to rekindle our hopes
no sky will spread
God Himself diverts
his wooden face
Georges Haldas
O COUNTRY OF SILENCE
Here is the evening train
It is the end of summer
I'm standing I keep watch
like a large sick tree-trunk
I have eyes full of bees
But I see the mountain
and the city and the plain
A whole country of mine
which was not for me
A life where I was
about to win
Where I did not win
And nothing to do but see it
this country of sweetness
its lakes its promontories
its villages in the evening
like necklaces
With its motorway
and its regular noises
I who wanted to say everything
in this late summer
I could not speak
Georges Haldas
RETURN TO OURSELVES
It is the happy descent, the limitless night
the roads are confused
the stones are dwindling
a large garden collects the remains of our lives
and we speak in the evening an unknown language
that only a dog understands
a star or this gold that shines in wine
and returns us to ourselves as unleavened bread
Georges Haldas
SHADOW
With your endless bridges
your colours your silence
where I now go
a lamp lit
and following my past
who walks before me
without asking me anything
or deigning to answer me
ignoring my voice
turning sometimes
to see if I'm still here.
Georges Haldas
SLAUGHTER OF TIME
Each day, like a beast
one slaughters, falls.
Evening is a flood
black and strong, moving away.
His wide eyes extinguished
invaded by fog,
the whole ox capsizes.
The children, astonished,
are held by the hand,
admiring all the blood
an ox can hold.
And the mountain is pink
and the sky smooth and full.
The butcher quite content
spits on his hands.
Georges Haldas
SON OF THE NIGHT
Who died in the silence
of the turned-off fountain
in the dark of night
without knowing anything
of seed and fruit,
complete oblivion. Son of the night.
Pray for him
Georges Haldas
TESTAMENT
I
I bequeath to my children
this colourless dawn
the unhappy bread the streets
where I was split
I leave the fountains
which spoke to me at night
solitary wagons
and the elm trees cut down
All the dark corners
and deserted hangars
And misinterpreted
dreams of happiness
always decayed
I bequeath with the rails
the rust of years
trains without passengers
the abandoned station
I bequeath after its joy
this changed city
as is changed
the one who believed in loving everything
To my children I bequeath
my faithlessness
II
I will die divided
unhappy without hope
I bequeath to my children
an immense duty:
Regain your footing. Recover.
Complete every night
the morning task
Give to others
a softer water to drink
I bequeath to my children
in memory of me
a sinister mirror
they will want to break
So that the pieces
remake this star
betrayed at my birth
And that my death attain
its primal luster
I bequeath to my children
an imperious duty:
Do not despair.
Georges Haldas
THE POINT OF CONVERGENCE
Without fire or place it was
the point of convergence
of all arteries
where night beats
where everyone stands alone
vigilant and unmarked
where every arc breaks
where the star goes out
The brief wind stilled
and the stone ceased
to be stone. Hand
no longer guides the hand
everything lives under an unmoving
grille. There is a gleam on everything
and the man with the black hat
who can no longer love
needs no evidence
back turned, he goes down
the staircase of the night
which returns into the river
and pulls all to it.
Georges Haldas
IN FRONT OF THE BEECH WOOD
At the first meeting
in front of the beech wood
the look on your face said that love
was neither impatience nor strength
But I didn’t believe you
and I went on my way
by all kinds of roads
through thick clouds
Then came the day my ghost
with pleasure recognized you
at the edge of the same forest
You found it too and the voice in the air said
"Love, you say, is neither impatience nor haste!"
only then did I believe you
now the snow may spread
on all useless and silent speech.
Jacques Chessex
IN THE MOUTH OF THE DEAD
In the mouth of the dead a clod of green turf
in the heart of the dead a chickadee
on the forehead a branch of fresh ivy
on the lips the springtime of the bone
In the soul of the dead the source
of the instant of living
and the uselessness of waiting
in the soul of the dead
the vast desire as the absent time
the source where you did not drink
the chickadee not yet listened to
In the heart of the dead no grass ever to tread
in the frozen freshness of no dawn
neither in the mouth a bird to mimic
On the forehead the crown of land
the song of absence between temples
O this waiting under the grass
neither spring for the absent tongue nor good night
Jacques Chessex
THE WOODS THIS MORNING
The woods this morning shine like brass
horns of beasts and clarinets have passed through
you tell me too about your army
I add an oboe for the serious impulse
and the cello for death
Your wood this morning with their lights their moires
silk carpet, hunting scene
you offer me your millennial army
I add the cries of birds and mourners
and the funeral horn
ah these woods have reflections of death and joy
frozen herds clear cemetery where
you made your army’s trumpets sound
I add the flute of the toad returned from death
at hell’s gate for the chord
Jacques Chessex
VOTIVE
When I go to the true place
at least let it be a day of cherries and lilacs
and that my head not look like that of the dead
that jawbone they have
before it splits off and falls alone
in the ossuary.
This morning I think of you, Mozart
in your pit of shins and skulls
O glorious one, and that day that was yours
your angel crying because God
had wanted for you
this strange Golgotha in old November rain
at my death there should be no angel
but let me be given
to hear again the small songbird of the soul
and the nightingale that has wrapped so often
his trills around my heart
And that I be alone too
but for the air in my open mouth
and the wind I drink one last time
with the greed of a suckling child
and let my bones start to descend slowly
in springtime’s earth
I drink death, now, its water
an emptiness, my breast, my teeth
and my regret for the beloved body
hollow in the sonorous shadow, ah, Mozart,
still sings to my formless heart
this heavenly song where you and I
have no part beyond our spaces.
Jacques Chessex
YORICK
Yorick
once again autumn has come down into your pit
under the crown of poplars, of cawing crows
another autumn Yorick, a rainy wind
a wind of nothingness has swept your pit where your skull
outcrops from season to season
always visible in the void from outside in the desert from above
Yorick
in the rotten air where your old dreams waken
Yorick autumn still throws its berries into your pit
and the migrating birds in flight watching
this red crown
shatter among the bones of the dead
but the dead from above are more dead than you
Yorick
with their real pearls, their brilliant teeth
they pass in front of your pit feeling pity and laughing
and see your skull
while the desert air is silent and your pupil dreams
yes meditative autumn has yellowed the grass of your grave
once again Yorick your pit open
your skull then in front of the childish snow
with its pure flakes that tingle in the old air
like the bells of memory
autumn pilgrims and dreams
the crown of regret erupting from
Christmas after Christmas
with the teeth of the dead
Yorick, the gestures of love
the child cradled, the father killed, the endless pacing
of your student dreaming and silent in the bright desert.
Jacques Chessex
FIRM FIG
Firm fig you open
raspberry you burn
you irradiate you modulate
with milk of seaweed and mammals
O moons of blood under the moire
structure of the buried bone
and you enamored shrub
clump of still air
Riverain of the stretched hem
Ferryman for the fern
envelope of the scent
sachet of the dream
Water divides the fish
from the air conferred by his muzzle
I dream in you deeper
than the dark honey of your layer
The open moon and her sisters
will rise above the cemetery
I invite you murderess
and no mistake into my ditch
Jacques Chessex
AT THE PROPER TIME
At the hour of my death
at the proper time
I hope to be sufficiently just
I wish to see clearly enough
to listen deeply to your voice
in that with will still be me,
to remember your voice in spring
Dies illa dies irae, pity for this tortured flesh
far from the celebration of error
Treaty of death, Milky Way
treaty of melancholy
air of your hair in me
the fatigable aureole
the secret chain for your neck
bearing the geometry
where shines the pearl, death’s eye
which I will set in the dream
forgetting your gaze
Jacques Chessex
AT THE LIMIT
At the limit
almost white almost blue
the water speaks of distant places
It has the colour of straw
of bricks and blood
It has the charm of mists
and the horizon’s frontiers
It pronounces life in a low voice
and in spite of the black shadows
it lets the red leaf approach
Only the nightingale disputes its territory
and the spidre’s web seeking anchorage
There at the limit almost white, almost blue.
Michel Cosem
BEAUTIFUL AS UNIVERSES
Beautiful as universes, the houses
which watch at the crossroads
the dance of quarrelling sparrows
small passing pearls
round as spring.
They speak to each other at nightfall
with scents of flowers and fruits
They smile at the children who live in them
and who play like cats. on the lawn
They are there a long time and are happy.
Michel Cosem
CAME A BRIEF FLASH
Came a brief flash
on this path between the shadows
in the sky scoured
by rain and burns
on this dried-up earth the beating heart
in the midst of all the lost voices.
No more need to return
to find here the trace of symbols
everything is written far beyond words
I'm talking to the open window
an interior of embers and ripe fruits
a sky laden with grains
star-bitten
vivid and fluid silhouettes
which inhabit the confines
expecting a sign from me.
I speak to the open window
Came a brief flash.
Michel Cosem
THE DRY LAND CRACKS
The dry land cracks
in the wind, in the salt
and guards in a hollow
the carcass of a gull.
From the width of the sea
a stretch of migratory birds
and the hill’s ochre cliff-face
smiles at the black pines.
The serenity of a single moment
there over the waves
while we see
the nearby island
like a whale
coming to graze the garden of spray.
Michel Cosem
THE WHITE FLOWER
Is it for me to cut
the white flower in the middle of the meadow ?
Or any chimera carried from the forest ?
Isn’t it the eternal birth
with its fragile cheeks of vast snows
and its heart of red wool ?
Who could attain so much beauty
and carry away a dream ?
I keep vigil but time too watches
and which of us will be victorious ?
Michel Cosem
YOUR SMILE
Your smile opens the door of the world
your quiet gesture speaking of a country
of trees and springs
of sunny songs
of tambours beating at night
of legends in the great heart
of wheat growing so high in the mountain.
Your smile opens the door of the world
it’s like a kite in the blue
which comes and goes and never wants to stop
in the secret hollow of the mountain
where rare water still flows
the old fig tree
keeps to its way
gives its fruits
to those who wish
and speaks with the storm.
Michel Cosem
WHERE ARE YOU GOING ?
Where are you going ?
you know how dark the night is
There are snares
there are murders
there are things of which you know nothing.
Where are you going ?
I know you’re moving on
you want to go so far
and I tell you hand in hand
keep going
I don’t know if I’ll be near always
but yes, a long time
and I ask you not to forget.
Michel Cosem
WRITE TO BE FOR THE WORLD
Write to be for the world
as a patch of land
sown with mauve orchids and feathers
To be in the sap
returning each season
in lights and memories
Write suns and oceans
write under the bark
history and imagination
journeys in the high gold dunes
and the heart’s twilights.
Michel Cosem
SNOW
The snow often suggests
that it puts order on the land
and that it soothes; but no such thing
on this Sunday that tastes of salt.
It is a splinter on the fingertip
and when we try to cauterize,
is acid on the wound.
It falls has everything, hides the trees
displaces seasons and embankment,
leaves crumbs under the cabinet
and on the table spills the milk
that no child will drink again.
Didier Pobel
YES, SPEAK
Yes speak, speak again
retell me everything I know
why love is strong
when it’s in our arms
and why the tree is shorn
when the scythe has passed.
Speak, speak, but above all
do not complete the sentence;
the wind will take it on.
Didier Pobel
THROUGH THE WINDOW
Through the window of the clinic one sees a tree
which has pushed its way here, no one knows how,
among all these buildings; which cuts like a sabre
this horizon where sometimes evening deceives.
The shadow of the cedar outlines on the Vercors
what there is in childhood of parietal rest
unquiet, bloody, drawn at the bottom of the body
in the primal ink of foetal patience.
Didier Pobel
EMPTY KEYBOARD
Where did they rise from, these arpeggios
which will offend the wings of angels?
when it is piano, the snow
plays only with the white keys
or if on the black, it is in us
old sonata or poor lied.
Our fingers of flakes are fleeing the wolves,
the ghosts and rats in the forest
at the empty keyboard
that beauty will overlay.
Didier Pobel
QUIET COUNTRY
If you see no bee
in the snow it’s because
there’s nothing to gather pollen from
in this corolla where it keeps watch,
the so-quiet land
where I was born.
Didier Pobel
SOME EXERCISES OBSERVING THE SKY
Some evenings we say the weather is heavy but there isn’t the slightest balance
to weigh the sky unless one day the arms
of man attain their equilibrium
the ballast of the skull suddenly compensated by the blue gramme of the eye
that unique counterweight of shade
Didier Pobel
THE CUCKOO
Who is that ringing?
An invisible tramp, a lectured child?
It’s both at once
and what he insists at the bottom door
with the broken latch
in tones both soft
and so cruel, this bird
we call the cuckoo
when we don’t know how
to name anymore
the dark species of childhood,
thief of other nests!
Didier Pobel
GOATS, CENTURIES, KINGS
To feel on my face a little air –
something like the slow breath of the world –
I walk toward evening, as far as the pier
where the felucca’s shadow
tries to gain the far shore.
Goats at the foot of the mountain send up
small cries to converse with kings.
What do you want now that it has reached us?
What do you want us to do tomorrow?
The centuries sing like a cloud of mayflies
beside the lamp, immobile, in the round,
engulfing crosses.
Didier Pobel
SEASON OF LIFE OR DEATH
About its neck a little mist clear in patches
and the rabbit it chased from the bushes
ran like a summer sky just as grey thunderstorms
opened the hunt.
It’s by the trembling of the legs, by language, that we know
if the seasons come or go: but this palpitation
in the animal’s side, who can say
if life or death flows there?
POEM ON RETURNING
Driving just now in the rain, it was the same
black ink, the same noise as turning in the rain
the pages of a book you read to shelter under the silence
in an autumn kitchen, by the window a dark tree
pitched like an old inkwell in which the pen
scratches for an impossible word to finish
the poem on returning in the rain.
Didier Pobel
FUGUE TO FIND A SINGLE MOMENT
I know the moment this country shimmers best
it’s in the tired hour when the shadow
of oaks underfoot looks like a double bass
I go then in hollow time
sad-searching in the plain
chewing the pathways like rind
darkness in its hold
with only this solitude: the harsh
wandering of nights of rope
which gives the skull its gross weight
and to words, the raw shade that caries them.
Didier Pobel
WOMAN IN GREEN ON THE BEACH
One morning in July at Kusadasi
a woman in a green pareo came on the beach
and turned toward the sea, motionless, almost
like a pillar of salt
and looked long at the large blue
island of Samos, the swimmers kicked-up foam.
And how could I examine that unknown,
either the nature of eyes hidden behind dark glasses
or the reason for that simple distress that made
her on that morning in July
not a goddess come on foot from Ephesus
but a woman, lovely, forever an enigma?
Didier Pobel
IN THE ETERNAL
Under the summer there are villages like ponds
their wings touch the earth like those of dead birds
which have turned belly-up in the sun.
The shade of the trees is a fire to each missing leaf.
We want to run our hand along the harvest
lying down like a woman half-undressed.
The sun. Shoulder against the door. No one will open.
In the lock, the sun inserts a falling key.
Afternoon is set on the dust of roads
under an unmoving sky,
there aren’t enough streams in the fields
to retain the light between their grasses.
The eye of a bridge in a dead district
looks out further than the world
and the walls are white as the paths
where the earth suffers its nakedness.
Lucien Becker
PATHWAY
I jump in the boat that offers me the dreamy motions of nostalgia and I go toward my childhood crowned with the dewdrops of home.
Will it be a second dawn, then?
No.
It is a wake in autumn where a casket – I know it’s made of memories – seeks me like a prey.
O virgin forests with pure scents and eyes pricked like banners on the gentle edge of heedlessness
O
Eden where flourishes the snow of our cries and laughter and which in your desperate soliloquy repeats the echoes of names soft as stars.
I’ve barely crossed to you, my feet so full of air, so much I claimed the gag of adolescence!
Lucien Becker
THE ONE WHO SPEAKS TO THIS MOUTH
The one who speaks to this mouth
can no longer believe in the fervour
that childhood kept for death.
Pursued by its steps
and always far from its truth
nothing exists but in his dreams.
Each day shakes his land
but under his feet there remains
enough to grow the pain
to the point where his eyes are broken stalks.
The wind traverses his hands
fissured by blood.
Sometimes, someone knocks
no one enters, there are no more doors
there’ nothing more than eyes
poorly lit by evening
and the gold which goes back to the heart
like a fire already grey.
Lucien Becker
LONG-WAITED DELIVERANCE
The window is soft like a knife
the mirror is deep with black shoulders
you see bare feet under the curtain
and the road is very far in the wall
the cut-off head is on the bed.
I remember or dream
that your brow is as those beautiful days
where there is no sign of death
where light gathers on the springs
the bridge rises from the grass
and makes a large bridge above the water.
The sleeper is still covered
his eyelids glued like fruits deprived of air
the shadows appear
and leave for a long time
their temples against the walls
Lucien Becker
IN THE LONELY QUARTER
In the lonely quarter traversed in haste
the shutters come down on the smiles of a child
on voices very soft very close
a woman’s head in the bowl-like panes –
no movement signifies her life
the last star falls from the window
like a tear from a shut eye
a child casts a paper at the sky
cries in the fractured silence
a wisp of smoke links roof to sky
the wind so weary it lingers in the hand
a kiss falls from a great height
unfastens the leaves in the trees
a lamp goes out without a cry
at the turning of the night
Lucien Becker
I NEED NO MIRROR
I need no mirror
to look at the face
your love has given me.
It is before me like the day,
carried by trees of blood
which depart from my hands
I rise like a hive
towards the unreadable sun of my heart.
Lightning closes again in the distance,
having flickered on the land of windows
which make me turn around my dress.
I will have to leave my face
in the place whereIi took yours.
I will remain lit up like a lamp
which your kiss alone will recognise.
I stand to my neck in spring water
and when I stop breathing
there remains for me all that silence to cross.
Lucien Becker
A FISTFUL OF AIR
A fistful of air in the hand
a tear suspended from an eyelash
a face due to leave
it disappears
disappears again.
What assaulted me ?
What made me flee ?
I hope never again will it strike
at my door.
My body is my vessel
making toward the far shore
a body without a body
in spite of me
I swim in a jar
of memories
Maria Zaki
A BEING OF CHANGE AND FIRE
To be a being
of change and fire
mustn’t you keep
the rules of the nocturnal chant
right to the limit
of pale night ?
The vigil is long, drawn-out
and the crescent moon
a masterpiece
an unforced weave of lace
on a smile or tear
retrieved from the lost fire
at the crossroads of days !
Maria Zaki
THE LAND WHERE THE POEM IS BORN
The land where the poem is born
is peopled with far-off immediacies
when the drama of duration
crosses our path
we unveil the fruits
we hide the roots
and we cultivate
the possible gardens
Maria Zaki
I SAY
I say:
the be the more dressed
is naked
without knowledge
you say:
only that
which leads to the light
I say:
Stop for the glare
in the middle of the desert
you say:
take care of your limbs
to go to the spring
Maria Zaki
I RAISE AGAIN
I raise again the sole index
of my best memories
from a school of wisdom
which destroyed me
to better make me anew
and now here I am
on the benches of a new class
one which doesn’t bend
under my false steps
or my implacable doubts !
Maria Zaki
THE NIGHT IN BLOOM
The night in bloom
wants you, calls on you.
It’s said to be
the sweet hour
of the springtime of poetry
Captured on the edge
of the forgotten
verses stripped of their noise
verses clothed in their melody
emerging from you
in spite of yourself
A rain of petals
Wets your lips
waiting for joy
an unconfessed dream
signals to you
that between the mists
of the ideal of me
You clasp its trunk
wrap yourself round
one of its branches
while another invaded by birds
smiles at you !
Maria Zaki
THE DESERT’S SAVAGE ANGEL
The desert’s savage angel
begins the countdown
and flies off noiselessly
it is the Thousand and Second Night
the night of no one
Shéhérazade hides
in a vow of silence
night of our risk and peril
dawn welling from the night
will be without a door or window
as a blind wall
our host of language
shudder at the finish of the count
forever shackled
in the powers of doubt!
Maria Zaki
REGARDLESS OF LANDSCAPES
Regardless of landscapes
here one only travels
between one face and another
a face clothed in its smile
the other a trickle of tears
Regardless of destination
all that matters
is the unachievable quest
we accept in its incompleteness
here we make a track towards the other
willingly complicit
where we close for good
the eyes and heart
Maria Zaki
ALHAMBRA
A woman was singing
in the gardens of the Alhambra
Her voice whipped the stars
as they came out one by one
Do you remember
the scent of the orange trees,
the murmuring of the waters?
Everything remains unchanged
in this place of memory
where the unending snows keep watch
on the enchanted palaces
Schubert's lieder...
a few notes are enough
to pull from our dreams
the twelve stone lions
of the sleeping fountains
We wander forever
among the colonnades
and the lace of the facades
in the scent of the orange trees
Jacques Robinet
IMAGINE
Imagine
childhood rediscovered
under the thick layer of years
the rifles' rust
your hands on the horizon
Imagine
the transparency of looks
the interior light
the trains and planes
which attend it
Imagine
the sea rising
in the prisons where you stir
reason capsizing
the heart on fire
Imagine
the silence and the joy
beyond the night.
Jean-Luc Pouliquen
TO BE THERE
To be there
in the thickness of the world
hands open
the heart alert
To be there
with no other desire
but the wellspring
with no other design
but love.
Jean-Luc Pouliquen
CAIRN DE BARNENEZ
Primitive night
which rises from the black earth
and the light of the first men
above the unchanging bay.
A single misplaced stone
and a rainbow of flints collapses
a single added stone
and the whole headland growls.
The bird lays down its fragment of sky
the lizard inscribes its fugitive line
the wind and rain knead
the leaven of stones.
Every pebble is a fixed sound
each stone the thought of a deceased
every block is a dream
which continues to come true.
All around the bramble sings
the broom gives forth its yellow trills
the gorse collides with the percussive sea
the rocky bush like a lunar bowl.
The swarm of stones attends its hive
the dial its solar needle
the attic of stones which opens to the stars
and the scattering breeze.
In the disorder of islands
a watchman was missing
for the eyes of holly and jonquil.
The men dragged him from their future age.
The rumbling of a sea-bed wave
which has climbed the promontory
and congealed in the summit –
a migrant awaiting a new flight.
Gérard le Gouic
PALIMPSEST
You have cursed
the unattainable
and when you
reached it
you were cursed.
Angeliki Dimouli
CRY
The sun
has cut your finger.
It's soaked in blood
the blank story
which you told me.
It has bled
to the end.
Ours.
Angeliki Dimouli
DANGEROUS SPOON
You consume memory
with the spoon of forgetfulness.
It's an evil spoon, the one you're using,
a spoon which consumes food and guest
until a shadow bowl
is left for you
in a shadow hand.
Hilde Domin
STRANGE JOURNEY
You spoke of burning your boats
- mine are in ashes -
you dreamt of weighing anchor
- already I was far at sea -
of a land n the New World
- already I was interred
in a foreign land
and a tree with a bizarre name
a tree like every other
has grown from me as from all the dead
no matter where
Hilde Domin
EVERYONE CARRIES IN THEMSELVES A POEM
Times lays its trail without haste, without reflection.
Testimony of the twilights which burnish the sun
after having sung the starry dawns.
the watchman knows that morning will not return.
The hymn of the earth echoes in us to shake
the immobile indivisible splendour of silence.
Uttered words mobilised by memory
prolong the reprieve of unfinished quatrains.
Everyone carries in themselves a poem never written
which no one will ever write, which returns without ceasing.
Jean-Bernard Charpentier
MIRACLE
A miracle to be alive
and to have bled
to be a man without parents,
given words for speech.
A miracle to have hands of flesh
and that all carries on
at the level of the rough sheet and the lost hair,
my regrets planted in me
like a ship's lights
and my muscles which conspire
in the red pits of my voice.
The sweetness of learning that my death
is only a bird perched on my bursts of laughter,
that it owes me its grain,
that it's still my life.
Jean Rousselot
MORE FAITHFUL THAN THE BREEZE
More faithful than the breeze
in the jasmine, the scents of shadow
the orchards after autumn
you do not leave my hand.
Each instant I receive
quite unknown like a guest
takes secretly your face
please leaning on mine.
Gerard Bocholier
GLOOMY NIGHT
Man bent under your burden
come and sit.
No need to speak. Let's watch
the black night,
Leave your stone there,
rest until morning.
Into the gloomy night let's both
point our human eyes.
Talking is hard. The stone is heavy.
The bread of stone
Why speak? Two stones in the night
to keep silent.
Julian Tuwim
THE PLINTHS
The storm has uprooted the stone statues,
nothing remains but their empty plinths.
What will we put in their place?
Glass doors, faces of ice, dreams on paper?
Time drinks the blood
down to the last drop.
The waves offer me their lips of foam,
stirring up memories and bitterness.
My footsteps are as light
as a shadow’s,
the sun has dropped an echo in the water,
a rock has left a hand in the sand.
I move away from the virtuosos of mediocrity,
the pluckers of roses, the inventors of truths.
Eric Jacquelin
I FEEL THE WIND
The grass grows thick
rich,
fat and green.
A young apple tree opens,
bursts into flower.
It marshals its strength,
draws sap and vigour from its sprawlng roots.
Further off, beside the fence,
the shadow of an oak tree flattens across our meadow.
I rest and gather myself in atoms of greenery a few metres from there,
six feet deep.
I feel the wind in my leaves.
Ronan Zaoute
I WILL WRITE FOR YOU
Immediately the words waken
like a sleeping hive
when springtime suddenly appears
They fly towards him who calls
Every language creates its passageways
Without you, gold dulls in its cellars
the springs sink
and no one knows for whom the bird sings
I will write for you
words which catch fire
like wild pearls
on a beloved skin
Your coming breaks the harshness
of a long learning
I will write for you
as the prisoner freed
celebrates the light
as the wind marries the leaves
as night surrenders to the day
Jacques Robinet
PIGMENTS
On my canvas
Arabesques interlace
in cold and hot tones:
rounds, farandoles, tchinkoumè, agbadja, morna!
Voodoo adorned with red oil
and Christ’s precious blood!
Spotless laces and indigo loincloths
are curves of fire
and stones animated by reflections
on my canvas.
Fon, mahi, French, Portuguese Creole
pour their notes into my brushes!
Oh multicolored Pantheons on the ochre of temples
where time has let its fingers run at random!
Oh sulphurous cape Verde where the mountain
is caressed, kissed by the ocean!
Oh French earth which made the burning sap of my ancestors germinate!
These mixed bloods soak my veins today!
The bed of the Atlantic,
lock of three allied continents
gave me birth,
drawing a flame of honey and amber
on my canvas.
Patricia Grange
POETRY IMMANENT LIKE GOD
The carpet of paper which I unrolled
and which for so long I've scattered
with flowers of words to welcome you
is still empty.
'My painting, my music,
my love which you are,
when do you intend to come
and set down your velvet feet?'
I asked,
and she replied 'Like God
I too am everywhere'.
My blank pages
filled up with poems.
KTM Iqbal
MEMORY
At night I think of you your face is before me
level with the mirrors and the sands
mother of the bouquets and the trees
mother with palpable hands
I see you; you have laughter between your fingers
and in your eyes a veritable blood.
Through the pines along the roads the storm leaves red lamps
the sky is a wheel in the broken grasses
the track rimmed with dawns hangs
like a clothes-line from the patient roofs.
In the baskets of the river a girl naked and white
glides her breasts and her hips
in front of the absence in front
of the emptiness which tempts her
a girl naked and tender skims absent-mindedly
the verdure of her limbs.
Marc Patin
POETS AND PROPHETS
I've seen the sky in a star and the black fire in the heart of a tree
the snow naked as a woman
and the blood hidden on sand
I've seen the day the ear against the windowpane
vigilant boat smashed in the night
I've seen two eyes stranger
wilder than fruits
I've seen men in the plain
covered in dust in dead wood in reflections
I've seen men of flesh and blood one evening
holding in their hand an extinguished moon
a woman's hand a horseshoe
they had on their faces
the acrid breath of the straits
Marc Patin
THE EYE AT THE WINDOWPANE
The eye at the windowpane like the bird of the past
I have no secret except that of the stone
secret of speechless women
I resemble the trees of the sky
a turban of ashes around my head
the hands alone living and closed
on a muddled treasure.
A little later the day and its golden knives mix
the grasses of the forests cut the fresh bread of the cobbles
in the countryside and in the towns
the man gets over a long desire
the eye at the windowpane against the closed eye
of the forgotten summer.
Marc Patin
SMOOTH
From the initial
of the upper-case day
the horizon opens up
to the smooth savour
of lower-case words.
Laurent Grison
THE CROSSROADS OF DESIRE
At the hour of death
which is always now
perhaps you desire
to turn like the sunflower
towards the light at early morning
in the garden of Eden;
but in looking at yourself
this far distant from the sun
forgetting neither our inborn gravity
nor the compact horizon of the created world
maybe you prefer to the flowers of Paradise
the effacement of your carnal existence,
the immediate collapse of your person and the world
in the night of the innermost depths, the original belly,
hoping for your return to the interior nothing
in the dark heart of the sun, out of the mortal hour.
Claude Vigée
THE DARKNESS OF SUMMER
A slow cry of crows
woke me in the summer of my twentieth year
on the earth shining with sun and wheat -
beside me the empty glass and the sliced orange.
The grass bent around me, I believed I could hear
a slight rustling of the wind or a lizard.
My head hurt, the world had become for me
only the vivid, violent small of crushed
hay, and then its taste -
the burning of salt on my bitter lips!
Claude Vigée
GREAT SCHISM
Attention on the unasked-for treasures
To the patient and taciturn pupil
long forgotten in a dark corner
the pupil who hastens the dreams
which makes life gentle
who forges a woman as one rigs a ship
who sees beyond the enclosing wall
beyond mounts
beyond seas
who would already be at the end of the world
if we were not there to speak to him about the backward surge
Attention to this fringe of sheer madness
in the front of a chatelaine and in the cold of columns in the margin of his temples
and in his shout where the night lays down
the tiredness of birds
Attention to this shameless vegetation
who intervenes between beings
and who finally gives them the right
to call themselves separate.
Georges Henein
UNDER THE GREAT LADDER
Blue. Night on the sand
and the ladder
to climb the mountain
The last pines trapped
by the encroaching dune
The last pines to help
to breathe freely
And this blue coloured night
which proclaims evening beautiful
on the immortal dune
hidden
under the great ladder
Thomas Chaline
THE WALLS DON’T MOVE
The walls don’t move
the doors remain closed
the hill-top bends
on the woods and the wound
you breathe on the embers
and make everything appear
Gerard Bocholier
TORR-BENN
The men are afraid.
the roughneck soldiers are in the countryside.
they live there, yes, and die there
the country is theirs, they violate it
night, day, women are their prey. Victuals too.
Finished, the revealing fires of life
the country is cold,
holding its breath the better to hide.
Only the weapons are warm, lying by the beds, with men ready to defend
their family, their children,
those joyous children of the poor,
treasures of the ragged.
Sleep is fitful
broken by agonies,
always lying in wait for the signals given by the dogs loosed to the night,
the peasants' sentries.
Men take refuge in God's houses,
strong chapels of huge stones.
The forgotten chimneys of churches in the woods smoke on evenings when they lie hidden under sackcloth.
And perhaps some children, a little too blond or a little too tanned will be born on the isolated farms,
the women’s' white thighs having been forced open.
But we will love them, our children,
they will be ours
Too fair or brown, they will defend us when another war, another struggle of the great comes to cast on our land the ruffians of power.
Our pretty little children will split their skulls with cudgels.
Ronan Zaouter
TURNING ROAD
There’s a terrible grey dust in the weather
the strong wings of a south wind
dark echoes of water in the capsizing evening
and in the wet of the night pouring from a twist in the road
coarse voices complaining
A taste of ashes on the tongue
the sound of an organ in the pathways
the tossed ship of the heart
work’s disasters
When the desert fires go out one by one
the eyes wet like blades of grass
when the dew descends, bare feet on leaves
morning barely broken
There is someone who searches
an address lost in the hidden path
the stars glitter, the flowers fall to one side
through the broken branches
and the dark stream wipes its soft lips barely parted
when the steps of the walker on the measuring dial
rules the movement and pushes the horizon
all cries are spent, all times meet
sand I walk to the skies, beams in my eyes
noise for no reason and names in my head
living faces
all that’s passed in the world
and this feast
where I’ve wasted my time.
Pierre ReverdCANTILENA FOR A BLIND FLAUTIST
(Cantilène pour un jueur de flûte aveugle)
Flute in the lonely night,
liquid presence of a cry,
all the silences of the earth
are the petals of your flower.
Scatter your pollen in the shadows,
soul crying, almost silently,
honey flowing from a dark mouth,
and, since your slow cadences
pulse with the rhythm of summer evenings,
make us believe the skies are dancing
because a blind man sang.
Marguerite Yourcenar
THE POEM OF THE YOKE
(Le poème du Joug)
The women of my country carry a yoke on their shoulders.
Their heart, heavy and slow, oscillates between these two poles.
At each step, two large buckets full of milk collide
against their knees;
the maternal soul of the cows, the foam of the chewed grass
squirts in sickening and sweet waves.
I am like the farm maid;
I advance along the pain with a firm step;
the bucket on the left side is full of blood;
you can drink it and gorge yourself on this powerful juice.
The bucket on the right is full of ice;
you can bend down and contemplate your weary face.
So, I go between each of my fates;
between my blood, hot liquid, and my love, limpid death.
And when I'm sure that neither the mirror nor the drink
can no longer distract or reassure your wild heart,
I will not break the innocent mirror;
I won't spill the bucket where my whole life has bled
I'll go, carrying my bucket of blood, into the dark night,
among the spectres, who at least will come to drink there.
But with my bucket of ice, I will go to the side of the waves.
The moaning of the wavelets will be less gentle than my sobs;
a large pallid shape will appear on the dune,
and that mirror you no longer want will reflect the calm face of the moon.
Marguerite Yourcenar
THE KEY
(La Clé)
Like ants from before the frost
we store our emotions
on the keyboard of our sleepless nights.
Our lives hang on words.
But the drawer of memories
sticks on the ledge of nerves
the cry of words is lost
in the hubbub of images.
What can we tell you still
strange foreigners our sons
if you've lost the key
which opens our recollections?
Jean-Pierre Thuillat
THEN THE TIME WITHERS
(Alors le temps s'étiole)
Then the time withers. Night
gets shorter day by day.
The landscape of the eyes alone dwells
faithfully at the crossroads of childhood,
witness to the sky's permanence.
We navigate between the pasts
of images. We find
the key to the fleeting moment
where we thought we had access
to the clear forest of joy.
We would have gained transparency
If only the round of birds had stopped
or a sudden youthful glance had landed
where the smile is born
right at the corner of the mouth.
Jean-Pierre Thuillat
PLAINT
(Planh)
For Bernard de Ventadour and Bertran de Born, living poets
Modernity is no longer written in Athens but in
a new Athens without Greeks or Latins
perhaps in Hudson's Bay, maybe on
the slopes of a Fuji its top laced with Chantilly
or those of the delta in great Calcutta
when in the morning they go to dump on the bank
all the corpses of the night.
But never again, alas! will it be written
between Loire and Garonne where you were born proud
to raise the glove lost by the Atrides.
No more eagles at Ventadour will cut the granite
no more herald in Uzerche or even in Excideuil.
The Dalon limestone crumbles on your bones.
Degun pus n'auvira la lenga trobairitz
qu'avia plan esvelhat las gens d'emper aqui.*
Europe has returned to her father's orchards
and Olympia is sold at Popocatepetl.
* Degun pus...No one will hear the troubadour speaking anymore
who had woken people up around here.
Jean-Pierre Thuillat
WISDOM
(Sagesse)
Without memories, without desires, without hate
I will return to the country,
in the great nights, in their hot breath
bury all my aged torments.
Without memories, without desires, without hate.
I'll collect the remaining shreds
of what I used call my heart,
my heart that has bruised your every gesture;
and if not completely dead of grief
I'll collect its remaining shreds.
In the endless murmur of dawn
at the mercy of its four winds, around
I'll throw away everything that devours me,
then, without dreams, I'll sleep - always -
in the endless murmur of dawn.
Birago Diop
THE TRUMPETS
(C'est l'histoire des trompettes)
It’s the story of the trumpets
which bothers me
when I gather the trumpets
of death I hear not a note
Neither those of Jericho
nor those of the operetta
not the faintest echo
of celestial music
The trumpets are mute
or I’m deaf – yet I hear
the wind’s grand gesture
in the radiance of days.
Jean-Claude Pirotte
HAVEN’T YOU HAD ENOUGH
(N’en as-tu pas assez d’être mort ?)
Haven’t you had enough of being dead?
Here we’re still looking for you.
The time has come, don’t you think,
to start a new life
with the wind and rain
as it was yesterday
or even at the well-springs of time.
You could become again the guardian
of this kingdom of silence
where we wander, lost.
Jean-Claude Pirotte