Laughing at the sky and the planets
Mouths soaked with confidence
The wise
Want children
And children of their children
Until they perish from erosion
Time just has time for the mad
Only the abyss will flourish
And the wise are foolish.
*
from Poésie et Vérité (1942)
As low as the silence
Of a corpse planted in the earth
Nothing but the dark in its head
As dreary and muffled
As autumn in the pond
Covered with dull shame
The widow-poison of its flower
And of these dressed-up idiots
Spits night on us
from Poésie et Vérité (1942)
A translation for Ukraine, and all the besieged.
“…a very simple wish, an everyday wish, a hardworking wish, to free oneself from the occupier.” – Paul Éluard
In my school-books
On my desk, on the trees
On the sand and on the snow
I write your name
On every page I read
On every blank page
Stone, blood, paper and ash
I write your name
On perspex screens
On soldiers’ guns
On the tyrant’s jewels
I write your name
In the forest on the steppe
On the nests on the thyme bush
On the echo of my childhood
I write your name
On the events of the night
On the day’s white bread
In the married seasons
I write your name
On all my sky blue rags
On the sun dried pool
On the vibrant lake of the moon
I write your name
On the fields of the horizon
On the wings of birds
And on the shadow’s engines
I write your name
On each wave of the dawn
On the sea on the boats
On the lost mountain
I write your name
On the froth of the clouds
On the sweat of the storm
On the thick and tasteless rain
I write your name
On the sparkling shapes
On the colours’ bells
On the real truth
I write your name
On the waking paths
On the rolled out roads
In the packed city squares
I write your name
With the light we switch on
With the light we switch off
On our gathered houses
I write your name
On the apple, cut in two
Of my mirror, and my room
On my bed’s empty frame
I write your name
On my gentle dog who eats so well
On her raised ears
On her clumsy paws
I write your name
On the diving board of my doorstep
On my everyday objects
On the surge of blessed fire
I write your name
On all the flesh of lovers
On the face of my friends
On every hand that’s offered
I write your name
On the window with its surprises
On attentive lips
Well above the silence
I write your name
On my destroyed shelters
On my fallen lighthouses
On the walls of my despair
I write your name
On unwanted absences
On naked loneliness
In my steps with death
I write your name
On the return of health
When risk has disappeared
On hope without memory
I write your name
And by the power of a word
I begin my life again
I was born to know you
To name you
Freedom.
After Pushkin via Louis Martinez
The palace was fire. A choir sang
ringing with flute-sound and lyre.
The Queen’s glance, and her voice
were the soul of a great feast.
All hearts inclined to the throne.
So, golden bowl in hand, the Queen
looked taken by dreams, and drooped
her beautiful head toward the ground –
the royal feast seemed to calm
and the hosts shut up. And the choir.
That’s when, again, she looked up
and said, her face bathed in milky light:
< My love is your sovereign joy. >
< A sovereign joy you can buy… >
< Listen. It’s mine alone to do: >
< give you all one equal opportunity. >
< Who here’s a buyer? My love’s in play >
< I’m putting it up for bids – let’s see >
< who among you is ready to pay >
< with your life for one night spent with me? >
She spoke. Fear took them all,
as a passion stuttered their hearts.
Enduring a muddled rumour which rose
of a face that was icy with pride –
she let run a disgusted look
round her circle of adorers…
Now, someone came from the ranks
soon followed by two others,
their step was daring, their eyes glowing
and the Queen rose, walking to meet them.
The game was set, three nights were bought
and death’s bed was opened to them…
…………
Immediately, blessed by the priests
the three lots, one after another,
were drawn from the fatal urn
in front of the silent guests.
Flavius came first. A robust soldier,
veteran of the Roman legions.
He twitched to see in a woman
so much arrogance and disdain.
He went to her bed’s challenge
like in old days, in his campaigns,
he’d gone to the call of battle.
Then came Crito, a young intellectual
raised in Epicurean groves
Crito, the adept, the poet
of the Graces, of Cypress, of love
whose eyes, and heart, were kind –
flower of a springtime barely begun.
History has forgotten the name
of the third. A short and soft fur
tenderly shadowed his cheeks.
Desire illuminated his eyes –
a hot and clumsy force
boiling in his young heart…
It was on him that rested
the saddened gaze of the Queen.
…………
< I swear, as Queen of pleasures
I will worship them beyond anything tried
and make myself play courtesan
in this game-of-love challenge.
Listen, oh powerful Cyprus
and you, infernal sovereigns
oh gods of fearsome Hades –
I swear to you that before the dawn
I will exhaust their desires,
their burning pleasures, my masters;
I will quench them, opening to them
the mystery of my strokes –
The divine secrets of pleasure –
but as soon as the eternal dawn
shines its morning purple –
this is an oath – their pleased little heads
will bounce under an axe. >
…………
Now the day is blown out,
the moon rises all horny and gold
and a delicious shadow fills
the whole Alexandrian palace –
where spurts of water and lamps glitter –
where a hot smoke of incense rises –
where they ready the gods of the earth
for the smoothest of pleasures.
There, in a dark and luxurious cavern
full of half-miracles of art,
under the shade of purple curtains
waits the gold and royal bed…
1828
Sun-prey prisoner of my head,
rub out the hill, rub out the forest.
The sky is more beautiful than ever.
Grape-dragonflies
give it form so precise
that I disperse with a wave.
Clouds of the first day,
insensible clouds, that nothing authorised,
their grain burns
in the straw-fire of my eyes.
In the end, to cover itself in dawn
the day must be as pure as the night
Ban on Knowledge (1928)
V
My words to you don’t change me
I don’t switch from biggest to smallest
Look at me
Perspective doesn’t work for me
I hold on here
And you can’t get away
There’s nothing else around –
And if I turn there is nothing on both sides
Nothing and me
It began at that so particular time of the night
where the end of one day bumps up against the start of another;
I went out in the rain, I was hungry.
The storm unleashed its warm hail on the flapping shutters,
no one else was walking in the streets
which were slick and seeped down to the square at the bottom
where the fountain overflowed.
Normally bony dogs would be having a bath there
but now, no barking, no whistles.
The night, the rain, the heat.
I crossed the road. A guy waved from the other side:
two fingers and a mouth ajar to ask
if I had something to smoke, I threw up an open hand
flapping, like the shutters, to show him that no,
and I went on, face buried in my oversize hoody,
hair full of the smell of a day
that wasn’t quite done.
By the sign, a young girl in a pink skirt and a guy
with a haircut that recalled the best moments
of Agnés Varda, waited their turn to order a kebab
with extra cheese.
The girl looked at the mounted flat-screen
on the wall showing clips of american pop,
the guy threw and caught a plastic bottle behind him
turning it over skilfully.
After they’d paid, the owner said
“Sorry for the wait”
I’d only just arrived, so that made me smile;
“a box of chips, with ketchup
okay
you can wait
inside.”
So I waited, standing, leant against the fridge
in front of the empty salad trays.
It was then that a man, soaked to the bone, came in.
I pushed myself aside to let him pass:
his clothes gave off a smell of cement
and cheap alcohol, his hair cropped short, grey,
held water
like the surface of a field at four in the morning.
He ordered.
At the moment I went to pay for my chips, he fixed his eyes,
eyes rounder than the beak of a Flemish rose,
the weak mouth of those tired men who drink
a bit too much and with acceptance –
he looked at me for a while,
and stammered:
“I don’t know what to say to you.”
At first I thought he was winding me up, but all the same,
his eyes, his eyes!
“How’s that?”
He took a great breath, as if each word
tore from him half of a lung:
“I don’t know what to say to you, Miss”
The guy behind the counter listened with one ear
filling the industrial chip trays.
“You don’t have to say anything to me”
I responded, shaking my jumper.
“I don’t know what to say to you because I know who you are.”
The rain left lightly shining grooves, falling
from his skull to the bottom of his nose.
I didn’t know what to say either:
midnight wasn’t far off, I’d come looking for what to expect til morning,
and this guy, perfectly drunk and sound of mind, seemed
about to cave in on himself.
“I know who you are, you write books.
How do you do it?”
“Well, however I can.”
He gave himself a tap on the knees, and then
in one go,
tears, sweat
of the rain which comes from the inside
something humid and sincere came over his look,
already drowning in solitude and the bizarre night.
He turned towards the guy
who folded
the orange trays
with the precision of a dental surgeon.
“I can tell you that I didn’t get soaked tonight for nothing, no way!”
At my back, the fridge hummed.
A light smile installed itself, naturally
between my dimples.
On the counter, my chips were ready, well packed.
I took out my coin
a two euro piece and the drowned man said to me:
“I would like to pay for your chips, if you don’t mind.”
I sighed and left my coin between him and me, then I offered my hand.
He shook it.
“Thanks, mister”
and I left, my bundle of chips on my wrist.
On the way back, the characteristic smell of chip fat
invaded my nostrils, my hair, my clothes.
I will probably never see that man again, or at least, not like that.
Since yesterday, I’ve wanted to write about him, because I wonder
which of us in a few months, in a few years, will be betrayed
by the image they have constructed
of the outside world?
Will it be for others to shake hands
at that hour of the night
for a box of lukewarm chips and an iceless cola?
I would like for poetry to be as natural to those
who surround me as the emotion
that sprang forth that night, before that square
with the improbable ease of moments that might not have been,
but that happened all the same, poorly thought out
overflowing with grace, and impossible words
The Apt Little Ones (1926)
VIII
She always refuses to understand, to hear,
she laughs to hide her terror of herself
she has always walked under the night’s arches
and everywhere she goes
she leaves
the imprint of broken things
We sleep alongside red angels who show us the desert without microscopics and without soft, sad awakenings. We sleep. A wing breaks us, escape, we have wheels older than flown feathers, lost, to explore the graveyards of slowness, the only luxury.
*
The bottle which surrounds the cloth of our wounds gives in to the slightest want. Let us take hearts, brains, the muscles of anger, let’s take the invisible flowers of pale little girls and tied children. Let us take the hand of memory, let us close our souvenir eyes, a theory of trees liberated by thieves hits us and divides us, all the fragments are good. Who will reassemble them: terror, suffering or disgust?
*
Sleep, my brothers. This inexplicable chapter has become incomprehensible. Giants pass by, breathing terrible moans, giant’s moans, moans like the dawn wants to push through them, the dawn which can’t complain anymore, after all this time, my brothers, after all this time.
I
Quiet world of rundown homes
Of night and fields
II
Good faces ready for fire faces ready for full speed
For refusing the night, for injuries, for impacts
III
Faces ready for anything
Here comes the void to fix you
Your death’s going to be an example
IV
The death overthrown heart
V
They’ve made you pay in bread
Sky earth water sleep
And the misery
Of your life
VI
They say want good intelligence
They ration the strong judge the mad
Make charity divide one penny
They salute dead bodies
They bomb themselves with niceties
VII
They persevere they exaggerate they are not of our world
VIII
Women children have the same treasure
Of spring-green leaves and pure milk
And of legacy
In their clear eyes
IX
Women children have the same treasure
In the eyes
Some men have defended it if they could
X
Women children have the same pink roses
In the eyes
Each one lets out its blood
XI
Fear and courage to live and to die
Death so difficult and so easy
XII
Those for whom this treasure was sung
Those for whom this treasure was gashed
XIII
Those whose despair
Enrages the desolate flames of hope
Let’s crack open together the last bud of the future
XIV
Outcasts the death the soil and the disgust
Of our enemies has the dull
Colour of our night
We will defeat it.
Absolute|Unrest 