Tentatives

Toutes ces tentatives

loin d'être naïves

sont incomplètes

désuètes

sommaires

éphémères

le temps excoriera

l'expérience animera

la puissance sommeille

attend l'éveil

la feuille de thé

en forme de paupière

l'hiccéité

formée dans la poussière

il faudra pour cela verser

plus de sang et de larmes

que n'en fit couler Circé

sans l'aide d'aucune arme

il faudra pour cela observer

plus de soleils et plus de lunes

au coucher et au lever –

peut-être les voir de la dune

il faudra pour cela vivre

moins vainement

lire plus de livres

plus silencieusement

il faudra pour cela, aller de l'avant

et être moins ivre moins souvent

Autant que possible (1913)

Et si tu ne peux pas mener la vie que tu veux,

essaie au moins de faire en sorte, autant

que possible: de ne pas la gâcher

dans trop de rapports mondains,

dans trop d’agitation et de discours.

Ne la galvaude pas en l’engageant à tout propos, 

en la traînant partout et en l’exposant

à l’inanité quotidienne

des relations et des fréquentations,

jusqu’à en faire une étrangère importune.

Constantin Cavafis, En attendant les barbares et autres poèmes

 

The longest night

The longest night is the longest day

juxtaposition of sun and sun

moon and moon in ecstatic ballet

light and light over a tiled floor

where names are renamed,

where words acquire new meanings for the night.

And the revelling takes on new shades

and people new hues

when yew trees extend their claws deep into the dusk

when the husk of what was is discarded

in the bonfire

and the pyre is delineated,

fiery line by fiery line,

minute after minute

by the failing light and the rising darkness.

The longest night of the year

lengthens and lengthens

and the lanterns flicker the way to the sphere

with the uncanny patterns,

some dance, enraptured,

some gambol with the giggling and the gay,

by the night immatured.

Behind the black birds-and-buds motifs

is secreted a spiral staircase.

Some, led by the nocturnal connoisseur,

will ascend this null point in space

and still the sclerotic buts and ifs

with the tongue-tying picture

of the city glazed in dazzling darkness

stripped of all merit and of all culpa

during the longest night of the kalpa.

Ramblings of an old man

Drop for drop

it should stop

when the cistern

becomes an urn.

Vessel grim and churning

harvests the burning

and we keep going

yes, we do.

Dustdrops dissolve

in the quiet surf

become a salve

neath the wharf.

Liquid stones

melting bones

trampled ashes

thesaurus dashes

bloody old crones.

Growing fear

of the nadir

the end is near

the end is near

the last frontier

where all things cohere.

Irises found in the next of kin

flaws in the depths of the skin

and the ceiling reels

the next funeral steels

yet we cover our ears to the din

for all things spin

one and two

one and two

and whirl within

effect and reason

of our chagrin.

Faults and imbrues of our forefathers

fuck us up into a spot of bother

and we pay our dues to our sons and daughters

conscientious saboteurs

hurtling topsy-turvy in the venerable turds.

It really is a rotten business, getting old is.

Fragment #1

Good-Friday's

cruxed Jesus

poised his back on the stairs

awaits the darkness and

the living history

to begin

again

Tundra

Not here, not here the desert

in this collapsing world.

Tundra has always exerted magnetism

from the very end,

which is also the beginning.

Few words, a man of few words, this they say that I am.

I punched and kicked and bit the devil out of me,

back in that dusty, tottering tomb.

Silence above all else.

The silence within for the words to reverberate.

I am closing in in order to open up.

I am withdrawing from the world in order to commune with the world.

I am silent in order to speak out.

Though deaf and dumb I spoke the word and I heard the sins

word against sin

word against bread

silence against water

word for water.

My staff will come to tread other deserts

other tundras

whilst I rot here, here where none can find me,

not even by accident, for the tundra hinders.

 

Fragment #66

phalène hors d'haleine

cognant contre le carreau

lumière de l'halogène

faux fanal ou lamparo

dans la nuit de méthylène

le mirage moderne du brasero

et l'antique de l'astre sélène

lueurs des leurres cathéméraux

aux saveurs d'éthylène

phalène hors d'haleine

volant jusqu'au luisant zéro

aux éclats vespéraux

Fragment #102

écrire pour oublier l'abîme

pour garder les paupières closes

les bras déposent

des gerbes de rimes

pour recouvrir l'aporie

la vie en creux qui implose

la rose n'est plus une rose n'est plus une rose n'est plus une rose

car plus personne ne rit

et le poète, lui, dérime

dans ce monde de morte prose

Fragment #9

s'assoupir pour fuir le quotidien

dormir pour abolir l'ultradien

s'éveiller sur un nouveau jour

ou une amorce de décours

mais pas sur ce manque d'amour

ce toujours à rebours

ce tout-rien officiant en calcin

ce mal-être malsain

qui pourrit tout et ne laisse rien

The People of Tun

This story is set in the tawdry town of Tun.

Its inhabitants were sundry good-natured fellers,

ranging from the grass-eater to the admirer of the sun,

but amiss from the roll-call was the storyteller.

Nowhere to be found.

So in his stead

they choose to propound

the cutting and spread-

ing to each citizen of a word

they had to learn by heart.

Anon they forgot

which word went with what yarn.

Had they set fire to the library barn

they hadn't done so much damage

in this year and age.

In time they compiled each citizen's treasure

and to add to this disaster

came up with a book of verse

that ranged from very bad to worse.

The storyteller is fated one day to come back to this place.

Let's picture his disgusted face

when he'll learn of the people of Tun's disgrace:

my hunch is that he'll retrace

his steps and go back whence he came

for there he had earned fame.