Nor their laziness...

"Don't judge men's wealth or godliness by their Sunday appearance."

Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)

Ode to the missing one

Where's the girl I'm supposed to date?
Vanished, by some trick of fate!
Don't tell me I was too late,
I was there on that date.
I'm quite au fait
on any fete
but that's another debate.
Perhaps she is in such a state
as she can't but circumnavigate
and she's stuck in Kuwait.
Well, I hate having to wait.
At any rate,
with all this overrate
let's hope she has a clean slate.
But let me get this straight:
I know that she's great
and my love for her didn't bate
but I'm yearning to relate
soon rather than late
and get to create
and sedate
in some real estate
in the Bering Strait.
There we'd ice-skate
and, elate,
we would mate
and ornate
the world with a new bunch of mouths to sate.
Come on, my promise, my soulmate,
I don't want to deflate!

åppås

Argentine snow yields lilies
on the levee of the marshes.
The dry season stupefied all,
the great billowy mass of virgas
crawled and blanketed all,
daggered the land
with shafts of sundust
and dwarfed the strongest burgas
we had seen in our days,
birthed the most radiant flowers.


Snowflakes the size of fists
pulverise the fields,
deposit frozen droplets
on the bending branches,
wisps of snow windcoil,
rage around the firs,
stilling the thoughts of movement
before they are even taken.


And such things the eye can't perceive
the photographs reveal
in a silver unguent of healing vision:
the dazzling drops of whiteness
silhouetted on a canvas of ice.


Stooped against the slanting current
the poet slogs on,
shards of rime boring through his brittle beard,
his breath drawing palpable vapour
in the still and fierce air.
His mind fixed on one purpose only:
a faint blue glint lost in the wilderness,
in the absolute necessity of snow,
a cerulean call to dive
into the unmistakable pallor of death,
a gaze which had pierced his very body,
calling for resolve and action.


The poet slogs on,
unperturbed, ready, percipient,
until he sees, in the squalls of snow,
the glaucous summon.
Now is the time.
The whiteout ceases,
and all around him for miles and miles
nothing can be discerned
but those spellbinding specks of blue.

Best viewed in the dark

That's what happens when you try to zoom in on a particular star

with a 15s exposure without a tripod...

Pluie

elle a les yeux couleur de pluie

et ses cheveux celle de l'éclair

elle a l'odeur fraîche de la terre

sa peau de soie comme la nuit

sur le jour naissant prend appui

dans ses mains le temps fixe et célère

parfois à la faveur d'un nuage

point brillant comme une comète

on l'entraperçoit qui voyage

et dans l'énigme sélénite

on la voit telle une allumette

fendant d'un coup d'ongle l'ombrage

j'ai fixé les gouttes collées

à la vitre au milieu de l'averse

son regard comme envisagé

à travers la cérule des herses

me souriait, ou pas, ou l'inverse,

déversées par ce ciel enragé

 

Fragment #25

Safe behind that pane of glass
The storm shatters the sky
Electric claws rip cloud to cloud
Its stomach churns
Digesting the universe

Last night's storm in Chartres / Le dernier orage sur Chartres

Click on a picture to zoom in.

Fragment #99

L'arc gibbeux qu'ont laissé ses dents,
lune crénelée, dans son croissant –
arrière-goût d'un bruit.

VÜCUTSUZ

VÜCUTSUZ

Ağustos böceği ovadan büyük,

Ova biter, o bitmez.

Söyler yıldız kırıklarını, gölde,

Talihden, nefes nefes.

Karanlık çekilir otlara, ağaçlara,

Şehvete terk edip havayı.

Ve kaplar acayip çehreler,

Up uzun, sim siyah aynayı.

Dalmışım büyümesine nakışların;

Uykumda kadın yok, aşk var.

Dalmışım topraktan gelen vakte,

Dağ yok, rüzgâr var.

(in Daha, 1943)

SANS CORPS

La cigale est plus grande que la plaine,

La plaine finit, elle ne finit pas.

Elle dit les brisures d'étoiles dans le lac,

De la chance, par souffles.

L'obscurité se retire dans les herbes, dans les arbres,

Laissant l'air à la volupté.

Et des figures étranges emplissent

Le très long, le très noir miroir.

Je suis plongé dans la croissance des broderies,

Dans mon sommeil il n'y a pas de femme, il y a l'amour.

Je suis plongé dans le temps qui vient de la terre,

Il n'y a pas de montagne, il y a du vent.

(in Encore, 1943)

Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca, poète turc / Turkish poet (1914-2008)


L'Oiseau à quatre ailes, traduit du turc par Ahmet Soysal, préface de Sébastien Labrusse. Collection "D'une voix l'autre", Cheyne éditeur, 2002.

Answer the call

"Les vocations manquées déteignent sur toute l'existence."

"The vocations which we wanted to pursue but didn't, drain the colours from the whole of our existence."

La maison Nucingen (1838), Honoré de Balzac, French writer (1799-1850)