Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology (15 page)

Th

en, amiably inclining her body to the right,

She let down the bucket of pure water so that it rested on the pavement

Level with the lips of the child that had kneeled to drink.

II

One morning in Rotterdam on the quay of Boompjes

(It was the 18th of September 1900, around eight o’clock),

I observed two young girls going off to their workshops;

And in front of one of the great iron bridges they were saying goodbye,

Th

eir roads not being the same.

Th

ey kissed each other tenderly; their trembling hands

Wished and did not wish to separate; their mouths

Drew distant sorrowfully and came together again

While they gazed in each other’s eyes . . .

Va l e ry L a r bau d
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Th

us they remained a long moment close to each other

Upright and motionless among the busy passers-by,

While the tugs grumbled on the river

And trains maneuvered whistling on the iron bridges.

III

Between Cordova and Seville

Th

ere is a small station where, for no apparent reason,

Th

e South Express always stops.

In vain the traveler searches with his eyes for a village

Beyond that little station asleep beneath the eucalyptus trees.

He sees only the Andalusian countryside, green and golden.

However, on the other side of the track, facing it,

Th

ere is a hut of black branches and earth.

And at the sound of the train a swarm of ragged children comes out.

Th

eir older sister precedes them, and approaches on the platform,

And without saying a word, but smiling,

She dances for pennies.

Her feet in the dust appear to be black;

Her swarthy and dirty face is without beauty;

She dances, and through large holes in her skirt the color of ashes

You see, nakedly, the movements of her scrawny thighs

And rolling of her little yellow stomach;

And this is why, every time, some gentlemen laugh

In the odor of cigars in the diner.

Louis Simpson, 1995

La rue Souffl

ot

Romance

For the fan of Madame Marie Laurencin

No, you will never know . . .

Paris.

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Our little day will soon be over: the last

Years open before us like these streets;

And the school is there as always and the laid-out

Square, and the old church where we once saw

Th

e dead Verlaine come in. Aft er all, despite the sea

And so many crossings, we have never left

Th

is place, and all our life will have been

A little journey around and zigzag across Paris.

And even aft erwards we will still be here,

Invisible, forgotten, but inhabiting as always

Th

e city of childhood and of fi rst love,

With the astonishment of being twelve and of that meeting,

Which still makes us murmur in the crowd:

“
Porque sabes que siempre te he querido
. . .”

And a passer-by, who has heard me, turns to look.

Richard Pevear, 2012

Va l e ry L a r bau d
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Je a n Foll a in
(1903–71)

Landscape of a Child on His Way to the Place of the Regents

Th

is great liquid silence

inhabiting the barrels

these tiny insects

trying in vain to devour the skin of virgins

the wheelwrights drinking near the blue thistle

the hornets making their white honey

the bees distilling their blond honey

the fl ashing cauldrons

that are rubbed with wet ashes

the sounds of the storm’s end

the rank smoke

of weeds burning in piles

in box-hedged gardens

and the portrait of a king

on the kitchen wall

and the clay and plaster

in the damp kingdoms:

All of it is the Messenger of an impossible dawn:

there she is already at the top of the hill

the widow

leading by the hand to the distant school

the child with the wild red hair.

Black Meat

Around stones called precious

which only their own

dust can wear down

the eaters of venison

carve in silence

their black meat

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the trees on the horizon

imitate in outline

a giant sentence.

Th

e School and Nature

Drawn on the blackboard

in the classroom in a town

a circle remained intact

and the teacher’s chair was deserted

and the students had gone

one sailing on the fl ood

another plowing alone

and the road went winding

a bird letting fall

the dark drops of its blood.

W. S. Merwin, 1969

J e a n F ol l a i n
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Y v es Bonnefoy
(b. 1923)

To the Voice of Kathleen Ferrier

All gentleness and irony converged

For this farewell of crystal and low clouds,

Th

rustings of a sword played upon silence,

Light that glanced obscurely on the blade.

I celebrate the voice blended with gray

Th

at falters in the distances of singing

As if beyond pure form another song’s

Vibrato rose, the only absolute.

O light and light’s denial, smiling tears

Th

at shine upon both anguish and desire,

True swan, upon the water’s dark illusion,

Source, when evening deepens and descends.

You seem to be at home on either shore,

Extremes of happiness, extremes of pain.

And there among the luminous gray reeds

You seem to draw upon eternity.

Th

e Farewell

We came back to our origin,

Th

e place of clarity still, but torn apart.

Th

e windows blended far too many lights,

Th

e stairs climbed over far too many stars

Th

at mean collapsing arches, broken plaster.

Th

e fi re seemed to burn in another world.

And now birds fl y from room to room,

Th

e shutters have fallen, stones cover the bed,

Th

e hearth is full of sky-debris, just on the edge of dying.

We’d talk there in the evening, almost in whispers

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Because of the echoing vaults, and nonetheless

We’d hatch our plans: but a boat

Laden with ruddy stones was pulling away

Irresistibly from a shore, and forgetfulness

Had already placed its ashes on the dreams

We endlessly replayed, peopling with visions

Th

e fi re that burned there up to the fi nal day.

Is it true, my friend, my love,

Th

at there is only a single word for naming

Th

e sun of morning and the evening sun

In the language we call poetry,

One word for the cry of joy and the cry of pain,

One word for wildness upstream and the ring of axes,

One word for the unmade bed and the stormy skies,

One word for the newborn, and the stricken god?

Yes, I believe it, I want to believe, but what

Are those shadows about to sweep away the mirror?

And look how brambles root among the stones

On the grassy track, still incompletely cleared,

Our footsteps used to trace towards the young trees.

It seems to me, today and here, that speech

Is that half-broken trough which spills

Its water uselessly, each rainy dawn.

Th

e grass, and water in the grass, that sparkles like a river.

All things of the world remain to be knit up again, united.

Paradise has been dispersed, I know,

Th

e earthly task’s to recognize its fl owers

Strewn in the humble grass;

But the angel has disappeared, a light

Th

at suddenly was only the setting sun.

And so like Adam and Eve, we’ll walk

One last time in the garden.

Y v e s B on n e f oy
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Like Adam the fi rst regret, like Eve the fi rst

Real courage, we shall wish and shall not wish

To pass beyond the low half-open gate

Down there, at the other end of the narrow fi elds,

Tinted portentously by a last ray.

Does the future root itself in the origin

Th

e way the sky consents to a curved mirror?

And could we gather from this light,

Th

e miracle of this place, a seed

To hold in our somber hands, for other ponds

Hidden in other meadows “barred with stones”?

Indeed, the place for mastery, for mastering ourselves, is here,

Whence we depart tonight. Here endlessly,

Like water from the trough, slipping away.

Emily Grosholz, 2001

On the Motion and the Immobility of Douve

Th

eatre

Now the life of the spirit does not cringe in front

of death nor keep itself pure from its ravage. It

supports death and maintains itself in it.

—Hegel

I

I saw you run on terraces,

I saw you struggle against the wind,

Th

e coldness bled on your lips.

And I have seen you break yourself and be glad of your death,

O more beautiful

Th

an lightning, when it stains the white windows of your blood.

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II

Th

e dying summer frostbit you with a monotonous pleasure,

we despised the imperfect joy of living.

“Rather the ivy,” you said, “the clinging of ivy to the stone of its

night: presence without issue, face without roots.

“Last happy windowpane ripped by the sun’s claws, rather in the

mountains this village to die in.

“Rather this wind . . .”

III

It was about a wind stronger than our memories,

Stupor of dresses and cry of rocks—and you passed in front of these fl ames,

Head graphpapered, hands split open, wholly

Seeking death on the exulting drums of your gestures.

It was day of your breasts

And you were reigning at last absent from my head.

IV

I awake, it rains. Th

e wind pierces you, Douve, resinous heath sleeping

near me. I am on a terrace, in a pit of death. Huge dogs of leafage tremble.

Th

e arm you lift , suddenly, on a door, lights me across the ages.

Village of embers, each instant I see you being born, Douve,

Each instant dying.

V

Th

e arm that is lift ed and the arm that is turned

Are of the same instant only for our heavy heads,

But these coverings of verdure and mud thrown back,

All that is left is a fi re in death’s kingdom.

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Th

e dismantled leg pierced by the high wind

Which drives heads of rain before it

Will not light you until the threshold of this kingdom,

Gestures of Douve, gestures already slower, black gestures.

VI

What pallor strikes you, underground river, what artery breaks in you,

where the echo of your falling resounds?

Th

is arm you lift suddenly opens, catches fi re. Your face draws back.

What thickening mist wrenches your gaze from me? Slow cliff of shadows,

frontier of death.

Mute arms greet you, trees of another shore.

VII

Wounded one, confounded among the leaves,

But caught by the blood of fading paths,

Accomplice yet of life.

I have seen you, quicksanded at your struggle’s end,

Falter at the limits of silence and water,

And, mouth sullied by the last stars,

Break off with a cry the horrible nightwatch.

O raising in air hard suddenly as rock

A beautiful gesture of coal.

VIII

Th

e absurd music begins in the hands, in the knees, then there is the

cracking in the head, the music grows loud under the lips, its certainty

penetrates the underslope of the face.

Now the woodwork of the face is taken apart. Now begins the

tearing out of the sight.

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