Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology (16 page)

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IX

White under a ceiling of insects, poorly lit, in profi le,

Your dress stained by the venom of lamps,

I fi nd you stretched out,

Your mouth higher than a river breaking far away on the earth.

Broken being whom the invincible being puts together again,

Presence possessed again in the torch of cold,

O watcher, always I fi nd you dead,

Douve saying Phoenix I wait in this cold.

X

I see Douve stretched out. At the topmost point of bodily space I hear

her rustling. Th

e black-princes hurry their mandibles across the space where

Douve’s hands unfold, their unfl eshed bones turning into gray webs which

the massive spider lights.

XI

Covered by the silent humus of the world,

Webbed over by a living spider’s rays,

Already undergoing the change into sand,

And cut to pieces, secret knowledge.

Adorned for a festival in the void,

And teeth bared as if for love,

Fountain of my death, with me, unbearable.

XII

I see Douve stretched out. In the scarlet city of air, where branches

battle across her face, where roots fi nd their way into her body-she radiates a joy strident with insects, a frightful music.

To the black tread of the earth, Douve, ravaged and exultant, returns to

the gnarled lamp of the plateaus.

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XIII

Your face tonight lighted by the earth,

But I see your eyes’ corruption

And the word face makes no sense any more.

Th

e interior sea lighted by turning eagles,

Th

is is an image,

I hold you cold at a depth where images do not take any more.

XIV

I see Douve stretched out. In a white room, eyes dark-circled with

plaster, mouth dizzy, and hands condemned to the luxuriant grass invading

her on all sides.

Th

e door opens. An orchestra advances. And faceted eyes, woolly

thoraxes, cold heads beaked and pincered, fl ood over her.

XV

O gift ed with a profi le in which the earth strives

I see you disappearing.

On your lips naked grass and fl intsparks

Invent your last smile,

Deep knowledge in which

Th

e old bestiary of the mind burns to ashes.

XVI

Dwelling-place of a dark fi re where our slopes converge! Under its vaults

I see you glimmer, motionless Douve, caught in the vertical net of death.

Superlative Douve, overthrown: to the march of suns through funeral

space, she accedes slowly to the lower levels.

XVII

Th

e ravine enters the mouth now,

Th

e fi ve fi ngers disperse in casual woods now,

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Th

e original head fl ows among the grasses now,

Th

e breast paints itself with snow and wolves now,

Th

e eyes blow on which of death’s passengers and it is we in this

wind in this water in this cold now.

XVIII

Exact presence whom no fl ame thereaft er could restrain; bearer of secret

coldness; living, by that blood that is born again and grows where the poem

tears apart.

It was necessary for you to appear, thus, at the deaf limits, and to

undergo the ordeal of that land of death where your light increases.

O most beautiful, with death in your laughter! I dare now to meet you,

now I can face your gestures’ fl ashing.

XIX

On the fi rst day of cold our head escapes,

Like a prisoner into the higher air,

But, Douve of one instant, that arrow falls

And the palm of its head breaks on the ground.

Th

us we had dreamed of reincarnating our gestures

But the head gainsaid we drink a cold water,

And bankrolls of death deck your smiles with fl ags,

Attempted rift in the thickness of the world.

Galway Kinnell, 1961

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Philippe Jaccot tet
(b. 1925)

“Night is a great sleeping city”

Night is a great sleeping city

where the wind blows. It has come a long way

to the refuge of this bed. It is midnight in June.

You are sleeping, I have been led to the edges of infi nity.

Th

e wind shakes the hazel tree. Th

e call comes

that approaches and draws back. One could swear

a light is fl ying across woods, or surely

shadows turning, they say, in the underworld.

(Th

at call in the summer night, how many things

I could say about it, and your eyes . . . ) But it is only

the bird named barn owl calling to us

from suburban woods, and already our smell

is that of corruption. In the morning light

already under our skin that is so warm, bone

pierces, while stars darken at street corners.

Seed Time

I

We would want to be pure

even if evil had more reality.

We would want not to hate

though the storm stuns the seeds.

Th

e one who knows how light seeds are

would hardly be devoted to thunder.

II

I follow the blurred line of trees

where the pigeons fl ap their wings:

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you whom I caress where your hair begins . . .

but under the fi ngers deceived by distance

the gentle sun is broken like straw.

III

Earth here is threadbare. But let it rain

a single day, you see in its humidity

a mixture from which it returns renewed.

Death, for a moment, has the cool appearance

of the fl ower snowdrop.

IV

Daylight stamps in me like a bull:

one would like to think that he is strong . . .

If one could tire the bullfi ghter

and delay a while the death of the bull!

V

Winter, the tree draws into itself.

Th

en one day laughter is humming

and the murmur of leaves,

ornament of our gardens.

For the one who no longer loves anyone

life is always farther away.

VI

O fi rst days of Spring

playing in the schoolyard

between two classes of wind!

VII

I am impatient and I am anxious;

Ph i l i ppe Jac c o t t et
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who knows the wounds and knows the treasures

that another life brings? Spring may

leap toward joy or blow towards death.

—Here’s the blackbird. A timid girl

comes out of her house. Dawn is in the wet grass.

VIII

At a very great distance

I see the street with its trees, its houses,

and the unseasonably cool wind

that oft en changes direction.

A handcart goes by with white furniture

in an undergrowth of shadows.

Th

e days are vanishing before it,

what is left me I count in a short time.

IX

Th

e thousand insects of rain have worked

all night; the trees have blossomed in raindrops,

the downpour sounds like a distant whip.

Th

e sky however is still clear; in gardens

the bell of the tools rings Matins.

X

Th

e air that you do not see

carries a distant bird

and the weightless seeds

that tomorrow will germinate

the edge of the woods.

Oh, how life is running,

mad to be down below!

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XI

Th

e Seine, March 14, 1947

Th

e crackled river is muddy. Th

e waters rise

and wash the paving stones on the banks. For wind

like a tall, somber ship has come down

from the ocean, with a cargo of yellow seeds.

It spreads a smell of water, distant and faint. You tremble

only for having surprised opening eyelids.

(Th

ere was a mirroring canal that you followed,

the factory canal. You threw a fl ower

into the spring, to fi nd it again in the town.)

A childhood memory. Th

e one who would take water in his hands . . .

Someone lights a fi re of branches on the bank.

XII

All this green stuff does not pile up but trembles and shines,

as when you look at the rustling curtain of a fountain

sensitive to the least current of air; and above the tree

it seems that a swarm of humming bees

has settled; a pleasant landscape

where birds that we never see call to us,

voices uprooted like seeds, and you

with your hair falling over clear eyes.

XIII

A single moment this Sunday brings us together again,

when the winds and our fever have fallen,

and under the street lamps fi refl ies

light up, then go out. One would say, paper lanterns

far away in a park, perhaps for your feast . . .

I too believed in you, and your light

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made me burn, then left me. Th

eir dry shell

cracks as it falls in dust. Others are rising,

others are blazing, and I remain in the shadow.

XIV

Everything gave me a sign: lilacs in a hurry to live

and children losing a ball in the park.

Th

en the small squares from which one returned,

peeling root upon root, the smell

of a woman in labor . . . Th

e air wove of these nothings

a quivering canvas. And I would tear it apart

by being alone and looking for traces.

XV

Th

e lilacs have opened once more

(but this no longer reassures anyone).

Redstarts fl ash by, and the servant’s voice

is gentler when she talks to the dogs. Bees

are at work in the pear tree. And always

under everything, that vibration of machines . . .

Th

e Ignorant Man

Th

e older I get the more ignorant I am,

the longer I live the less I possess and the less I command.

All I have is a space, by turns covered with snow

or shining, but never inhabited.

Where is the donor, the guide, the guardian?

I keep to my room, and at fi rst I am silent

(silence enters like a servant to impose a little order)

and I wait until, one by one, the lies have gone.

What is left ? What is left to this dying man

who is so able to stop dying? What force

makes him speak again to his four walls?

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Could I know, I the ignorant, the perplexed?

But I do hear, truly, one who speaks, and his word

comes in with daylight again, though very vague.

“Like fi re, love makes itself clear only

by its fall and the beauty of woods in ashes . . .”

Distances

Th

e swift s turn in the heights of air,

yet higher unseen stars are turning.

Let light retire to the ends of earth,

on the dark sand fi res will be burning.

So we live in a domain of movements

and distances; so the heart

goes from tree to bird, from bird to distant stars,

from the star to its love. So love

in the closed house increases, turns and labors,

servant of those who care, with a lamp in his hand.

Louis Simpson, 2001

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G e r m a n

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Wa lther von der Vogelw eide
(ca. 1170–1230)

“Under the lime-tree,”

Under the lime-tree,

By the heath,

Where with my well-beloved I lay,

You can go and see—

Pleasant both—

Flowers and grass we broke that day.

Where the forest meets the dale:

Tandaradee!

Sweetly sang the nightingale.

Here we were meeting;

But already

My well-beloved was waiting there.

Such was his greeting,