Two truly lovely poems here by the prolific Luxembourg poet, novelist and editor Jean Portante translated from the French by my old friend and former colleague at the University at Albany Pierre Joris who is himself a prolific and peripatetic poet, impresario and world-traveler. (Please revisit his gorgeous translations of Habib Tengour’s “Five Movements of the Soul & Hodgepodge” published earlier on NC.) These are amazing poems. The first is an insistent, undulating, rhythmic meditation on the desert, sand, the sea (the anti-image) and the poet’s self, the sand and the desert inhabiting the self as metaphor and soul. The poem is leavened with sweet touches of wit (the poet at the line between one desert and another, watching the grains of said get married in secret before crossing). And, oh my goodness, just look at the “The One I Saw Again” — three parts, three characters; take the first, with its recursive “passed and passed,” the train passing before the eyes of the subject who is sewing up his wound again and again and not seeing the passing and passing though it is reflected in his eyes. Oh language, oh beauty! Helps heal the day.
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THE DESERT
Le désert compta ses rides et l’aigle et le
faucon répandirent, aussitôt la nouvelle.
— Edmond Jabès
it is due to the general indifference of
the grains of sand
that the desert came about
but also because the sand
knew how to remain gregarious
………………..*
to know that all the grains of sand
of all the deserts sleep in me
does not reassure me
like them every night
I get underway
searching for a dry dream
a dream which in order to defend us
would brave the meanders of humidity
………………..*
I went to station myself
on the line separating one desert from the other
to watch the grains of sand
getting married in secret
before crossing the border
………………..*
when I said I had the desert in me
I was thinking less of the dryness
than of the incessant swarming of the sand
and caught in the swirl
I stopped weeping
even though I had been weeping for joy
………………..*
each desert hides a secret
each secret hides an injustice
nobody knows who slipped it in there
but it makes everybody rejoice secretly
………………..*
I’ve read somewhere or did I dream it
that the desert was the scar a sea left
o what anguish to think
that one day the wound could open again
………………..*
in my childhood my youth my life for short
I have known many a gathering of sand
the words I have spoken or written
rest there temporarily
a wind comes up and worries them
………………..*
I envy the desert’s sand grains’s anonymity
they come and go they say hello good night
they love & know how to recognize each other
because there where one ends the other begins
in the desert the eternal return
is a question of life and death
………………..*
no one has as much imagination as a desert
the sea was there first
but the desert knew how to dry it up
& seize its memory
that’s why no one
has as much imagination as a desert
………………..*
Certain words disappear
when they venture into the desert
the stories that emerge from it
nearly always seem truncated
but if one looks at them closely
one notices that they have become purer
………………..*
All poets should speak of the desert
and the musicians would do well
to think of it from time to time
if only because history
has all too often slandered it
………………..*
to be as happy as a desert or as sad as water
is not a malediction
one couldn’t have avoided
today you can love the one
without betraying the other
………………..*
we should thank the desert
for having taught us to ration the water
this could come in handy
during the next drought
m
m
THE ONE I SAW AGAIN
…………….THE ONE I SAW AGAIN
two days ago kept sewing
the same wound up again:
if he still sat facing
the train that passed and passed
again it was not because he
particularly loved the
journey but because of this
window that gave
onto the viaduct:
yet the train as it passed
and passed again over the
viaduct before him still reflected
in his eyes:
did he know this as he kept sewing
the same wound again & again:
and what did he know of immobility:
and the one sitting across from
him on the train that passed
and passed again over the viaduct
was he jealous that across
from him the other thus
sat at his window giving
on this viaduct without
particularly loving
the journey:
and isn’t it exactly because
of this that the train passed
and passed again as if
instead of carrying its
passengers towards a specific
destination its only mission
was to agree with this
statistic that states that of
two men sitting one at
least will ceaselessly be sewing
up the same wound.
m
…………….THE ONE I SAW AGAIN
previously held at the end
of a long string a distant
kite that his hand reeled
in and reeled out:
the clouds were close by
and the migratory birds that
were returning from afar
were also tethered to a string:
just like the clouds
by the way and even the sun
when it hid:
and if you looked carefully you
saw that there was also
a string from one language to
the other or from the apple tree
to the olive tree and our gazes
remember were linked
one to the other by two
strings on which wept like
clothes hung out to dry
or rain that falls and wets
the pro and con
of love:
the kite also wept
on its flight:
you could have thought the entire
universe was repenting:
the strings of course were
invisible to the naked love
but when the storm
broke and the flash of
lightening photographed the
landscape didn’t you see
as if you were all
these hands that reeled in and
reeled out all remorse.
m
…………….THE ONE I SAW AGAIN
more than a week ago
like a dead man hugged
the walls of the city:
you’d have thought he was
sorting the mirrors
from the shadows:
there were graffiti
behind him on the walls
he was hugging but he
didn’t read them:
everything he did or
didn’t do was
carefully sorted:
I confess that I didn’t
read what the walls
said either and when
I said that I saw him again
more than a week ago the one
who like a dead man hugged
the walls of the city maybe
I was a little too forward:
it was pitch black already
and a street light of uncertain
origin was projecting
shadows on the walls:
what I saw was that
some were missing
others not as if light
had its preferences:
so then I started to count
these shadows thus sorted
on the walls of the city
and coming to mine with
a step darker than usual
I like someone who knows
but doesn’t say anything
to anyone thought back on
this story of a kite that
doesn’t fly which
I often tell and on these chance
occurrences that sort so well
the secret from death
but I told no one about it.
—Jean Portante translated by Pierre Joris
———————
Born in Differdange (Luxembourg) in 1950, though presently living in Paris, Jean Portante is a writer, translator and journalist. He is the author of some thirty books including volumes of poetry, collaborations with artists, narratives, plays, essays and novels. Published in 15 countries, his work has been translated into English, Spanish, Italian, German, Slovakian, Croatian and Rumanian. He has translated Juan Gelman, Gonzalo Rojas, Jerome Rothenberg, Maria Luisa Spaziani, Edoardo Sanguineti, John Deane, Pierre Joris many other poets into French. For editions Phi in Luxembourg he directs the poetry book series graphiti. In 2003, he was awarded the Prix Mallarmé for his book L’étrange langue and the Grand prix d’automne de la Société des gens de lettres 2003 for the whole of his work. En 2005, a Selected Poems came out from Editions Le Castor Astral. The sequnce above is from “Journal d’un oublieur intime” in La réinvention de l’oubli. Editions Le Castor Astral, Paris, 2010.
Pierre Joris has moved between the US, Europe & North Africa for 45 years, publishing over 40 books of poetry, essays and translations. Coming in early 2013 are Meditations on the Stations of Mansur al-Hallaj (poems) from Chax Press & Barzakh (Poems 2000-2012) from Black Widow Press. Just out from UCP is The University of California Book of North African Literature (vol. 4 in the Poems for the Millennium series), coedited with Habib Tengour. Exile is My Trade: A Habib Tengour Reader edited, introduced & translated by Pierre Joris (Black Widow Press) came out in early 2012 as did Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays on Joris’ work by, among others, Mohamed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Robert Kelly, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Jean Portante, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff & Nicole Peyrafitte (Litteraria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, 2011). The Collected Later Poems of Paul Celan, translated & annotated by Pierre Joris, is scheduled for early 2014 from Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. Other recent books include The Meridian: Final Version—Drafts—Materials by Paul Celan (Stanford U.P. 2011), Canto Diurno #4: The Tang Extending from the Blade, (poems, 2010), Justifying the Margins: Essays 1990-2006 (Salt Books), Aljibar I & II (poems) & the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; Mitch Elrod, guitar; Ta’wil Productions). Further translations include Paul Celan: Selections (UC Press) & Lightduress by Paul Celan which received the 2005 PEN Poetry Translation Award. With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry. He lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn with his wife, performance artist Nicole Peyrafitte & teaches poetry & poetics at the State University of New York, Albany. Check out his Nomadics Blog.
Thanks for introducing me to these fine poets/translators, nicely done.
Good, aren’t they? Glad you found them.