Hughlings Himwich

La voie du sang, par André Richaud

 

La voie du sang

par André Richaud

A Pierre Seghers

Cet amour dénoué à travers les champs 
Ce poignard sanglant dans les rochers 
Ce vent mortel traîné par de fausses hirondelles 
Voilà ma pauvre vie. 
Il faudrait pouvoir traverser le miroir 
Pour vous atteindre ô vous qui m'aimez 
Mais il y a du sang jusqu'au plus profond de ma jeunesse. 

Je suis comme la mer plein de villes flottantes
Je suis comme le ciel peuplé de nuages ennuyés
Ma vie, au fond des ravins
Tremble chaque nuit jusqu'à l'aube 

Et moi je rampe tout nu dans un songe de mort.

Bêtes de mon sommeil, regardez-moi qui tombe
Fontaines habitées
Fontaines de mes mains où les dix sources grondent
O collier des forêts !
Colliers d'arbres en fleurs par qui le monde espère
Vous m'étranglez chaque matin
Et chaque soir les bleus de vos ongles mystères
Etouffent l'avenir dont je suis possédé. 

Ne pas pouvoir sortir de ce lacis de veines
Et cet étrange piétinement à gauche de ma poitrine
Contre lequel je ne peux rien ...
Ô mort regarde fixement cette ligne rouge à mon cou
Chaque nuit des cordes tendues m'entraînent au ciel.

Seules mes mains me guident parmi les planètes
muettes d'étonnement.
Aigles de cristal brûlant sur les cimes
Torches de plumes qui jalonnent ma vie
Sources fumantes dans l'amour qui tombe
Lorsque s'est levé le vent de l'au-delà
Vous êtes ce masque, qui riez quand je saigne
De toutes mes plaies cachées.

Quand je ferme les yeux un monde invisible étincelle
Quand j'ouvre mon cœur une fumée chargée d'oiseaux
Se lève à gauche derrière mon cœur.
O corps aimé qui me cherche sans jamais m'atteindre
et dont le regard d'argent m'étouffe
lacet de songe 
qui me tirera jusqu'aux abîmes miroitants de la mort. 

La neige, la neige, la neige 
Tuez-moi, de la neige et que ce soit fini.  

    La confession publique
    Pierre Seghers éditeur, 1944

 

**Translation into English**:

The blood path

 

That love unravelled across the fields
That bloody dagger in the rocks
That deadly wind dragged by false swallows
Such is my poor life.
One would need to go through the mirror
To reach you O you who love me
But there is blood down to the very depths of my youth.

I am like the sea full of floating towns
I am like the sky filled with troubled clouds
My life, at the bottom of the ravines
Trembles every night until dawn 

And I, I crawl naked in a dream of death.

Beasts of my slumber, look at me falling
Inhabited fountains
Fountains of my hands where the ten sources rumble
O collar of the forests!
Necklaces of trees in bloom that make the world hope
You strangle me each morning 
And every night the bruises of your mystery nails
Stifle the future of which I am possessed.

Not to be able to get out of this network of veins
And this strange standstill to the left of my chest
Against which I am helpless…
O death stare at this red line on my neck
Every night stretched ropes take me to heaven.

Only my hands guide me among the planets
muted with surprise.
Crystal eagles burning on the summits
Feather torches lining my life
Smoking springs in the falling love
When the wind of the beyond rose
You are that mask, laughing
When all my hidden wounds bleed.

When I close my eyes an invisible world sparkles
When I open my heart a bird-laden smoke
Rises to the left behind my heart.
O beloved body that searches for me without ever reaching me
and whose silver gaze chokes me
lace of dream
and will pull me to the enticing abyss of death.

The snow, the snow, the snow
 Kill me, some snow and let it be over.

 (English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

"Dialogue entre deux corsaires" par Roger Vailland

 

Dialogue entre deux corsaires 

Premier Corsaire:

            Tes belles victuailles feront éternellement ma tristesse.

            Pourtant, si tu les cueilles, tes épines tomberont.    

Deuxième Corsaire :

            Mes épines sont plus belles que les tiennes,

            Dans la terre elles grandiront comme des tours,   

            Elles blanchiront comme des jeunes filles,

            Elles descendront comme des paravents.

 Premier Corsaire:

            Pare le vent!

            Vente tes pas!

            Vent à bois,

            Le vent déguingande sur les toits.

Deuxième Corsaire :

            Bois le vent !

            Cueille la brise !

            Brise le ris,

            La tempête gourgandine la voile.

Premier Corsaire:

            Ma voile est plus belle que la tienne,

            Elle serre la certitude dans ses bras noirs,

            Elle flatte la cuisse du ciel,

            Elle casse-gachète la pelure de l’ombre.

Deuxième Corsaire :

            L’ombre se perd, l’ombre se crée,

            Le nombre est l’ombre,

            L’ombre est le nombre

            Et le monde est le nombre de l’ombre.

Premier Corsaire:

            Braconne la ramure sans croix,

            Croise la plaie et rame dans les lances,

            Crique le blâme et saigne la camaille,

            Ton oriflamme est sans balance !

Deuxième Corsaire :

            Le crois-tu, protecteur des Anneaux,

            Contempteur du mercure et du plomb,

            Rival des germes et des coraux,

            Vainqueur de la conjuration des roses du Vent?

            Ma gâchette est plus camuse qu’on ne le pense.

Premier Corsaire:

             Panse-la!

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

English translation

**

A dialogue between two corsairs

First Corsair:

            Your fine victuals will make me sad forever

            However, if you pick them, your thorns will fall off.

Second Corsair:

            My thorns are better than yours.

            Once in the soil they will grow like towers,

            They will turn pale like young women,    

            And drop like folding screens.

First Corsair:

            Parry the wind!

            Get the wind in your steps!

            Wind for wood,

            The wind tumbles on the wood.

Second Corsair:

            Drink the wind!

            Catch the breeze!

            Reefing time,

            The sail gets flirty in the storm.

First Corsair:

            My sail is better than yours,

            It holds certitude tightly in its black arms,

            It cajoles the sky’s thigh,

            It splits the skin of the shadow.

Second Corsair:

            The shadow is lost, the shadow is created,

            The number is the shadow,

            The shadow is the number,

            And the world is the number of the shadow.

First Corsair:

            Poach the deer without a cross,

            Cross the wound and paddle among the spears,

            The blame might crack and the rascals bleed,    

            But your banner is partisan!

Second Corsair:

            Do you believe it, protector of the Rings,

            Despiser of mercury and lead,

            Rival of germs and corals,

            Victor of the compass rose conspiracy?

            My gun trigger is blunter than one thinks.

First Corsair:

             Bandage-it!

 (English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

 

         "Dialogue entre deux corsaires" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933
          Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review
          Collection of Leonora's translations from Transition: Leonora's Translations from Transition

 

NUIT FAISEUSE D’ANGES par Camille Schuwer

 

NUIT  FAISEUSE D’ANGES

par Camille Schuwer
 

elle est née

Sélèné

c’est l’aînée

à l’heure du réverbère

il lui pousse un corps bleu des feuilles d’air

au bout des flammes de vent

de toutes parts la rue est dans les blés

sans compter les roues amères

et la tour de vos cheveux

o mort armure à rendre

ah me voilà

âme à voile

âme vois-là

comme elle tremble aux étoiles chues des terrasses

les chômeurs de l’ombre pillent aux vitres

tout ce qui n’est pas or mais brille

dans le ciel au bord de la mare

la tête des maisons se suicide

 

ENGLISH TRANSLATON

Night of the angels

she has been born

Selene

She the eldest

at the time the street lamp was lit up

she’s growing a blue body leaves of air

at the tip of flames of wind

the street is in wheat fields all around

not to mention the bitter wheels

and the tower of your hair

o death armor to restore

ah here I am

soul with sail

soul you see

how she trembles to the stars fallen from the terraces

the invisible unemployed loot in the windows

all that glitters but is not gold

in the sky at the edge of the pond

the head of the houses commits suicide

(English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

 

          "NUIT  FAISEUSE D’ANGES" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933

          Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

          Collection of Leonora's translations from Transition: Leonora's Translations from Transition

 

L’amour qui m’a donné des yeux, par Joë Bousquet

 

 L’amour qui m’a donné des yeux

par Joë Bousquet

 

    Parler, une chanson d’argent qui s’élève à la vie

    Parler pour qu’une passante devienne de la lumière qui

m’écoute  et qui s’avoue combien une solitude est profonde

    Parler, la route dans la neige, le silence des voitures arrêtées

devant les maisons

                                               *

    Ouvrant autour d’elle la nuit protectrice où je me sentais

m’enfoncer

    Des mains où la chair était aussi légère que le regard, flot-

tait sur lui comme un miroir pour le ciel qui passait

    Un cœur pour que ma douleur me conduise

    De grandes ailes lasses dans ces jambes brisées pour qu’un

rayon vivant éclaire ce qi n’est pas dans une image qui nous

appelle,

    Des bouches dans la chair, toutes les ardeurs qui soulèvent

un corps sur l’oubli de lui-même.

                                                  *

    Ma chair dans mes yeux, un miroir d’eau pure sur la terre,

    Un abîme dans ma stupeur où se lève la toute-beauté de

son visage comme un regard rayonnant dont sa chair se ferait

une proie.

    Quelle douce main dans ces yeux ouvrait les yeux du jour ?

                                                 *

    Tu le sauras. La nuit sans mouvement que ton œil cache

avec du ciel

    Habille de tes larmes l’âme qui dit que tu n’es pas.

 

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

Love gave me eyes

 

     Words, a song about money rising to life

     Talk so that a woman passing by might become light

listening to me and avowing how deep solitude is

     Speak, the road in the snow, the silence of parked cars

in front of the houses.

                                             *

     Opening around her the protective night into which I could feel myself

sink

     Hands with flesh as light as the gaze, floating

 on him like a mirror for the passing sky

     A heart so my pain can lead me

     Large weary wings in those broken legs so that a living

ray can illuminate what is not in an image

calling us,

     Mouths in the flesh, all the passions that lift

a body on its abandon.

                                             *

    My flesh in my eyes, a mirror of pure water on the earth,

    An abyss in my awe where rises the very beauty of  

her  face like a radiant look on her flesh

as prey

    What soft hand in those eyes opened the eyes of the day?

                                            *

    You will know. The still night that your eye hides

with some sky

     Dresses in your tears the soul that says you are not.

                                                                                         (English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

 

            "L’amour qui m’a donné des yeux" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933
            Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

Salaire de mes yeux, par Joë Bousquet

 

Salaire de mes yeux, par Joë Bousquet

 

Elle est tout mon regard; mon regard où ma chair se

traverse de sa nuit comme un œil clos dans la lumière qui

l’a créé.

                          Le langage du cœur, celui qui donne un

 corps à ce qui nous poursuit

                          Un voile léger, ton visage

                          briller, redire avec mon regard, redire dans

le vertige de mon regard: A qui sont ces yeux ?

                         Voiler de ma présence la pensée que tu es

une femme, le ciel déchiré de l’autre chair.

            Le soir ; sur la nuit vaine, la rose des regards où l’es-

pace ferme les yeux et rêve entre nous de nos corps;

            Une étoile de mer dans la main des sables

mouvants.

 

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

 

My rewarding eyes, by  Joë Bousquet

 

She is all I see; a gaze where her night

crosses my flesh like a closed eye in its creative light

                        The language of the heart, the one that gives

flesh to all that pursues us  

                        A light veil, your face

                        to shine, to say it again with my gaze, and to repeat it in

the vertigo of my gaze: Whose eyes are these?

                       To hide with my presence the thought of you as

a woman, the torn sky of the other flesh.

            Close of day; on the vain night, the rose of gazes where space

shuts one’s eyes and between us dreams of our bodies;

            A starfish in the hand of the shifting sands.

 (English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

 

          "Salaire de mes yeux" was published in Transition, No. 22, 1933

          Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

“Coréâme” by Camille Schuwer

 

Coréâme
 

Because you did not lie on the day you were born,

The seers’ sun, the incandescent light,

delighted you under your eyelids, and the wheel of greenery

turning with your blood, became centrifugal,

splattered stones, was truth.

 

There were smiling eyes and crying flowers

at the end of the hands cutting the day’s rose,

the buzzing mouth to prophesize,

a black brain to bury oblivion.

 

At the foot of the towers the soil

was like a place ceded without a fight;

the dead looked like trees,

like their flagging flames.

 

The soul told the body:

if you like, I’ll take you everywhere without touching your clothes,

without letting you fall out of sleep;

you will go through the walls, the sheets of lead;

your raging thoughts, my star presence,

will redden the patients’ brow,

and steal from the poet his turn to speak;

 

you see the sun’s noise, the perpetual movement

of the bee that stays in one place

like a pulsating factory;

the same night, the same sun; you understand it all.

 

And the body answered: I hear less than the deaf,

I am thirsty, I feel dizzy at the edge of my anthill,

they fatten me like a queen, I am losing my seeds 

and my blood, in spite of my heart’s rose window;

I scream, I have my own light, I feel hot in the snow;

O Sisyphus! O the ordeal! I fall and get up again;

time is feeding my strength and my fatigue;

please just give me a little foliage before I die.

 

The soul also said— sounding like Antigone:

who knows the weight of the shadow, a thin column,

O my palm tree head holder,

here is the wind of my mind, without all its glories;

and the heavy light one, supporting supported

wobbled along carrying its tower of light.

 

Dazzled they sleep in the middle of the darkness,

black, it slumbers, as the mangoes roll out of its hands.

                                       (English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

 

• Translator's Note:  The paranomastic title is a pun on “Corps et âme“, which sounds exactly the same and means “Body and soul”.The created word means nothing in French. I have left it in French

         "Coréâme" was published in Transition, No. 27, 1938: Download Coréâme II

          Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review: 

"For Peace" (Pour la Paix) by Jacques Baron

 

For Peace

With time passing, with water flowing, with

the workers leaving the factories,

with the rumours of the stock market,

with the memories, the desires, the wasted moments,

 the doors opening and shutting without knowing why

with all that we wanted to say that remained on the edge

         of our lips,

with a landscape already seen in a dream,

with the habit of reading newspapers,

we went for that romantic stroll we had promised ourselves

         a long time ago.

We took beaten tracks, so beaten that they screamed like beaten dogs,

we wanted to leave them but a sound philosophy would always prevent us from doing so.

We argued with ourselves, we grabbed each other's throats; and tore each other apart

after ferocious insults,

We did not entirely succeed in forgiving ourselves but the heart was in it,

the always obliging heart,

the very bar that grants credit,

until the time when all the paths that you’ve always followed

           fall back on you and crush you like four-leaf clovers

           pressed between the pages of a book.

 

Suddenly it is not the same any more,

not exactly the same.

You’ve left you’ve disappeared you are in the air you breathe and you see everything.

You see a woman and you grab her by the waist. She says yes.

She does not really know what she means by this.

But you hear the rustling of wings. 

The dairyman’s hello is brighter.

The large drapes of one’s memory solemnly fall down

behind a procession of runaway actors.

But the branches of the pepper trees are stirred

in sweltering countries, where are buried under the sands,

                 temples dedicated to bloody cults.

Out of one’s nerves a rug is made on which to lie down

and one fears

that all pain might have vanished.

You stop writing to your friends

and you are forgiving about their letters gathered in the dew.

 

And all that remains slowly warms up.

The horizon becomes blurred

and you congratulate yourself that the good weather will last.

You call on the muses. They pretend not to

               understand;

they are camping,

catching centaurs running.

But all that happens is good.

You are as pleased as when you’ve passed the age

                of the New Year’s visits.

You slip into the Adriatic Sea near a charming woman

                whose eyes are islands peopled with castaways

                 sensing their hour of deliverance.

She is swimming.

Now is not the time to understand.

 

                                     (English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)

"Pour la Paix" was published in Transition, No. 27, 1938: View this photo

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

"Anonyme" by André de Richaud

 

Anonyme

Les biches de l'amour ont pleuré jusqu'à l'aube
les bêtes de ma vie ont toutes les yeux faux
Et toi — tête de gel qui sanglotte dans la flamme
sans pouvoir redevenir le nuage
visage étonné des étincelles du silence
calciné par l'odeur des cuivres emmêlés
et les chevaux du rire impatients
de mordre la chair des astres ennuyés
et les femmes de verre qui se brisent quand on ne pense plus à elle
et celui qui se décompose en souriant
au fond de la glace miroitante
et sa jambe lépreuse de soleil
et son sexe couvert de rosée
et le ventre de cette femme tout parsemé d'hirondelles évanouies
qui vont et viennent et passent à travers les anneaux de diamant comme
si le diamant ne pouvait se faire comprendre
sans le secours des oiseaux du ciel

- -

Parle nuit plus douce que les amandiers de sa bouche
qui neigent sur ma langue quand l'heure se couche
Parle, fantôme étonné du silence.

             * * * * *      

Nameless

Until dawn the does of love cried
all animals in my life have phony eyes
And you—frozen head sobbing in the flame
unable to be cloud again
your face baffled by the sparks of silence
charred by the smell of tangled brasses
and the horses of laughter eager to bite
the bored stars’ flesh
and the glass women breaking through oblivion
and the one who is smiling as he rots away
at the bottom of the shimmering ice
and his leg under the dappling sun
and his sex covered in dew
and that woman’s belly dotted all over with unconscious swallows
going in and out of the diamond rings as if
the diamond could not be grasped
without the help of the birds in the sky
_        _

Speak up night, softer than the almond trees in her mouth
falling like snow onto my tongue when the time retires at night
Speak to me, ghost amazed by the silence.

                                                -- English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.

 

André de Richaud's "Anonyme" originally appeared in Transition: A Quarterly Review, No. 26, 1937.

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review

 

"séparation" by Camille Schuwer

Camille Schuwer's poem "séparation" as it originally appeared in Transition, No. 26, 1937. 

Download Separation Camille Schuwer

English Translation: Download Separation    © Leonora; all rights reserved.

Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review