from Decarceration
Translated from the French by John Taylor
Crepuscular cupules in
pulpy vigils.
The joy of letting
the harrow
level out the soil
of your being.
*
the inebriation
of running yourself dry
belonging
when you find the way out
in others.
*
Led back, drawn off once again
towards your fluvial and insular
solitude
which you struggle to gather
into a single pronoun.
*
You’re no longer your body you
go beyond yourself like a law
whose revocation
you have demanded.
*
Core
in which breaks out
a fire that again takes on
flesh.
*
the aftermath leaves
incendiary joys
covered with ash
*
Your breathing rises
thousands of times thousands
and is revived
in a never-ending
systole.
*
Garroted in a continual absence,
this body onto which surfaces and sometimes seeps
an epidermic pain, an
exudate.
*
From core to crust,
a long cloak of absence
bedecks you
before showing
on your surface.
—from Désincarcération (©Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2017)
John Taylor’s most recent translations are, from the French, José-Flore Tappy’s Trás-os-Montes (The MadHat Press) and Philippe Jaccottet’s Ponge, Pastures, Prairies (Black Square Editions), as well as, from the Italian, Franca Mancinelli’s The Butterfly Cemetery: Selected Prose 2008-2021 (The Bitter Oleander Press). His most recent books of poetry are Transizioni, a bilingual volume published in Italy by LYRIKS Editore and illustrated by the Greek artist Alekos Fassianos, and Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees (The Bitter Oleander Press), illustrated by the French artist Caroline François-Rubino. He lives in France.
French originals :
Cupules crépusculaires, en
de pulpeuses veillées.
Joie à laisser
ces labours
te herser
l’être.
*
l’ivresse
de te tarir
des appartenances
quand tu trouves l’issue
en d’autres.
*
Reconduit, drainé à nouveau
vers ta solitude fluviale
et insulaire
que tu peines à rassembler
en un seul pronom.
*
Tu n’es plus ton corps tu
t’outrepasses comme une loi
dont tu as demandé
la révocation.
*
Noyau
où éclate
un feu qui reprend
chair.
*
dans le sillage
se cendrent
des joies incendiaires
*
Ton souffle mille
fois mille fois s’élève et se
ravive
dans une systole
qui n’en finit plus.
*
Garroté dans une continuelle absence,
ce corps où affleure et suinte parfois
une douleur à l’épiderme, un
exsudat.
*
Du noyau à la croûte,
un long manteau d’absence
pour te parer
avant d’affleurer
à ta surface.