from Decarceration

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          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.

 

 

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