The poets and poems

Je vous écris à présent
que la porte claque à jamais
derrière nous
de ce pays de passé de légendes

je garde inaltérable
la forme que l’amphore
donne à la clarté de l’eau
et la carte fiévreuse des routes
où l’on s’est perdu

creusés dans les marches
les pas si lents des hommes

sur le seuil
la vielle femme en noir
déjà un peu ailleurs
n’attend plus rien

de passage
avec ou sans
signature

I am writing to you now
that the door is clattering shut
behind us forever
from this land mapped out by myth

I guard changelessly
the form which the amphora
lends the clarity of water
and the feverish map of roads
where one has lost oneself

treading deeper into the well worn footsteps
the steps so slow of men

on the threshold
the old woman in black
already somewhat lost and limnal
no longer expect anything

passing though and on
with or without signature

translation © Donny O’Rourke

XXIX

La pierre est lourde sur mon corps léger
N’y posez pas de fleurs tranchées
O périlleux humains qui marchez sur mon toit
Craignez les ramoneurs aux longs cordages noirs
Le feu le feu follet consume l’œil et la main
Humains doux somnambules qui parcourez les toits
Bientôt dans un grand lit vous vous réveillerez
Sous l’ardoise des collines sous le chaume des champs
La pierre est lourde sur mon corps léger
N’y gravez pas mon nom mortel
Le feu le feu follet flambe à ma cheminée

The stone is heavy on my light body
Don’t burden it with severed flowers
O perilous humans who walk on my roof
Fear the chimney sweeps with their long black ropes
The fire the merry fire devours hand and eye
Gentle sleepwalking humans who cross the roofs
Soon you will wake in a wide bed
Under the slate of the hills under the thatch of the fields
The stone is heavy on my light body
Do not engrave my mortal name
The fire the merry fire flares in my chimney

translation © Magi Gibson

Les Dieux

The Gods

Ils viennent
comme des amis longtemps absents
qui sonnent à la porte du jardin
dans leurs vêtements
flotte un parfum de lointains pays

ils ne savent rien des deuils
qui nous ont dévastés

nous découvrons leur lenteur
leurs gestes entravés
qui ne parviennent pas jusqu’à nous

C’est un jour de fête
avec des cadeaux sur la table
personne
ne les ouvre

le ciel d’après-midi
se fait très vaste

They come
like long lost friends
who ring at the garden door
their clothes fragrant with the scent
of far off countries.

They know nothing of the sorrows
which have devastated us.

We realise how slow they are
how fettered their gestures
none of which touch us.

It’s a feast day.
The offerings are on the table.

No one
opens them.

The afternoon sky goes on forever.

On prend le temps de respirer toute la dormeuse
mais sur une passante on se retourne déchiré
d’un seul coup par ce sourire imprévisible
surgi d’enfance en souvenir d’on ne sait quoi
un sourire venu à fleur et resté comme une ombre
offerte et retirée à tous les promeneurs

depuis que tu marches et te souviens tu cherches
l’ange oublié l’ange apparu de bouche en bouche
le chiffre des visages aimés dont la caresse
à la musique douloureuse est brusquement parue
et repartie s’enfouir à jamais dans l’allure
ayant cité ce mystérieux sourire d’autrefois

Slowly, you breathe in everything about sleeping beauty
but a passerby makes you turn round torn
suddenly by this unexpected smile
surging from their childhood in memory of who knows what
a smile softly grazing the skin shifting like shadow
offered to and then withdrawn from everyone walking by

ever since you could walk and remember you’re seeking
the forgotten angel the angel announced by this mouth and that
the sum of loved faces whose sad musical caress has brusquely
come and gone to bury itself forever in the hectic pace of things
after briefly quoting this mysterious smile from once upon a time

translation © David Kinloch

Skeleton tossed...

met à mal le tranquille
cheminement d’un homme

emplit
de bourrasque la chair
sitôt déposée que tirée
hors les murs hors
les yeux Le vol-
can garderait

ses cendres son
haleine
et près d’elle
une fiction épaissie
de nuages

si dans le cerveau
rien ne retombait

Skeleton tossed to the top
most tip of a wave barely
clear
of the flame The wind

jousts with a man’s
calm advance

fills his flesh
with gusts
no sooner settling in than yanked
beyond the walls beyond
the eyes The vol
cano might hold on

to its ash its
breath
and close by
a thick story
of clouds

if nothing drifted
down within the brain

translation © David Kinloch

La banlieue...

La banlieue, c’est pareil. L’espace, l’espace tue.

On est debout à l’arrêt du bus. On attend le car. Autour
il y a le ciel et les poteaux télégraphiques. Le ciel est
plein de fils.

Le ciel est immense. Il y a ces fils. On attend le car.
La route est là.

Des immeubles sont contruits au milieu des champs.
Le car s’arrête devant certains immeubles, il ne s’arrête
pas devant d’autres.

Au café, la musique. Ce n’est rien.

On est debout à l’arrêt du bus, on regarde les immeu bles,
là bas.
On pense aux allées entre les immeubles.

Les allées sont ouvertes.

You stand at the bus stop. You wait for the bus.
The sky. Telegraph poles. The sky full of wires.

The sky is vast. Full of wires. You wait for the bus.
There is the route to think about.

The buildings are built in the middle of nowhere.
The bus stops in front of some, not others.

In the pub, music. It’s nothing.

You stand at the bus stop. You see
the buildings over the road.

You think about the paths between them.
You can walk down those paths.

The outskirts are the same. Space. Space killed.

You stand at the bus stop. You wait for the coach. Around
you is the sky and the telegraph poles. The sky is
full of wires.

The sky is huge. There are these wires. You wait for the coach.
The road is there.

Some buildings have gone up in the middle of the fields.
The coach stops in front of certain of them,
not in front of others.

In the café, music. It means nothing.

You stand at the bus stop, you look at the tower-
blocks, below.
You think of the walkways between the buildings.

The walkways are open.

If I say to you

If I say to you the green parking meter
on the pavement by the garden in front of me
when I say it for you I make it
exist even if there is neither garden nor pavement
nor meter in front of me and yet I must
be there to say it this meter
whose greenness I mete out to you on the pavement
by the garden this bright hero of a brand new
fictional parking lot which does not figure
in the annals of any yellow peril
this six foot metre this green meter
beckoning you whose hand stretches
to delete the detail of the dial which you begin to read
this fine meter’s fine whose face value
will remain for me forever hidden behind your shoulder
unless of course poetically I pay it tribute

translation © David Kinloch

Greffe

Transplant

Dans le café, on éteint les lumières
pour nous signifier l’heure de la fermeture.
Sans hâte, elle finit de boire son thé
et comme une lampe sous son teint d’opale
tu vois s’éclairer en elle un au-delà
l’attention intérieure à la communauté
rassemblée près du Styx, inquiète du passage
dans l’alignement des lits d’hôpital.
On l’a renvoyée ici pour attendre
une seconde vie avec le foie d’un autre.
Là bas, ce ne sont pas des mœurs surprenantes
car on ne paie pas le sombre nocher
avec sa propre obole: il faut l’échanger
contre bien des regards, des mots de réconfort
et il n’accepte que la monnaie étrangère.
Elle t’apprend tout cela sans rien dire
avec ses yeux gris où l’inconnue douceur
a dissous l’amertume, et tu la trouves belle.

In the café, they put the lights out
to let us know it’s closing time.
Without hurrying, she finishes drinking her tea
and lamp-like beneath her opal skin
you see light up within her one who has gone beyond
an inner awareness of the people
gathered near the Styx, worried about the journey
in the rows of hospital beds.
They have sent her back here to wait for
a second life with the liver of another.
Over there, these ways do not surprise
for the dark ferryman is not paid
with his own coin: there must be an exchange
of sympathetic looks, of words of reassurance
and he only accepts foreign coins.
She teaches you all this wordlessly
with grey eyes where an unknown gentleness
has dissolved all bitterness, and you find her beautiful.

Fil d'horizon

Thread of horizon

Sur ce fil d’horizon
simple
sur cette nuit d’horizon
il y a une pleine lune qui se joue au ballon
il y a la lumière d’une journée lourde
qui s’évapore dans l’air noirci

Sur cette lame d’horizon
vont périr
les grands débats du petit jour
les idées courtes d’après la sieste
il y a la ligne des épaules
qui se réjouit de tant de calme
il y a le fond du cœur
qui se déleste de ses scories

Sur cet arc d’horizon
vient se greffer
le tissu distendu des étoiles
l’univers en lui-même
commence ici
par cette lumière quasi parfaite
le cœur grésille
sous la ligne des épaules
la ligne des épaules
oscille
dans l’axe de sa galaxie

On this
single
thread of horizon
on this night of the horizon
the full moon bounces itself like a ball
there is the light of a heavy day
which evaporates in the blackened air

On this blade of horizon
will perish
the large debates of the little day
the short term notions that follow a lie down
there is the line of the shoulders
that exults in such peace
there is the bottom of the heart
which clears out its clinker

Onto this arch of horizon
is being grafted
the attenuated tissue of the stars
the universe itself
begins here
in this partly perfect light
the heart crackling
under the line of the shoulders
the line of the shoulders
swaying
on the axis of its galaxy

Je t'écrivais...

I was writing...

Je t’écrivais des cartes postales pour tous
les jours.

Deux le vendredi donc à cause du dimanche.

Des crocus coloriaient la neige sur la dernière
que tu as vue.

Tes doigts devaient trembler à tenir le
croissant, et des miettes seront tombées sur
la neige.

Mais pour la carte postale du lundi elle est
restée dans l’enveloppe dans ta poche dans le
cercueil dans le caveau dans la terre, père gigogne.

I was writing you post cards for each
of the days.

Two on Friday on account of Sunday.

Crocuses would have coloured in the snow on the
last one you saw.

Your fingers must have shaken as you held the
croissant, and some crumbs will have fallen on
the snow.

But as for Monday’s card it remains in its
envelope in your pocket in the coffin in the vault in
the earth, father enfolded within.

Nous ne sommes pas l'arbre

We are not the tree

Nous ne sommes pas l’arbre
mais son feuillage qui raconte.

Nous ne connaissons rien du jour,
pourtant l’aube nous a mis en marche.

Nos voix, c’est à peine si nous savons
les reconnaître. Que veulent-elles,
ornées de mots insaisissables?
Elles appellent sous la voûte.

Notre source,
cette brise légère
que nous n’attendions pas.

We are not the tree
but the leaves who speak.

We know nothing about the day,
yet the dawn set us in motion.

Our voices, we hardly know
how to recognize them. What do they want,
decorated with ungraspable words?
They are calling beneath the vault.

Our source,
this light breeze
which we were not expecting.

Le quartier des fleuves

The river district

Moi aussi j’aurais pu grandir ici,
dans ces rues plates et calmes
et sans mystère mais peut-être n’est-ce
que parce qu’elles sont plus larges que chez nous.

Au centre les photos montraient un terrain vague;
les arbres ont aujourd’hui soixante-cinq ans
et font beaucoup d’ombre. Sous eux
on peut s’installer et lire

un livre quelconque, dans la chaleur stagnante.
Plus tard se lever, parce qu’à la fin
on finit par se sentir de trop, voyeur.
Citoyen ordinaire sur une rue moyenne,

on passe devant l’école, le salon de thé,
on réintègre la circulation. Aux terrasses des cafés
les gens sont disposés à causer, à rire. Je sais
pourquoi je suis venu ici. Je n’ai pas besoin de le dire.

I too could have grown up here
in these flat serene streets
without mystery but isn't it just
because they are broader than where we live

At the centre the photos showed a vague landscape
the trees are sixty-five years old today
and cast heavy shadows. Under them
you can settle down to read
a humdrum book in the stagnant heat.
Later get up, because in the end
you end up feeling like a voyeur.
Ordinary citizen in an average street.

You pass in front of the school, the tea room
and get back into circulation. On the cafe terraces
people are happy to chat, laugh.
I know why I came here. I don't need to explain.

More about this event

While French novelists have made a considerable impact post-1945, and French theorists even more so – Lacan, Derrida, Foucault – knowledge of poetry remains sketchy. There may be some excuse for those reliant on translation when the French themselves, polled recently, declared (the widely translated) Apollinaire, Baudelaire and Verlaine their favourites, along with some chansonniers who have proved resistant to translation.

In an effort to improve this situation, the Scottish Poetry Library in partnership with the Institut français d’Ecosse invited Jacques Rancourt, director of the annual Festival franco-anglaise de poésie and editor of La Traductière, to choose about twenty poems from the last twenty years to be circulated to four Scottish poets, who would then choose twelve poems to translate. On 14 December 2002, M. Rancourt presented his own and his contemporaries’ poetry at an open session at the Institut français, chaired by Graham Dunstan Martin, a distinguished translator of French poetry. An appreciative audience were also teased and amused by Gael Turnbull’s bilingual poetry installations.

The next day, M. Rancourt and Magi Gibson, David Kinloch, Brian McCabe and Donny O’Rourke gathered in the Scottish Poetry Library for a concentrated day of translation, re-working and working on the poems they’d chosen, with advice from M. Rancourt and in discussion with each other. This collegial approach was different from the practice of showing work to one or two friends in its intensity of focus and level of exchange. The results may be seen below. All the poets responded to Leslie Kaplan’s poem ‘Banlieue’, bringing to bear not only their experience of such places in France but also similar bleak estates in Scotland. The versions in Scots emphasised the range of registers and vocabulary available to Scottish translators – and poets – that weren’t evidently at the disposal of French poets. For the most part these translations are very close to the originals, but in ‘Si je vous dis’ we read the ‘plain’ version by Brian McCabe and a version by David Kinloch that changes the central image whilst preserving the metaphorical transformation.

This creative exchange introduces us to many new poets, as well as providing for the Scottish poets a stimulus to translation that may influence their own future work. The Scottish Poetry Library is grateful to the Scottish Arts Council for funding the project, to Institut français in Edinburgh for their funding, hospitality and enthusiasm, to the participating poets, and to the French poets for their permission, readily given, to reproduce the original poems here.

Robyn Marsack
Director, Scottish Poetry Library

Acknowledgements

The Scottish Poetry Library gratefully acknowledges support from Institut français d’Ecosse and the Scottish Arts Council.