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« Thread Started on Sept 14, 2008, 11:50am » | |
Marie Etienne
Translated by Marilyn Hacker
INSTRUCTIONS FOR WEEPING
In the sky there are birds flying in place
While grouped together as a shaft of light
Casts very gentle beams against all those
Bodies in movement but fixed nonetheless
The violet sea then a boat
Its sail
A single one is rounded like a cheek
Powdered to seem fairer (The garden gate)
***
(Powdered to seem fairer) The garden gate
Opens on the river the air is thick
Because of summer because of the heat
The city grumbles around the ancient
Hangars
From a grocery comes opaque
Light displayed on the shelves we see apples
And we can smell them (Far from the pathways)
***
(And we can smell them) Far from the pathways
We wait for a surprise when we stop like
A hare the hunter takes his stance his features
Are somewhat heavy his face is all smiles
Amidst the leaf*ge he has turned his head
Towards the horse’s bridle and exhibits
His cropped hair and his slender neck the image
Is terrifying (His movement is curved)
***
(Is terrifying) His movement is curved
His hand holds a hammer ready to break
The mirror hanging under the staircase
Its face to the light so it can gather
The day
There is no image only the
Outline lasts its force due to the presence
Of the frame (Huge room near a garden)
***
(Of the frame) Huge room near a garden
Like those around which houses once were built
The walls and the floor set with cream-colored
Tiles a row of washbasins on one side
From the high window to the right there comes
A fragmentary shaft of moving light
Tennis players are on the court downstairs
And as they play one begins to notice
A stain on the window-pane or is it
Mildew begun to spread across the green
***
Who are these people coming? They line up
On the sidewalk sometimes one of them gets
Annoyed they stay there all night long when I
Wake up in the morning they all have gone
I ask myself again what it can be
They want they’ve gathered in a group they watch
Me from the street up through my window they
Imitate figures on a frieze they have
Enough air to breathe I have all the light
***
Now the people are seated with their backs
To me in the high loges on the first
Floor and contemplating St. Theresa
Carved in an attitude suggesting sin
Despite the darkness a wall panel or
A pillar can still be seen on either
Side there is a bed the one on the right
Is empty the one on the left I guess
Is occupied because of the face which
Is white (A good man is giving food)
***
(Is white) A good man is giving food
To a woman while another relieves
Herself loving the man who’s facing her
“Yes I thought she was crazy!” he pretends
To be breaking bread into crumbs above
The nestled body
The old woman wags
A finger “Tell me what you want I swear
You’ll have it” he recoils into the room
It stretches far back its ceiling is high
***
Objects have accumulated they are
Shaped like hats the pile is large ---He climbs
All that’s needed is his head placed on top
Body stapled to a ladder one can
Watch through a skylight in between the bars
Reminded of the spider and its prey
Above she is insatiate --- below
She is content and glorious
Meanwhile
The daughter is sucking her thumb seated
On the ground the mother makes piles of salt
***
As for the woman she’s wearing heavy
Shoes and her hand grips a cane while her head
Is leaning against the window her skin
Joyful in the sunlight her hair hangs down
She had been drying her tears with the steam
Iron like that laundress who could never take
Off her eye makeup in the evening
Because during the night her husband
Wanted her painted (Close to the shut door)
***
(Wanted her painted) Close to the door shut
On a luminous source whose
Scintillation surrounds the wall panels
Her silhouette is seen in profile—soaked
By a waterfall centered just on her
Outside this cone the air’s dry and burning
The vision effaces itself there was
A violence that remained comical
I forget what it was
The fire starts we
Feel nothing at last we’ll love each other
MARIE ETIENNE
translated by Marilyn Hacker
first published in Poetry London
![[image]](http://shayepoet.com/conference/authors/marieetiennes.jpg "[image]")
MARIE ETIENNE is the author of ten collections of poems, five novels and two books on the theater. She spent her childhood in Indochina, in what is now Viet Nam, during the Second World War. These origins are the basis of two of her novels, Sensó: La guerre, and L’Enfant et le soldat, kaleidoscopic impressions of the war and of the multiple displacements of a child between cultures. Her own education continued in France and in Dakar; returned to France, she was assistant to the experimental theater director Antoine Vitez. Her most recent poetry collections are Dormans (2006) and Roi des cent cavaliers (2002). Marilyn Hacker’s translation of the latter, King of a Hundred Horsemen, was the recipient of the first Robert f*gles Translation Award of the National Poetry Series, and will be published in November 2008 by Farrar Strauss and Giroux.
***
MORE:
Translation and Writing: A Conversation With Marilyn Hacker
Interview by Jennifer Dick
http://tinyurl.com/4hdaev
and
Marilyn Hacker on "The Most Engaged Form Of Reading"
http://tinyurl.com/3vebm8
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