Romance

I

It wasn't serious, sixteen years -
a beautiful night. glasses of lemonade,
the green park and the luster of stars
the soft grass welcoming our feet.

You smelled so good in the June night!
The air was sweet and they were closing
the gates, but the wind slipped the bars,
the city wasn't far,
the perfumes of wine and beer ...

II

And here is an apricot for your mouth,
like a blossom against a somber branch
smiling like a wicked star against the
deep night, so white...

June evening ! Sixteen years old !
We hid ourselves and drank champagne.
You rose in my head like a tide
and divined that i would like
to steal a kiss, hiding there
like a beast ...

III

The heart is crazy, it flies to
romance,
in a clarity pale and tremulous
a girl with an air of charm
casts a delightful shade ...

she finds me foolish,
immensely naive,
when she turns,
her movements are so alive
it is the end of reason.


IV

We were lovers until August.
We were lovers,

All our friends said " Get lost.
You've got it bad."

and I adored you
" Too much " you wrote.

That night - glasses of lemonade -
it wasn't serious,
sixteen years old,
the soft grass
welcomed
our backs.

- aprés A.Rimbaud

Sun

you want to encourage my charming auroras
the sun, which you say is your basis,
lays on my skin like love’s tincture
posing its rays to me like questions
and to the queens they’ve thrown

large butterflies with primitive wings,
the waterfronts are too affronted
to chase your jealous winds
a frightened deer does not stop to answer
to the frightened flowers

breathe with me this rose
by the sun elue ,
radiant for gardens
glad for her heat,


grateful as a sinner

for a Saint’s benediction.


O sun, jealous of the
poet
of the
thief of sentiments !

sentient sentinel,
unpreviewed,
lashed to its place

Who stops to smell
the serpent-minute
in the flower ?

- aprés Henry J. - M. Levet

Big Wind

this year the wind moves
it spins the air around the thinking body
blows soft from the sea
or the ocean

it is the same in Paris at night
great gusts of warmth
here, too, in the place of celebrations

everything cut and crossed by a touch of suffering
of absence

french freesia, oh
where are you ?

this year the wind has a soul
it is she
in the end
ready to go already gone
ready to tumble to the earth
the feeling is alive
dying to be alive

and he’s a child again
on a plane too big for him
tells me

look





in the cafe where they see each other
their stare is soft and gentle
to the face that faces them

I sense in that look
and in the body which watches
like a soft night wind
come from afar

french freesia

she laughs on the phone
and I laugh with her

where are you, in this empty summer
ancient scent of trees along the Seine

scent of the present in the emptiness
or each breeze
which falls again -

softly -

and in the empty emptiness
gentility is desired

- it happens to strengthen
this idea of desire

name written and thought
without weight
without preface


the absence -
takes you

blows you to the place

windyvoices invented

oh vain memory

- she comes not when wanted
she comes in her light fashion

when the big love takes her
big with its hands, always the same

new thing - new everything
anew; the sounds in the music

the flowers are not the same

your face which comes with all thoughts hidden
and a soft voice

“ disappeared, I have crossed over “

soft and so controlled

“ not much space, but I have crossed over . . .”






Working at the piano today
trying to work
I listen to you
and the thought of you comes as she wants to

across everything
my same resistance
my negation of you

blow the hatred of love
that comes with love

cruel and glacial

which reverses everything
which razes

and allows the reversal of itself
by its Image
or its Breath
its Music grown stronger . . .


- Jacqueline Risset

transl. by Colin Mahar. Paris, Oct. 1998.

The Giving of My Self

I offer myself to another, it begins again ;
I give you the same before you have earned me.
There is something about me,
deep in me, at the center of myself,
something of infinite value.
Like the peak of the high mountains;
something like the dead point in the
retina,
without echo
which sees and listens,
a real existence, a proper life, and which
depends.
Throughout my quick life, listen, impossible,
the barrage of consciousness.
An existence is birth, if that is possible,
insensitive to physical suffering,
which does not fear my tears,
which laughs not when I laugh,
which does not blush at my
shameful behavior
and which does not whine when my
heart is broken;
which keeps still and offers no counsel,
but always and forever speaks the same :

“ I am there, indifferent to everything. ”

Perhaps it is empty as empty is,
but it is as big as Good and Evil put
together
and cannot be replaced.


Hate is killed by asphyxiation
the biggest love never penetrates it.

Take, then, all of me; the sense of
these poems.
Not what you read, but what you learn as
you traverse me
Take, take, you have nothing
and where I am , in the empty universe,
I always remember
Outside myself, as within myself,
the irreplaceable emptiness,
the unconquerable nothing.

- aprés Valery Larbaud