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English Translation Below/ traduction vers l’anglais plus bas

Quand je suis avec lui ça doit me bercer comme si l’on était

des vagues sur le dos de la baleine qui s’attarde sur la voix

des rochers, ces rochers qui crient, crient tout le temps

mais nul ne les entend sous l’hurlement des fantômes, des veils hommes

crachés sur le plafond de leur mer

gâchés par la vie non-vécu

les prix non-réçues

les non-dits des goélands solitaires

effaçant ensemble

les nuages, les vagues, les courbes de la mer,

s’effaçant sans trace.

Traduction vers l’anglais:

When I’m with him it should cradle me as if we were

waves upon the back of the whale who waits upon the voice

of rocks, those rocks who cry, cry all the time

but no one hears them beneath the howling of ghosts, of old men

spat upon their sea-mother’s ceiling

wasted by unlived life

ungotten prizes

unspoken words of solitary gulls

erasing together

the clouds, the waves, the curves of the sea,

erasing themselves without a trace.

Images:

“Leviathan. 30 November 2014, 10:09.” Christopher Michel / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

“at Imagoura of Kasumi Coast in Kami, Hyogo prefecture, Japan. The place of “Beautiful evening sun veiw point best 100 of Japan” there.” 663highland / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

Quarantaine

Le jour de ma quarantaine

Le monde est en quarantaine

Je n’ai pas su m’octroyer mon gâteau de sous la cerise.

Le jour de mes quarante ans

J’écoute une chanson compromise

Par la basse qualité du stéréo dans mon Nissan.

Et si je sauve des vies simplement par ne pas aller déhors

Je ne saurai vraiment jamais; faut avoir de la foi

Mas c’était ma foie qui a provoqué la crise

Qui m’enverra à l’hôpital l’année dernière

Et maintenant l’on se demande si ce n’est pas la dernière année de la terre.

English translation:

On my fortieth birthday

The world is in quarantine

I couldn’t snag my cake out from under the cherry.

On my fortieth birthday

I listened to a song compromised

By the low quality of the stereo in my car.

And if I’m saving lives by simply not going outside

I will never really know; one must have faith

But it was my liver that provoked the crisis

That sent me to the hospital last year

And now we’re all wondering if this isn’t the last year of the world.

NOTES (aka why this poem is better in French than English:)

1. In French, the word for “fortieth” and the word for “quarantine” are the same: quarantaine.
2. The French expression “c’est le gâteau sous la cerise,” literally translating as “it’s the cake under the cherry,” is an even more ironic version of the expression “la cerise sur le gâteau,” like our “cherry on top.” So, “to top it all off” becomes the even more exasperated and overwhelmed “whoa all we were seeing before when we were freaking the f*ck out was the cherry on top; now we see the giant cake of underlying stressors.”
3. I have no opinion of Nissan vehicles or their stereo systems, I was just looking for something to rhyme with an, the French word for “year.”
4. The French words for “liver” (foie) and “faith” (foi) are homophones. Une crise de foie is a liver failure. Literally, “A crisis of the liver” — which also sounds like “A crisis of the faith.”
5. This poem is not intended to be a political statement on whether quarantine should be a thing or not or anything like that. It is merely an expression of one individual’s loneliness and ennui, or lack of joie de vivre, caused by the unnatural separation from human communal contact. Let’s face it, Zoom meetings just lack that certain je ne sais quoi (actually, I do sais quoi, it’s real eye contact and the possibility of an oxytocin boost from a hug, among other things. But whatevs.) Who’s ready to wake up and find 2020 so far was all a dream?

Simple à plaire

Une rivière qui coule

ne se demande pas quel métaphore peut la contenir,

elle ne se définit pas par le verbe décrivant son pas alors

qu’elle traverse l’océan terrestre,

elle n’a pas recours aux voyelles ni aux consonnes —

elle sonne, simplement, l’instrument divin du néant

et de la chose qui ne se considère pas comme telle.

Traduction vers l’anglais/ translation toward English:

A running river

doesn’t wonder what metaphor may contain her,

she does not define herself by the verb describing her gait while

she crosses the earth ocean,

she resorts not to vowels nor to consonants —

she rings, simply, the divine instrument of the nothing

and of the something that doesn’t think of itself in such terms.

Les Vaisseaux fantômes/Ghost Ships

Ça vous fait peur, que je me définisse par ce que vous n’êtes pas — par ce que je ne suis pas. Vous vous dessinez en encre, vous vous ancrez dans la boue du fond en visant le Nouveau Monde, vos boussoles s’enivrant jusqu’au vide. Vos desseins d’assassinat se dessinent sur mon plafond tandis que je prends le petit-déjeuner: un réseau social.

Traduction vers l’anglais/ Translation toward English:

Scares you, doesn’t it, that I define myself by what you are not — by what I do not follow. You draw yourselves in ink, you anchor yourselves in the muddy bottom while you aim for the New World, your compasses inebriating themselves up to the point of the void. Your assassination plots sketch themselves out on my ceiling as I eat my breakfast: a social network.

Note: “Je suis” can be two things in French. The most common is the present-tense first-person indicative of the verb “to be” — “je suis” usually means “I am.” But the verb “suivre,” meaning “to follow,” takes the same form “suis” when conjugated in the present-tense first-person indicative. Therefore “je suis” can mean “I am” and “I follow” at the same time.

le chevalier-poisson

le chevalier-poisson est monté sur son cheval sablonneux. Dit-il, tout recommence avec ça. Et le sable devint malveillant//et les rochers devinrent malades//et la toute petite maison au gré du bois s’empêtra dans un filet conçu pour les papillons en papier jaune.

The fish-knight mounted his sandy horse. Said he, everything hereby begins anew. And the sand became evil//and the rocks became ill//and the tiny little house at the whim of the woods became trapped in a net intended for yellow paper butterflies.

Rosa sempervirens

Mais on ne s’était point promis la survie;

je ne t’avais rien promis outre la vie-même,

ce qui est à dire: l’amour.

Mais je t’ai vu parmi les fleurs fantômes

à la recherche d’un arôme discret

depuis l’édit qui l’interdit de subvenir parmi les souvenirs

des femmes, des hommes, et des gens s’essayant dans un jardin.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

But we had hardly promised each other survival;

I had promised you nothing other than life-itself,

that which is to say: love.

But I saw you amongst the ghost flowers

in search of a smell discreet

since the edict which forbade it to come to aid amidst the memories

of women, of men, and of people trying themselves on in a garden.

Images dans leur ordre chronologique d’apparence/Images in order of appearance:

“Rosa sempervirens.” By H Brisse (upload by Abalg) – from the aforementioned site, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3772335

“Grounds of Red House Museum in Gomersal, West Yorkshire, England. Showing Adélaide d’Orléans rose, bred by Jacques, 1826.” By Storye book – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50074642

“Fragmenta botanica, figuris coloratis illustrata (T. 107).” Jacquin, Nikolaus Joseph; Mathiae Andreae Schmidt. [Public domain]

La langue de moi/ The Language of Me (My Tongue)

Ma langue ne peut faire naître que des mots:

antonomases, injures, et portmanteaux

Ma langue ne peut pas faire naître que des mots:

elle donne aussi la vie à des bigorneaux,

des longue déroulements d’histoires aux ruisseaux.

Ma langue ne peut naître que des mots

Sa mère s’appelle maître; son père c’est des jeux vidéo

Ma langue voudrait n’être qu’un drôle d’oiseau

s’envolant, en volant des pains chauds.

Traduction vers l’anglais/ Translation towards English:

My tongue cannot give birth to anything but words:

antonomasia, insults, and portmanteaux

My tongue cannot give birth to nothing but words:

it also gives life to comestible snails,

to long outspiraling yarns by the streams.

My tongue cannot be born but of words

Her mother is called master; her father is video games

My tongue would love to be nothing but a strange bird

taking flight, stealing hot breads.

Image: By ADT 04 – Petites brioches provençale, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42630732

La Chose que je n’ai jamais voulue —

— perdre

du temps à rendre compte

des comptes non-connectés, des

non-comptables, incontournables

lèvres carrées sur la poitrine lunaire

désilluminée qui essaie à la fenêtre de mon être

somnambule, de me faire

me réveiller, sans déviner

que c’est déjà le dernier stop du métro

qu’au delà du rêve réel, rien n’est vraiment vrai

Traduction vers l’anglais/ Translation towards English:

The thing I never wanted —

— to lose

time accounting for

disconnected accounts,

uncountable, unstoppable

gridded lips on the disillumined

lunar breast who is trying, at the window of my somnabulant

being, to make me

wake up, without perceiving

that this is already the last stop on the train

that outside the real dream, nothing is really true

Images dans leur ordre d’apparition/ Images in order of appearance:

“Lieu : Cotentin (Normandie/France) – port – Filet de pêche.” By Daniel Plazanet (Daplaza) – Photographie personnelle – More of my pictures (Attribute – Share Alike) on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1671305

“Birdhouses on wooden columns. Picture taken during low tide – during high tide the bottom parts are under water. Sidney Spit (part of Gulf Islands National Park Reserve), Sidney Island, British Columbia, Canada.” By Michal Klajban – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69690260

“Soon west under crecent Moon as well as the Earth illuminates the Moon..” By 阿爾特斯 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11670391

 

La Nuit est grande/ The Night is Large

 

De mon lit terrestre,

je m’avale les étoiles champêtres,

les amourettes des pieds,

les ponts entr’orteils.

Sous le mal de mer

j’entend chanter le loup lunaire

alors qu’un gecko lui marche sur les yeux,

délicat, grimpant, cherchant un point de vue

calme et ennuyeux

dans l’iris ensoleillé de miel —

Et bien, n’est-ce le ciel qu’un couple malheureux,

un attelage des yeux

trop proches pour s’approcher?

 

Traduction vers l’anglais/ Translation towards English:

From my terrestrial bed

I swallow myself stars of the fields,

the shallow affairs of the feet,

the inter-digital bridges of the toes.

Under the seasickness

I hear the moon-wolf singing

while a gecko walks on her eyes,

delicate, clambering, searching for a calm and boring

point of view

in the iris sun-drenched with honey —

And come to think of it, isn’t the sky simply a dysfunctional couple,

a yoking of eyes

too close to get too close?

Images dans leur ordre d’apparition/Images in order of appearance:

“Lajedo de Pai Mateus, Paraíba, Brasil.” By Ruy Carvalho – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49830095

“Sète depuis le Mont Saint-Clair, Hérault, France.” Christian Ferrer [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D

“Image ID: reef0297, The Coral Kingdom Collection Location: University of Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology Credit: Photo Collection of Dr. James P. McVey, NOAA Sea Grant Program.” By Dr. James P. McVey – NOAA: http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/reef0297.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79846

Le Château brûlant avait de la crème dedans/ The Burning Castle had Cream Inside

Le château brûlant avait de la crème dedans

alors on y mettait sa cuillère

et on déclara que c’était de la bonne chair.

Et on éclaira les paysages: un goût de poésie

aux notes de caramel, une suggestion de cannelle

comme une apparition revêtue de la ganache lune-de-ciel

pâle, légèrement salée.

Traduction vers l’anglais/ Translation towards English:

The burning castle had cream inside

so the people dipped their spoons in

and declared it was good flesh.

And they illuminated the countryside: a taste of poetry

with notes of caramel, a suggestion of cinnamon

like a ghost dressed in sky-moon ganache

pale, lightly salted.

Notes:

1. “Crème brûlée” literally means “burnt cream” in French. This is the same verb used for the burning of castles and other non-dessert entities.
2. The term “bonne chère” in French (rhymes with “unshare”) literally translates as “good dear,” but it’s an expression meaning “good grub” (or sometimes, in less polite circles, “pleasing to look at naked.”) The word “chair” (rhymes with “right here”) means “flesh;” there is also the similar word “chaire” for the “chaise” relegated specifically to the elementary schools.)

Images dans leur ordre d’apparition/ Images in order of appearance:

“Korean haunted house1.” By Sanandreas119 – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65619981

“Crème brûlée with raspberries and a lit candle at the Blue Bayou restaurant in Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California.” By Patrick Pelletier – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39198885

“Illustration for “The Fated Hour” (taken from Tales of the Dead) from The Penny Story-Teller, London: Charles Penny, August 15, 1832, p. 17. Adjusted from Google books scan [p. 28] by uploader.” The Penny Story-Teller [Public domain]